Source Criticism & Sifting Reports
Not just collecting stories but testing them — comparing versions, doubting the implausible, and saying so.
Greek historians moved beyond gathering reports to sifting them critically: weighing rival accounts, rejecting what seemed implausible, and often noting that they relay a tale without vouching for it. Herodotus (5th c. BCE) records variant versions and reserves judgment, while Thucydides (late 5th c. BCE) made the method rigorous, dismissing poets' embellishments and rumor in favor of the most probable reconstruction. This testing of testimony is a foundation of critical history.
How it traveled
- Antiquitates RomanaeRomeexplains
- In Hippocratis Epidemiarum IRomeexplains
- Ἀλεξάνδρου ἈνάβασιςNicomediaexplains
- Scholia in Iliadem—explains
- De ThucydideRomeexplains
- De DinarchoRomeexplains
- Scholia in Euripidem (scholia vetera)—explains
- Epitome HistoriarumConstantinople (Istanbul)explains
- Epistula ad Africanum—explains
- Commentarii In Evangelium Joannis—explains
- Praeparatio Evangelica—explains
- OrationesPrusaexplains
- Adversus Marcionem—applies
- Maximus et Balbinus—applies
Key passages(20)
De Lysia · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Maximus et Balbinus · Scriptores Historiae Augustae
Syntaxis mathematica · Claudius Ptolemaeus
De Thucydide · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
In Hippocratis De natura hominis · Galen
In Hippocratis Epidemiarum I · Galen
De Engastrimytho (Homilia In I Reg. [I Sam.] 28.3-25) · Origen
Historia Romana · Cassius Dio
Catena In Lucam (Typus B) (e codd. Paris. Coislin. 23 + Oxon. Bodl. Misc. 182) · Catenae (Novum Testamentum)
Historiarum Alexandri Magni · Curtius Rufus, Quintus
Historiarum Alexandri Magni · Curtius Rufus, Quintus