Joined: 31 Mar 2014 Posts: 9 Location: United States
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 6:23 pm Post subject: Herodotus and Thucydides
I believe that Herodotus was the father of history because he was the first one to have put together and recorded world events all in one place. He “put together the man varied events of Asia and Europe and a description of their peoples and lands in a single work”, something unthinkable before him. He was the first one to introduce the idea of creating a “history” though using a record of events. Before that everything was simply passed down orally or of specific moments in time. Due to this it would be extremely difficult to get accurate information seeing as oral evidence and stories can vary so much. It does not matter that it was not entirely accurate information because it was the most accurate information that was available to him at the time. Also history has a very broad definition even folk tales and stories do hold some type or percentage of history. Therefore the relaying of these stories, as Herodotus did, is also history. It still gives you a vision of life at those times and places even if it is more like reading a novel than a history volume. From his idea of condensing all stories and pasts in to one place sprouted other, more accurate representations of history, however, without his original work these newer works would not have come to be.
My current definition of history: The past recounted from books, people and experiences and tinged with personal ideology.
I believe that Herodotus is the father of history. I think that Thucydides was a better historian in the way that he was very factual and did not add any poetic aspects to his writing about history. I think that Herodotus is the father because of the fact that he was one of Thucydides sources for his writings " Much of the History is built upon unnamed oral sources and written sources such as Herodotus." (pg.321) So Thucydides was able to see that Herodotus was too poetic and fantastical in his writings and did not have accurate enough sources, so he was able to write his history in a more accurate way."This approach, Thucydides argues, may make his work 'less pleasing to the ear' but more likely to endure in the long run." (pg.321)
I think that one of the reasons Thucydides was able to be so factually accurate was because he studies a more narrow view of the war than Herodotus did. Herodotus studied a much wider range of topics so he wasn't able to hone in as many details as Thucydides was or able to verify his sources. Another reason that Herodotus was the father of history was because he was the first to look at historical relationships between events rather then the individual event itself.
To address Emma's question I think that history is anything and everything in the past, but I think that it is impossible to document everything and anything. So historians document the events that stand out and change the way society functions.
Last edited by Eve Frankel on Tue Apr 01, 2014 9:28 pm; edited 3 times in total
My definition of history is past events that are connected to someone or something, and they been recorded and studied.
Even though I really like the way the Herodotus recounts history, I have to say that Thucydides is the father of history. He did not take gods or legends into his account of the Pellopenesian war. He is very factual based. I believe that it is important to read about history from people who have firsthand experience, and also are writing about how these events are currently influencing them.(those events are then read by others in the future, whether that is an hour after it is recorded, or 1000 years.) Since Thucydides stuck to writing only about events that happened during his lifetime. He was very diligent with his research, and he paved a way for future historians to write history in a factual and scientific way.
Can history be everything and anything? For example, if everyone were to record everything that was going on at every second, would that count as history? Is there a real set of guidelines for what is history and what’s not? Normally, I would say that everything and anything can be called history, but that doesn’t seem right to me. Is history just important events?
I agree with Kaela and Eve that Herodotus is the father of history. While his accounts were not always factual or strongly supported with evidence, he did proscribe to my definition of history. He told a contextualized story of past events and he employed a lot of methods that show his writings were not just story telling, but history. He cited his sources of information and acknowledged different versions of histories that were being told, he contextualized events and recognized patterns and precedents. Also, he not only told the different accounts of events, but he often gave his opinion on which deserved more weight.
I don't think Herodotus was an especially good historian in terms of what we think of today. He clearly held strong opinions and seems to be strongly moved by personal ideas rather than evidence. One special example is when he claims that Cambyses is insane and his only evidence is that Cambyses does not proscribe to his native customs. However, I think Herodotus still began many of the important practices of historical study. He was the first to really take on the task of accounting the past events of different places in an studied and deliberate manner. It is also worth noting that if we are to discount every historian that told stories from a one sided perspective much of history is lost.
I've been struggling all evening to come up with a definition for "history".
Specifically: is history concerned with only the chronology of past events, or does it also inherently imply the study of the that chronology? Linguistics is the study of language, geography is the study of the world, psychology of the mind - so, is history the study, or is it what's being studied? Does history exist regardless of analysis in the same way that language, the world, and the mind can exist without human pondering, or is history the analysis itself?
Let's say that history is the study and analysis of past events, and not just the past events themselves. If so, what distinguishes history from everything else? Say I write, "I had a bagel earlier today and it was delicious". It includes both a past event (had a bagel earlier) and analysis of that past event (it was delicious) - is that history? What if I log every bagel I ate from 2003 to 2013? What if I chart worldwide consumption of bagels throughout the 21st century? What's history, and what isn't? These are all questions that I don't have answers to, and I'd love some feedback.
Surely people studied and analyzed past events before Herodotus and Thucydides. If we're using that definition, then the "Father of History" would be the first Homo Sapiens who kept track of when berry season was coming around, or who cataloged the hunt of the day on their cave wall. So what did Herodotus and Thucydides do differently from the berrypickers? It wasn't just that they wrote stuff down; people were keeping financial, political, and historical records in Mesopotamia three thousand years before the Greek historians.
What sets Herodotus and Thucydides apart is that they produced narrative historical records, that detail not only about what happened, but how and why it happened using research and analysis. Quote: Herodotus of Halicarnassues, his Researches are here set down to preserve the memory of the past by putting on record the astonishing achievements both of our own and of other peoples; and more particularly, to show how they came into conflict. That is what's new.
Of course, Herodotus and Thucydides have very different ways of approaching their cataloging; the former is more literary, leaves some of the interpretation open to the reader, covers a incredibly wide range of topics, and is happy to go on many digressions; on the other hand, the latter strives for "serious historical research", with "fierce, laser-like concentration on a single topic", determined to tell the truth rather than "please the ear". But as different as they are, they both still try to achieve the same thing - to tell what happened and why.
I think it's fair to say that Herodotus was the Father of History because he employed the method of research, analysis, and cataloging past events before Thucydides. Actually, because of the incredibly vague definition of "history", I'd rather call Herodotus the Father of Historians - the first to do what he did.
Now, whether or not Herodotus was a good historian is a different question altogether...
[Note: while writing this, Emma's post went up, and my questions are very similar to hers. Emma, I think what we can determine is that what constitutes history is incredibly arbitrary. Maybe... history is what's deemed as "important". History is what people write about. Maybe.]
Who do you consider the father of history? Why? How are you defining history? Post your Owen thoughts, but respond to other's ideas, too.
I believe that Herodotus was the father of history. He may be the father of a less than trust worthy, bias history, but none the less he stands out as the first historian to documented important events in a chronological order. Like Aristotle in science, Herodotus sets the stage for historians to come after him. Although the content may not have been his strong suit the step that he took to document his version of "history" was innovative and vital to the way we document history today. The content of what he documented is of less importance anyways (even though this is a loaded thing to say). Even today often our history text-books and knowledge is completely bias. What mattered more was that humans had a physical written script to pass from generation to generation. This way, details of stories were not lost completely, and even hundreds of generations later one could still read the same text. "His ideas had much influence on historians of the ancient world, but it was the style of the Histories, not the content, that elicited the praise of writers such as Cicero an Quintilian. Herodotus’s work was not thought to stand up in the historians aim of telling the truth." P. 162. Herodotus is the father of history because he changed history, and the way we write about it. However with out Thucydides, there wouldn’t be the same standard for research that we have today. “ After all, historians tend not to write about flying snakes.” P.162 At the beginning of this post I thought I knew the answer to the question however, now I think they are both equally fathers of history, because each shaped an extremely important part of how we analyze and thing about history now.
My definition of history: Un-bias (possible?) facts of importance in chronological order.
^(this is not excluding the idea that there may in fact be more then 100 "histories" of the same five minutes, all of which are valid).
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 8:45 pm Post subject: Who do you consider the father of history?
Who do you consider the father of history? Why? How are you defining history? Post your Owen thoughts, but respond to other's ideas, too.
My definition for history: A record by someone based on what that person learnt from what he saw and what others said about the past.
I believe Thucydides is the father of history. History is different form story because history should be the truth and story can have the author's imagination or emotions in it. I know that Herodotus is the first man who put the events together and write it down as "History". I think he put his own emotions in it. In his record, there are a lot of his own feeling, but he didn't address that they were his own feeling clearly. His thoughts and what he said kind of mixed together. It is really misleading. Thucydides, however, did a better job on separate what happened and how he felt about the event. Since it is really hard to not put his own imagination in, he wrote down how he got the information. This is really helpful because the readers can have their own thoughts after reading the history. The Herodotus version history would just give the reader his thoughts and all the people will think the same. So I think both of them are really great, they all made big progress on recording history. But I think Herodotus kind of helped to inspire Thucydides to come up with the thing called history, himself cannot be called as the father of the history.
Emma had a really interesting question in her post. What I think about history is history can be anything. But why do we only focus the important events? Say someone had and egg in the morning, that could be a part of history. If he is fine with having eggs then it just happened then turned into history, and he doesn't go around and tell others that he had an egg. But if he is allergic to eggs and he got really uncomfortable after that, he will surely talk to people about his bad feeling. So the the reason we learn important events not someone's daily life is because the events are more worth to talk and we can learn from them. It means that everything is history, but we just don't talk about some of them.
My definition of history for the purpose of this: the study of past events in order to understand history, the present, and the future.
I think Herodotus was the father of history. Like other people (especially Cote and Hope) have been saying he was really the first person of his time to study history and write it down, he was the first to be more than a story teller. Even though his credit has been disputed he was the first to start the process. He even had his own definition of history, he said: History shows patterns of growth and decline (158). The idea of putting a name and definition to history, of using it to seek out patterns was revolutionary. I believe Herodotus was the original father of history. That being said I think there is an argument to say Thucydides founded what we think of as a more modern approach to history. Although it was a long time ago the reading points out that some of his methodology is similar to our approach today. As mark said its hard to compare because they, Herodotus and Thucydides, take such different approaches. Thucydides aimed to detail recent events, where as Herodotus was looking in a more big picture sense, he adapted speeches to demonstrate larger themes in history, where as Thucydides stayed closer to the facts. I think they both brought something new and important to the table, but in the end I think Herodotus was the father, the person who started it all.
History is importantly linked to the reader and the author of said history. As can be seen with Herodotus' initial two volume Histories being turned into a 9 volume collection later, the future readers feel the need to adapt their mentalities to that which they feel the author would have expected. This demonstrates that history can never be consistently connected to; rather, it is a product of public experience and consequently it is a public creation. This is to say that history is a shared development, subject to the time of the scenarios it references (though the measurement of the time period is less definite) and thus history is contained; consider that alternate events for specific circumstances in Herodotus' work are not touched upon today, because the reader can never fully connect with his recollections of the past. This is not due to a technological or political or even paradigm shift - instead, it is because history lives only in its past form, yet it is consumed in its present. (To visualize this, imagine a stock trade closing at the end of a business day: the trading for that day can never reopen, and only the financiers howling out on that same day truly know that "history" - the reader of any accounts of this particular day cannot truly experience it without some sort of interpretative flaw.)
Therefore, history relies on the internalization of the public memory by the author. Take for example Herodotus' advice on arrogant people: they are "liable to ignore warnings" (16). Arrogance, though commonly perceived, is wholly subjective, and this subjectivity tinges the recounted experience - the history is inextricably colored with it. Similarly, the reader's attempt to connect to this history takes on an adaptive mentality that attempts to meet the author halfway. In other words, because the history is a shared/public experience, the author forfeits their contribution by writing it, by "finalizing" many varying accounts, the reader adapts their mentality to repay the writer's sacrifice, which automatically diminishes the reader's own innate authority. However, as history is wholly a shared creation, when it is examined it can never be fully participated in: the reader will never be a part of the creation of the history, only its transmission (which, intriguingly, can be considered an event in and of itself).
Considering this, it's clear to see that each generation/each era or other measurement of time has their own group knowledge, their own public memory. When Cicero declared Herodotus the Father of History, it was a result of Cicero's own involvement in his public memory, his time period's shared creation of history. Thus, in this case it's just as valid to call Cicero the Father of History because his definition was developed, as mentioned, in his own time frame, within his own circumstances. Our present can never align with the past shared/created history of peoples long ago, but our currently developing history is as valid as those of past years. (If it's helpful to visualize it again, think of histories as a sin graph: it will periodically occur. This is not to say that history is predictable, but that it has a beginning and end which are not necessarily the product of life and death, rather, time periods long and short).
In summation, as the father of history results from the reader's present, which can never align with past histories, there would hypothetically be multiple fathers of history/ies. However, as there can be no connection histories past, there's no way to verify or connect with previous definitions or "present" circumstances, and therefore there can be no shared/universal definition of the father of history; it is a definition that is entirely conditional to the reader's developing present. Therefore, there is no Father of History.
History is what can be least discussed, and most understood. (This definition is entirely conditional to ^^^^ explanation, in essence history is wholly colloquial, and wholly temporary/periodical).
My question to you all: What is the meaning of the word "public" in relation to history? (for example, consider that the Persians gave a different account than the Greeks of Io's kidnapping. However, how can one side be "incorrect?" History as a public creation cannot be interpreted - it is their own circumstance - therefore no one public/side is the wisest, and this could be an example of public's significance within the meaning of history).
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 9:17 pm Post subject: reply to mark's question
"What's history, and what isn't?"
I've been thinking a lot about the same idea, Mark, and I feel like I'm most curious about who has the right to decide which disputes are brought to light within history, while other perfectly juicy controversies are left aside. I think that history is a collection of everything, really, all sources - it struck me as odd that Herodotus was so praised for being selective about which sources he trusted, because this seems a natural thing we do in our daily lives when we absorb information. I think that this collection, though, can never amalgamate into a unit: history is a whole bunch of - for lack of a better word - things that are grouped together with one another, and this particular set of notions is history; history is not their sum, it is their being grouped together.
This is really abstract, but I'm not sure there's quite a definite/detailed answer to your question, because it's so situation/time-period specific.
I think Mark and I were thinking about this in a similar way. Before either Herodotus and Thucydides humans had been sharing stories and legends through oral tradition. I think that the job of a historian is to take the events around them and unite them with common themes and a view of the larger picture. Herodotus went about writing in a very naturally human way. "most of the histories is constructed from oral evidence." While not always reliable, it sets a story that was told in stone preventing it from being changed.
In addition to oral arguments Herodotus used cartography and tangents to flesh out oral stories. This is the groundwork for what modern history aims to do. You first must begin with primary sources and then you are free to add analysis. Herodotus does this when he states that "...Cambyses was raving mad."
While I would rather give credit to the more accurate historian (maybe a tendency that comes from living in more modern times), I feel that as a pioneer or "father" of history, Herodotus is a better match. He set oral stories down on paper and laid the foundation for how to examine and expand on primary sources.
Before answering the post question, I had to ask myself, what does it mean to be a "father" of history anyways? The first true historian? The person who lit the match that started it all? Should the father of history be the kind father we all know and love, or the abusive father who abandoned "history" at a young age? Getting a bit extreme with these analogies, I know, but what I'm trying to say is that no matter how you define what a "father" is, a father in most definitions is a person who is responsible and plays a large role in the development of a person / idea -- in this case, history.
I would say the person who falls under this definition most accurately would be Herodotus. "Before Herodotus there were storytellers ... philosophers curious about the nature of things, and poets curious about the origins of peoples." (page 20 of the packet). This quote sums up very well how Herodotus was truly original in both intent and the actions he took (his research). Before him, all tales of the past were nothing but stories subject to change and exaggeration. Herodotus set out to discover what truly happened in the past. Even though he conducted this research and his readings suggest bias -- we cannot doubt that he was the first historian simple because we believe his methods to be imperfect today.
Of course, being first at something doesn't automatically mean you're the father of something. What Herodotus did that was especially intriguing was how large everything he wrote about was. Be it battles or trade, Herodotus wrote about things much bigger than himself that were completely out of his control. We aren't talking about some random human from thousands of years ago who one day sat down and wrote about what was on sale at the local agora -- we are talking about battles that changed the course of -- well, history.
This is very similar to what Emma was talking about in her question -- about when something becomes history. I believe that history is the analysis and description of past events and their connections to the present through society, nature, knowledge, etc. So what would separate my breakfast front he civil war in terms of history? We live in a world that was radically shaped by the civil war, whereas my breakfast has yet to have any such effect. Simply put, my breakfast didn't lead to anything that changed society on a fundamental level -- nothing foundation shacking or jaw dropping. To look at it another way: "History is written by the victors" (Winston Churchill). There was no "victory" when I ate my breakfast this morning, but there was a "victory" in the civil war.
My definition of history is the study of people, places and events in the past, and their effects on society.
Like (nearly) everyone else, I agree that Herodotus is the father of history. Although he is known for the inaccuracies and lack of credibility in his writing, what made it unique was the element of storytelling. He was one of the first historians to add his own opinion in his writing, making it somewhat like a narrative. But what makes someone important is the effect they have on their society, and (like Hope said) Herodotus was incredibly influential with his writing, and set the stage for historians after him. The strongest argument I can think of that one can make against Herodotus is that his strong opinions may have caused him to be biased in his writing. I think, however, that this strengthens the sense of reality in his writing, because it's important to (as mentioned earlier) take the effects on society into account, and there's no better way to do that than give your own opinion on the matter, as someone present.
It seems to me that Thucydides is the true 'father of history,' not Herodotus. There are a few passages of the first reading that mention Herodotus inserting his own opinion into his text or using I statements. I feel that a retelling of history should be entirely impersonal, and changed in no way by personal opinions or thoughts. Thucydides is described as having been more meticulous with his sources and retellings, which makes me inclined to cite him as the father of history. One thing that throws me off a bit, however, is how Thucydides leaves very little up to opinion or discussion. All the loose ends are tied down, and as we have seen in the real world, sometimes opinions or accounts of the past can change.
I defined history as: The recounting or retelling of experiences from sources surrounding a time or event. The study of the past. Even though both Thucydides and Herodotus do this, I feel less comfortable with Herodotus being the father of history because of his methods.
Responding to Mark and Emma, I think history can be anything and everything that has already happened. I define science as more of a study of the present. Using both science and history, we can try to predict the future.
My question to all: Is history confined to the past? Is there any way it can define the present or the future as well?
My definition of history is the study of people, places and events in the past, and their effects on society.
My definition of history is the study of people, places and events in the past, and their effects on society.
When we were first asked to write down a definition of history, for some reason I thought of W.H. Auden’s definition of great art – that is, “clear thinking about mixed feelings”(this is by no means meant to be comprehensive or authoritative, but for some reason it stuck out to me). While this may seem like a huge oversimplification or merely an attempt to be clever, I have always loved this quote, and throughout tonight’s reading I kept thinking about the ways in which an attempt to write an historical account is also an aesthetic endeavor in which form and content – while not entirely indistinguishable – are constantly being muddled. (Perhaps that doesn’t make too much sense.) I guess it’s unsurprising, then, that I found Herodotus’ historical perspective to be more intriguing and urgent than Thucydides’.
Before I analyze tonight’s reading, I’d like to bring up this incredible quote from Soren Kierkegaard: “What an extraordinary change takes place… when for the first time the fact that everything depends upon how a thing is thought first enters the consciousness, when, in consequence, thought in its absoluteness replaces an apparent reality.” This notion – for me, at least – renders Thucydides’ theories of objectivity to be somewhat crude, in that the subjectivity of any historical perspective is insurmountable, and therefore, to a certain extent, should be embraced. I also take real issue with the assumption that an emphasis placed on poetic language is somehow separate from the pursuit of truth: this seems to be predicated on a really pernicious and goofy definition of beauty – i.e., the assumption that beautiful prose is defined by adornment and the ability to entertain the reader, as opposed to enlightening and edifying the reader.
For Herodotus, it seems that he’s really embracing a delineation of the essence of what happened, rather than engaging in the frustrating belief that he might be able to dig up an easy-to-identify cause. In the analysis of Thucydides, this was most frustratingly apparent when the importance of Thucydides’ authority and objectivity was asserted: “Thucydides presents the details of History with great confidence. Only in book 8 do we see him, like Herodotus, inviting his readers to analyze alternative explanations”(321). I feel like there’s a certain irony in this kind of confidence – it seems to be assuming that, through denying solipsism as an experience, it can assume a certain amount of authority; but I guess I’d claim that, if solipsism is recognized as an experience and not a fact, only then can a truly urgent historical narrative be written.
I found Herodotus’s belief about the isolation and certainty of an individual’s morals to be really interesting: “If one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in the world such as seemed to them the best, they would examine the whole number and end by preferring their own; so convinced are they that their own usages far surpass those of all others”(26). Now, whether these customs are inherited or not is not what I find interesting; what I find significant is the understanding that people are essentially limited to a certain perspective (“throughout life one experienceth only oneself”), and that perhaps the whole point of reading history is to recognize a perspective outside of oneself. I don’t know anymore, there are too many ideas, this has become a complete mess.
Emma – I found your post really interesting. I guess I’m inclined to say that history can be just about anything, and that the way it’s being written is what makes it pertinent to our understanding of what it means to be alive. Although, if I say that, I guess I’m also not making much of a distinction between history and art. I don’t know anymore, I think this has become unnecessarily involuted.
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