Why Rome Fell

7 Varieties of History

Over two thousand years ago, the great Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460–c. 400 BCE) identified what he considered the most fundamental criteria in the writing of history:

• The need for accuracy
• The analysis of causation
• The resemblance between past and future
• The utility of history as an aid to the interpretation of the future
• The long-term value of his history, composed “not as an essay for immediate commendation, but as κτῆμα ἐς αἰεί (a possession forever).” (Thucydides 1.22.4.)

Thucydides’s ambition for his work to become a possession forever has been realized. But his criteria are still not universally accepted. This chapter discusses some of the many different approaches to the writing of history, with my own criteria summarized at the end. The issues dealt with are as follows:

• “Proper historical writing”: Moses Finley, who is credited with founding a new “school” for the writing of ancient history, defined “proper historical writing” as writing and teaching that is “morally and politically committed” and even “socially subversive.”
• The skeptical tendency: A tendency of some historians exists to dismiss evidence accepted by most others, to the point of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
• Baby and bathwater: Taken to an extreme, this tendency can result in a distorted or erroneous impression of whole periods.
• “Drowning the Baby”: This is exactly the opposite fallacy, of credulously accepting weak or even non-existent evidence, perpetrated by some of ...