How to Write History
How to Write History is the title of a study by the classical writer Lucian, which can be considered as the only work on the theory of history-writing to survive from antiquity.[1]
Themes
The first part of Lucian’s essay involved a critical attack on contemporary historians. Lucian maintained that they confused history with panegyric, overloaded it with irrelevant details, and weighed it down with overblown rhetoric.[2]
Lucian recommended instead the virtues of clear narration, and the valorisation of truth.[3] He argued that the historian should write for all times, as “a free man, fearless, incorruptible, the friend of truth”;[4] and held up the work of Thucydides as the legislative template for all subsequent historians.[5]
Later influence
- The early Renaissance saw the essay taken up by figures like Guarino da Verona and Giovanni Pontano.[6]
- Edward Gibbon, who wrote of “the inimitable Lucian”, owned the 1776 edition of Quomodo Historia Conscribenda Sit (Oxford)[7]
See also
References
- Lucian and Historiography
- Butcher, S. H. (1904). Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd. p. 249. Retrieved 18 March 2020 – via Internet Archive.
- M Winkler, Fall of the Roman Empire (2012) p. 181-2
- Butcher, S. H. (1904). Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd. p. 250. Retrieved 18 March 2020 – via Internet Archive.
- P J Rhodes, Intro, Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War (OUP 2009) p. l
- D Marsh, Lucian and the Latins (1998) p. 29
- E Gibbon, Abridged Decline and Fall (Penguin 2005) p. 63 and p. 782
External links
- "The Way to Write History". The Works of Lucian of Samosata. Complete with exceptions specified in the preface. II. Translated by Fowler, H. W.; Fowler, F. G. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1905. pp. 109-136. Retrieved 23 March 2020 – via Internet Archive.
- "How to Write History". LUCIAN. VI. Translated by K. Kilburn. London and Cambridge, Massachusetts: William Heinemann Ltd. and Harvard University Press. 1959. pp. 1–73. Retrieved 18 March 2020 – via Internet Archive.
- The Way to Write History
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