Historians’ Concern for Accuracy?
Historians’ Concern for Accuracy?
Contrary to what some have argued, ancient historians generally had concerns for accuracy regarding events.5 Although historians, especially elite historians, were also concerned with rhetorical presentation, they did not consider factual and rhetorical goals incompatible so long as rhetoric was kept within appropriate bounds (the verdict of appropriateness varying from one historian to another). Many historians did not achieve common ideals of accuracy, but objective accuracy remained an ideal by which other historians evaluated their work.6
In one of the seminal studies a generation ago, A. W. Mosley examined the claims and practice of various ancient historians and concluded that some (he includes both Herodotus and Thucydides) followed their material as carefully as they could, whereas others (he includes here Strabo and Plutarch) were much less dependable.7 Among Romans, Tacitus proved a more critical historian, though many were not.8 The ideal, then, remained accuracy, although not all writers achieved this goal equally well.
History was supposed to be truthful,9 and historians harshly criticized other historians whom they accused of promoting falsehood, especially when they were thought to exhibit self-serving agendas.10 To a lesser extent, historians critiqued those who unknowingly got their facts wrong.11 More damagingly, a writer who consistently presented the least favorable interpretation, ignoring the diverse views of his sources, could be accused of malice.12 Even biographers, who had a bit more freedom to be one-sided,13 might evaluate sources’ or witnesses’ motives.14
Ancients readily distinguished between the goals of history and those of less factual epic poetry. For example, the Greek thinker Aristotle noted that the difference between “history” and “poetry” was not their literary style, for one could put Herodotus into verse if one wished. Rather, he insisted, the former recounts what actually happened whereas the latter recounts what might happen. 15 Early Greek historians distinguished themselves from epic poets not only by prose but by explicitly identifying themselves and the limits of their knowledge.16 Likewise, even rhetorical historians recognized that historical inquiry required not merely rhetorical skill but research,17 and those thought guilty of inadequate research or firsthand acquaintance with their reports were likely to be doubted.18
The perspectives of Pliny the Younger are helpful here. Pliny was an orator who was alive during the writing of the Gospels; he valued history, even though his public speaking career never allowed leisure to write it himself.19 Ideal subjects for history offered original and interesting material, he opined, but only provided that the material was based on genuine facts.20 We shall explore later the role of rhetoric in historiography, but Pliny, a rhetorician, felt that history’s primary goal, in contrast to that of some other genres, was truth and accuracy rather than rhetorical display.21 He insisted that accuracy was praiseworthy.22 Historians would insist that their duty was to present facts accurately, though acknowledging that some individuals discussed in their histories viewed the facts (and the political perspectives informing their presentation) quite differently.23
Still, he recognized that contemporary political exigencies could affect the telling of current history; eager to appear in Tacitus’ history, Pliny reminds him of one of his own noteworthy deeds,24 though the incident, the prosecution of one bad governor,25 is barely worthy of mention. Tacitus can increase Pliny’s fame, the latter urges. Yet his caveat is also significant: of course he ought not go beyond the facts, Pliny allows, since history must attend only to the truth.26
Although Pliny writes as a Roman, writers in the eastern Mediterranean (such as the Gospel writers) may have held a greater commitment to firsthand research than Roman historians did. Romans were often interested in history more for collections of moral examples than for its own sake (though both Greeks and Romans valued both uses for history). Thus because Livy valued history for its examples, he sometimes failed to research alternative perspectives on the character of those about whom he wrote.27 But even among Romans, while some may have written something like fiction, “Such excess . . . for which there are enough modern parallels, was a gross evasion of the rules of historical responsibility.”28 In the first century BCE, Cicero noted that everyone expected historians to avoid falsehood and bias.29 Accuracy was not always achieved, but the desire for it does distinguish the conventions of historiography from those for novels or epic.
C. W. Fornara, a scholar of ancient historiography, argues that despite the failures of some writers, objectivity remained the goal in history. For this reason modern scholars dispute which direction Sallust leaned; he produced “a designedly neutral text,” “concealed his predilections,” and, “for the sake of historical truth, he repressed his loyalties and took (or tried to take) an objective view.”30 “Honesty and objectivity” were part of the genre, Fornara contends, part of “the contract between author and reader.”31 He concludes, “On balance, therefore, tendentiousness, though an omnipresent danger, probably threatened the integrity of historiography no more than in present times.”32
Fornara very likely plays down tendentiousness too much (see our discussion in the next chapter); yet he is surely correct to the extent that historians did not feel free to invent events, but only to interpret them. They were not always objective, but blatant fabrication of persons and events violated the rules of their genre, inviting severe criticism. Interests shaped the telling of history, but did not allow anything close to the same degree of factual freedom they normally afforded novels and epics.
As one sample of a range among earlier Greek historians, we may contrast Herodotus with Thucydides, perhaps the two most widely read historians in antiquity.33 Ancients recognized that Herodotus wrote more for his audience’s pleasure than Thucydides did;34 his charm consisted especially in making readers feel that they were reading stories rather than history.35 Thucydides, however, had a reputation for notably accurate history writing.36
Herodotus employed but sometimes misunderstood his oral sources in his travels, and could not read other nations’ written ones.37 Yet even Herodotus, who was largely pioneering38 the sort of ethnographic research he undertook, was a genuine ancient historian. His depiction of the eastern Mediterranean coastal regions fits what we know of these regions from other sources.39 One faction of modern scholars has made him out to be “a mere ‘arm-chair scholar’ who only feigned his journeys, his personal observation and his sources,” but Klaus Meister judges this view an “aberration” that has been refuted yet really merits little refutation. It is unbelievable, he argues, that Herodotus simply invented the vast array of citations scattered throughout his work.40 Herodotus does not, to be sure, work from the consensus methodology of critical scholarship laid down after his time, in that he offers little attempt to evaluate his sources; he does not, however, invent them.41 Herodotus also displays far less Hellenic bias than we might expect.42 Ancient historians’ frequent use of sources is not simply an anachronistic supposition; we address some explicit evidence for their use of sources in chapter 9.