The Fallacy of History-as-Truth in the Ancient and Modern Worlds - Coursework Example

Doomed to Repeat It The fallacy of history-as-truth in the ancient and modern worlds This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge butno power. —Herodotus, Histories, Book 9, Chapter 16 The philosopher George Santayana famously wrote “Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it,” a sentiment that might well have been coined by the Classical scholars of ancient Greece and Rome who embraced history not only as a way to make sense of the past but also as a way to ensure the security of the future. History, as we think of it, was a fairly new idea to the ancient Greeks at the time of Herodotus. Up until that time, history was focused solely on the ancient past, on the creation of the world and of man, of the events that lay far beyond the realm of any living person’s experience. It was, therefore, a comprehensive change when Herodotus began work on his History, not only dealing with events that had happened in living in history but also pointing out that he did not necessarily believe every fact he had to hand about the event. “I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it,” he writes. (Book 9, Chapter 16) Indeed, the Greek and Roman period marked a significant shift in the notion of history. Historians like Herodotus, and Plutarch and Livy after him, applied the mathematical and scientific methodology that had begun to change the way people understood the natural world to history. They sought to collect facts from the old epics and records — one historian carefully annotated all the information about the Greek fleet from the Iliad to write a history of the Greek navy — and to write them down in chronological order. It’s clear that both the Greek and Roman philosophers believed that they were doing this in a dispassionate and entirely objective way. Herodotus’s contemporary, Thucydides, spoke for his fellow historians — and set the standard for future historians — when he wrote in the introduction to his History of the Peloponnesian War: With reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report always being tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. (vii) In fact, however, despite their earnest desire to separate the facts from the mythology and to create a clear, unbiased and chronological history of Greek and Rome, the historians of the ancient world had other objectives that were more important to them. It is perhaps not insignificant that the importance of history emerged both in Greece and in Rome during times of political and social upheaval in those civilizations. With their contemporary world in an uncertain state, historians turned to the past both as “refuge and inspiration … [to give] pride, consolation and guidance.” (Breisach 53) In other words, history emerged not as an attempt to reconstruct the past but as a way to construct the present through the events of the past. Even as they sought out eyewitness accounts of past events and pored over the records of the ancient past, Greek and Roman historians attempted to find the present in the past, and in doing so to understand both the forces that contributed to the present and what the future held. At the same time, history was a source of incontrovertible proof — to the Greeks and to the Romans after them — that they were exceptional people with exceptional origins. Like the origin myths of other ancient peoples, the new histories of Greek and Rome assumed the importance of the people they chronicled. Historians like Coelius Antipater were given to embellishing the events of the past with natural disasters to highlight particularly significant events — his Scipio arrives in Africa on the wings of an enormous storm, and when his army yells in preparation for battle, the power of their cries causes birds to fall improbably dead from the sky above. Military and political leaders give eloquent, lengthy speeches of questionable origin. These histories read much like children’s Bible stories — neat moral lessons encapsulated in pretty tales. Indeed, the Roman historian Livy is quite honest that this kind of teaching is the purpose of his own historical investigations: The subjects to which I would ask each of my readers to devote his earnest attention are these — the life and morals of the community; the men and the qualities by which through domestic policy and foreign war dominion was won and extended. Then as the standard of morality gradually lowers, let him follow the decay of the national character, observing how at first it slowly sinks, then slips downward more and more rapidly, and finally begins to plunge into headlong ruin, until he reaches these days, in which we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies. (5) In Livy, as Jane D. Chapman points out in her book Livy’s Exemplary History, historical figures frequently turn to the past, referencing historical or mythological situations that mirror their own circumstances. The personages of Livy’s history are “constantly … scrutinizing and using historical knowledge.” (2) Chapman points out that both Greek and Roman citizens were “culturally disposed to see the past as a source of wisdom” (16), and recorded history was as much a how-to guide for dealing with current challenges as a record of the past. There’s no question that bias was an essential element in early history, and in considering these historical records, these biases must be taken into account. It’s questionable, however, whether modern history has truly achieved the kind of unbiased historical perspective that the Greek and Roman historians touted centuries ago. Open any modern history book, and the contents tell a story, of a region, of a war, of an event. The historian chooses facts, makes connections, draws lines from one event leading to another event in an attempt to make sense of things that have happened. It’s true that today’s historians have better methods of preserving source documents and that there are more records available to enhance historical knowledge, and yet when a modern historian sits down to write an historical account, he finds himself in the identical position to the Greek and Roman historians — the position of having an agenda to make sense of things. In truth, any history is biased because an historian must always choose a place to begin — rejecting other beginnings that undoubtedly would make some small impact in the reader’s understanding of the story — and a place to end — creating a false implication that any event has concluded or run its course. By choosing places to end, historians — ancient and modern — open events up to interpretation. Because they have concluded, they can be dissected, analyzed, made sense of. In fact, though, the notion of any period of history beginning or ending is a fallacy — perhaps a necessary fallacy for historians and for readers of history, but certainly one that makes it imperative that we view every historical document as suggestive rather than definitive. In fact, Herodotus’s desire to show the importance of the Greeks and Livy’s urging readers to use his history as a moral resource are not so different from modern historians who encourage readers to focus on the economic circumstances that led to a particular crisis or the role of women in a particular period. A historian must have an agenda; history conveniently lends itself to many kinds of telling. It could be said of all historians what Murray Gilbert wrote about Herodotus: [His] work is not only an account of a thrilling struggle, politically every important and spiritually tremendous; it is also perhaps, more than any known book, the expression of a whole man, the representation of all the world seen through the medium of one mind and in a particular perspective. The world was at that time very interesting; and the one mind, while strongly individual, was one of the most comprehensive known to human records. Herodutus’ whole method is highly subjective. He is too sympathetic to be consistently critical or to remain cold toward the earnest superstitions of people about him; he shares from the outset their tendency to read the activity of a moral God in all the moving events of history. He is sanguine, sensitive, a lover of human nature, interested in details if they are vital to his story, oblivious of them if they are only facts and figures; he catches quickly the atmosphere of the society he moves in, and falls readily under the spell of great human influences, the solid, impersonal Egyptian hierarchy or the dazzling circle of great individuals at Athens; yet all the time, shrewd, cool, gentle in judgment, deeply and unconsciously convinced of the weakness of human nature, the flaws of its heroism and the excusableness of its apparent villainy. His book bears for good and ill the stamp of this character and this profession.” (133) In short, the best a historian can hope for is to offer a perspective that illuminates one person’s informed view of a period or event — something classical historians seem to have done as well as modern ones with the resources at their disposal. Works Cited Breisach, Ernst. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Herodotus. The Histories. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. Livy. The Early History of Rome, Books I-V.New York: Penguin Classics, 2002. Murray, Gilbert. Ancient Greek Literature. CITY: D. Appleton & Co, 1908. Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Rex Warner. New York: Penguin Classics, 1954. Read More