Primary Sources

[Nathan Ross]

The primary source/secondary source dichotomy may have become so abused that it is best to avoid the terms

I can see the reasoning, but wouldn't that risk losing the sense of the terms as well? Which, as you've said, is quite important and useful in helping us to better understand what we're looking at?

"Handbook for Classical Research"... we usually treat as primary any source beyond which we cannot go, because its own sources are inaccessible to us ... what source is primary and what secondary also depends on the problem with which we are dealing."

Thanks for the quote - that does cover one interpretation very neatly (and quite a common one, going by some of the responses here).

But I'm still not sure what's gained by treating earliest available sources as primary sources by default. There's still an important difference between a genuine primary source document and the work of an historian writing much later - surely calling Livy an ancient secondary source is both more accurate and preserves the sense of the term 'primary' in this context?

even though they won't give us a tidy narrative.

I wonder if 'tidy narratives' are the exclusive preserve of secondary literature!