The Birth of History:
Herodotus & Thucydides

How did ancient Greek historians differ from earlier poets & chroniclers?
How did ancient Greek historians differ from modern historians?
How did their goals differ?

In antiquity there was virtually no way that words and actions could be exactly reproduced after the fact. . . . We in our world are so used to having available to us on-the-spot reports, verbatim transcriptions, photographs, tape and video recordings, and to having libraries . . . that we sometimes fall into the trap of supposing that the ancients had the option of whether to base their writings on primary documents and that they rejected it for literary or other "anti-historical" reasons. This, of course, was not the case.

There is . . . no real word in Greek for history in the sense of "the past" or "the subject matter of written accounts." A word like historía, for example, meant either the written accounts themselves, or the process of inquiry that led to the creation of such accounts. In sum, history existed in men's minds and on the written page: it was a mental construct that the historian put in permanent literary form.

From what has been said it should be clear that the classical historians had a different conception of historical truth than we do today. . . . The history of times long past was particularly problematic: myths and legends frequently had variant versions and tended to attract bizarre and miraculous elements.

T. J. Luce, The Greek Historians (1997)

Herodotus (c. 484-425 B.C.)

* travelled widely through Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylon, s. Russia
* outsider status; Dorian colony
---> prose form, not mythic poetry
---> first-hand research
---> still included tall tales, exaggerations, fabrications

the rebels against the Magi held a council on the whole state of affairs, as which sentiments were uttered which to some Greeks seem incredible, but there is no doubt that they were spoken. Otanes was for turning the government over to the Persian people. . . . "Therefore I give my opinion that we make an end of monarchy and exalt the multitude, for all things are possible for the majority."

it is said that one-eyed men called Arimaspians steal it [gold] from griffins. But I do not believe this, that there are one-eyed men who have a nature otherwise the same as other men.

[Phoenicians] brought with them to Hellas, among many other kinds of learning, the alphabet, which had been unknown before this, I think, to the Greeks. As time went on the sound and the form of the letters were changed. . . .

Thucydides (c. 460- 400 B.C.)

* Athenian general in Peloponnesian War
* exiled during war; contact with both sides
---> critique of Homer's distortions
---> claims to greater accuracy
---> great pains to verify sources
---> celebrated importance of Greece of his day
---> distinguished between his work & his predecessors

There are many other unfounded ideas current among the rest of the Hellenes, even on matters of contemporary history which have not been obscured by time. . . . So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.

On the whole . . . the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted may, I believe, safely be relied on. Assuredly they will not be disturbed either by the lays of a poets displaying the exaggeration of his craft, or by the compositions of the chroniclers that are attractive at truth's expense. . . . time having robbed most of them of historical value by enthroning them in the region of legend. Turning from these, we can rest satisfied with having proceeded upon the clearest data, and having arrived at conclusions as exact as can be expected in matters of such antiquity.

With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said. . . . The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future. . . . In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.