Impartiality and Truth-Telling (Without Favor)
The historian must praise his enemies and blame his friends: truth is the eye of history, blind to patriotism and favor.
Greek historians insisted that the truth must come before loyalty: a good chronicler praises even an enemy who acted well and condemns even a friend who acted badly. Thucydides set the tone by refusing crowd-pleasing legend in favor of hard accuracy, and Polybius sharpened it into a rule, calling truth the very "eye" of history that no patriotism or grudge should be allowed to blind. The Lucianic tradition later distilled the ideal into a writer's creed: tell it "without anger and without partiality."
How it traveled
- HistoriesMegalopolis · -118explains
- De Heroditi malignateChaeronea · 120explains
- Quomodo historia conscribenda sitSamosata · 180explains
Key passages(20)
Jewish Antiquities · Flavius Josephus
Quomodo historia conscribenda sit · Lucian of Samosata
Quomodo historia conscribenda sit · Lucian of Samosata
Quomodo historia conscribenda sit · Lucian of Samosata
Deipnosophistae · Athenaeus of Naucratis
Historical Library · Diodorus Siculus
Historical Library · Diodorus Siculus