Chapter 1 Early Histories

Part I: Historiography in Europe to 1900 Chapter 1 Early Histories Busts of Herodotus and Thucydides ( Courtesy of the Library of Congress ) For Europeans, the transition to stories about the past that we would now recognize as “history” began in sixth-century B.C.E. Greece (Hellas), where a philosophical revolution was taking place. In the midst of nearly continuous wars between the Greeks and the Persian and the various Greek city-states, and a series of civil wars, Greek think- ers strove to bring order to their chaotic world and develop new solutions to age-old 15 MM02_HOEF7624_01_SE_C01.indd02_HOEF7624_01_SE_C01.indd 1155 005/05/105/05/10 77:13:13 PPMM 16 Part I Historiography in Europe to 1900 Chapter 1 Early Histories 17 questions. Greek philosophers moved beyond merely accepting traditional knowledge Herodotus Herodotus (c. 484–425 B .C.E. ) was the first Greek to break away from the as the truth and began to use their own logic and reason to explain the universe. The mythopoetic tradition and forge a new path in historiography. Herodotus was born most famous Greek philosophers, such as Socrates and Aristotle, began using a new in Halicarnassus, a Greek town on the western coast of modern Turkey, where the inquiry-based method which applied deductive reasoning 1 and observable evidence to revolution in Greek thought began. He lived in Athens and various other Greek cities, all questions. Preserved and transmitted to the rest of Europe and the Mediterranean where he was exposed to the ideas of Socrates and other leaders of the Greek philo- world by the Greek and Roman empires, their method of asking questions, formulat- sophical revolution. He traveled widely across the Mediterranean, and died sometime ing hypotheses, and testing their theories with observations became the basis for mod- after 420 B.C.E. in exile in Thurii, an Athenian colony in southern Italy. Like most of ern Western notions of humanism, rationalism, and the scientific method. This had a his contemporaries, Herodotus admired Homer, but he criticized Homer for his lack revolutionary impact on many fields, but especially on the study of the past. Greco- of observable evidence. Like most Greek rationalists of his day, Herodotus attempted Roman historians, and their Early Christian and Muslim descendants, now attempted to study the world through observable evidence. As a consequence, the primary agents to re-create the human past as accurately as possible by using observable evidence and of history in his work were observable forces: human activities and cultures. reason to support their arguments. Their approaches and theories became the founda- Herodotus’ only surviving work is The Histories , which was written while he was tion for the study of history in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. in exile. The Greco-Persian War is the main topic of this work, but it includes chapters on other cultures in the Mediterranean. Rather than focus simply on the political leaders and generals, Herodotus provides extensive descriptions of the various cultures of The Greek Revolution the Mediterranean, attempting to explain the origin of the wars as a cultural conflict. It is no coincidence that Herodotus chose this event as his subject. He was born in Classical Greeks called the scientific study of the past “historia.” The word derives from Ionia, where the war began, and this war was the most important event to affect his “histor,” which is related to the words for “to see” and “to inquire.” 2 In the Greek mind, own life. With little written documentation available, gathering reliable evidence therefore, historians were considered to be part soothsayers, who study the past to pre- on events from the distant past was difficult, if not impossible. By studying an event dict the future, and part bards, creating epic poetry in the tradition of Homer. Indeed, which occurred in his own lifetime, in his own region of the world, Herodotus was able Clio Homer the Greek muse of history Clio was also the muse of poetry. Many Greeks to this day to use eyewitness accounts as his evidence, thus making his history more reliable than consider Homer to be their first historian. All we know of him has been handed down other stories of past events. Herodotus was interested not only in describing what hap- through the generations. Homer was supposedly a traveling poet, or bard, who made pened, when, and where, but also in explaining why it happened, another key feature his living by telling exciting stories to his audiences. The first written copies of these of history as we now know it. Herodotus’ methods of gathering evidence and applying stories appeared in Athens in the sixth century B.C.E. , making it difficult to pinpoint the it to historical questions about past human events became the foundation for history author, much less the accuracy of the stories. The two most famous stories attributed as it was to be practiced in Western Civilization for the next two thousand years. to Homer are The Iliad and The Odyssey , which told the story of early Greek heroes, While Herodotus may be the father of cultural history in the West, and one of the gods, goddesses, and the famous Battle of Troy. Homer’s stories of the early Greek earliest Greeks to apply scientific methods to the study of the past, it was up to another past were widely known by the fifth century B .C.E. in Greece and spread throughout the Thucydides Greek, Thucydides (c. 460–400 B.C.E. ), to make a clear break from mythopoetic story- Mediterranean world in the next several centuries. As mythopoetic narratives, however, telling and question the credibility of his sources. Thucydides was born in Halimous, Homer’s stories bear little resemblance to the kind of history practiced in the United southwest of Athens in Greece. He lived in Athens when the war with Sparta broke States today. The revolutionary shift in Greek historical thinking took place in the fifth out in 431 B.C.E. , lived through the plague, was elected a general, and was banished century B.C.E. , with the emergence of historians who criticized Homer’s lack of observ- from Athens after losing an important battle with the Spartans. Exiled in Thrace, he able evidence and applied rationalist methods to their own study of the past. began writing his history of the war between Sparta and Athens, but died in 400 B.C.E. before he could complete his masterpiece The History of the Peloponnesian War . It is divided into eight books, chronologically covering the war from its beginning to the twenty-first year of the war. It is primarily a military and political history, but he does 1 Deductive reasoning starts with a general premise or hypothesis and uses that todeduce specific set it within the larger context of other events affecting Greece during the war. He conclusions. For example, the statement “it is dark outside at night” is a general premise, and from that we could deduce that if an event happened at night, it would have happened in dark- includes numerous detailed battlefield accounts and speeches to support his overarch- ness unless artificial light was provided. ing narration of the war. 2 Francis Hartog, “The Invention of History: From Homer to Herodotus,” History and Theory Even more so than Herodotus, Thucydides studied the actions of men, as opposed 39 (2000): 384–395, reprinted in Q. Edward Wang and Georg G. Iggers, Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, to supernatural forces, and used credible, observable evidence to establish a factual 2002), 28. account of the past. Thucydides criticized Herodotus not only for his inclusion of MM02_HOEF7624_01_SE_C01.indd02_HOEF7624_01_SE_C01.indd 116-176-17 005/05/105/05/10 77:13:13 PPMM 18 Part I Historiography in Europe to 1900 Chapter 1 Early Histories 19 unobservable forces, but also for wasting his time studying issues of little importance. Polybius Famed Greco-Roman historian, Polybius, directly connects the Greek tradition For Thucydides, political forces were the driving forces of history, not cultural forces. to Roman historiography. Polybius (c. 200 B.C.E. ) was born in Greece, but as a young In his view, the main reason for studying history was speculative: to understand politi- man lived as a well-treated hostage in Rome, while Rome was overtaking the Greek cal events, such as the causes and courses of wars, in order to apply this information Empire. A great admirer of Rome, in his great work The Rise of the Roman Empire to making future policy decisions. Like Herodotus, however, Thucydides studied an Polybius used the methods of Thucydides to explain and justify Rome’s rise to power. event (the war between Sparta and Athens), which took place in his own lifetime and He proclaimed this a “universal history,” a history of the known world, with the in his own region of the world. Reliable eyewitness accounts, therefore, were readily Roman Empire at its center. Like Herodotus and Thucydides, his was essentially a available and could be analyzed and used to re-create a precise account of the event. contemporary history and attempted to express a truthful accounting of the subject. Thucydides, himself, was an eyewitness in the wars, serving as a military general for Tacitus Other Roman historians, such as Tacitus (c. 56–120 C .E. ), also professed to main- part of the conflict. In fact, Thucydides included over thirty speeches in his history, tain strict objectivity in their interpretations. Tacitus’ motto, sine ira et studio , pledged most of which he reconstructed from memory, to tell the story of the war.

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