According to a common place in modern scholarship, hellenistic historiography of II-I Century BC is a period of decadence or should be interpreted closely linked to Rome. The aim of the paper is to challenge this view and to offer a new interpretation of Timagenes (FGrHist/BNJ 88 T 6), who sees himself as the innovator of greek historiography. The Rome’ milieu of this author and other greek authors is sketched, with particular attention to the struggle between Asianism and Atticism in the late Republic and in the Augustan age.