View the h-history-and-theory Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in h-history-and-theory's September 2001 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in h-history-and-theory's September 2001 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the h-history-and-theory home page.
I'm not sure I understand the concern to demonstrate that Thucydides (or whoever) adhered to the same kind of 'truth' to which present-day historians aspire. Why should he have? As W.H. Leckie so eloquently describes, Thucydides lived in a different world - language, culture, beliefs, social structure, political ideas, categories, you name it. If his beliefs were different from ours then surely his 'truth' would be different from ours too? This does not necessarily make him *inaccurate*, and perhaps we should distinguish between this and truth. Perhaps one is about getting names and dates right, and the other about providing an honest (if always idiosyncratic) view of what it all *means*. How would others define 'truth' in the context of historical works? Naomi Standen
|