The paper explores the absence of clear ideological tension in the Greek historiography written in the early empire, using Dionysius and Plutarch as case studies. Given the subjection of Greek culture to Roman politics, it is strange how little these historians used the past as an arena for exploring national identity and the processes of colonization and subjection. I argue that a multivalent approach is necessary: readjusting expectations on the basis that ideas of nationhood became more tightly defined in the Enlightenment; considering the influence of dialogic approaches to textual representation over more authoritative ones; and reading texts with an eye to the dialogue with historian-predecessors. The paper works on Dionysius’ account of the sack of Alba Longa, and on Plutarch’s Roman Questions, to demonstrate the interpretative problems, to illustrate how ideological dilemmas could be dramatized in different types of historical writing, and to point to the usefulness of ‘dialogue’ as a concept when approaching the ideological struggle between Rome and Greece in this period.