Thucydides versus Herodotus

Thucydides and his immediate predecessor Herodotus both exerted a significant influence on Western history writing. Herodotus records in his Histories not only the events of the Persian Wars but also geographical and ethnographical information, as well as miraculous and mythical stories ("fables") related to him during his extensive travels. If confronted with conflicting or unlikely accounts he leaves it to the reader to decide what to believe. Herodotus views history as a source of moral lessons, with conflicts and wars flowing from initial acts of injustice that propagate through cycles of revenge. In contrast, Thucydides claims to confine himself to factual reports of contemporary political and military events, based on unambiguous, first-hand, eye-witness accounts, though – unlike Herodotus – he actually does not reveal his sources. Thucydides views life exclusively as political life and history in terms of political history. Morality plays no role in the analysis of political events while geographic and ethnographic aspects are, at best, of secondary importance.

Thucydides was held up as the model of a truthful historian by subsequent Greek historians. Lucian refers to Thucydides as having given Greek historians their law, requiring them to say what had been done. Greek historians of the 4th century BC accepted that history was political history and that contemporary history was the proper domain of a historian though, unlike Thucydides, they continued to view history as a source of moral lessons.

Thucydides and Herodotus were largely forgotten during the Middle Ages but Herodotus became a very respected author in the 16th and 17th century because of the Reformation when the Histories provided a basis for establishing a biblical chronology. Even during the Renaissance, Thucydides attracted less interest among historians than his successor Polybius. In the 17th century, the English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes advocated highly authoritarian systems of government and was an admirer of Thucydides. Thucydides, Hobbes, and Machiavelli are together considered as founding fathers of the school of political realism, according to which states are primarily motivated by the desire for military and economic power or security, rather than ideals or ethics.

The reputation of Thucydides greatly revived in the nineteenth century. Among leading historians, who developed modern source-based history writing, Thucydides was again the model historian. They valued in particular the philosophical and artistic component of his work. However, the reputation of Herodotus was high as well among German historians: the history of civilization was increasingly viewed as complementary to political history.

In the twentieth century, a different mode of historiography emphasized the study of long term cultural and economic developments, and the patterns of everyday life, over that of political history. The Annales School, which represents this direction, has been viewed as extending the tradition of Herodotus. At the same time, the influence of Thucydides became increasingly prominent in the area of international relations.

Livy

Titus Livius (traditionally 59 BC – AD 17), known as Livy in English, was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, from its founding (traditionally dated to 753 BC) through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own time.

Livy was a native of Patavium (modern Padua, Italy). He was married and had at least two children. He died in his native town, some record as AD 11 or AD 16–17.

The title of his most famous work, Ab Urbe Condita ("From the Founding of the City"), expresses the scope and magnitude of Livy's undertaking. He wrote in a mixture of annual chronology and narrative—often having to interrupt a story to announce the elections of new consuls as this was the way that the Romans kept track of the years. Livy claims that lack of historical data prior to the sacking of Rome in 387 BC by the Gauls made his task more difficult.

Livy wrote the majority of his works during the reign of Augustus. However, he is often identified with an attachment to the Roman Republic and a desire for its restoration. Certainly Livy questioned some of the values of the new regime but it is likely that his position was more complex than a simple "republic/empire" preference. Augustus does not seem to have held these views against Livy, and entrusted his great-nephew, the future emperor Claudius, to his tutelage. His effect on Claudius was apparent during the latter's reign, as the emperor's oratory closely adheres to Livy's account of Roman history.

Livy's writing style was poetic and archaic in contrast to Caesar's and Cicero's styles. Also, he often wrote from the Romans' opponent's point of view in order to accent the Romans' virtues in their conquest of Italy and the Mediterranean. In keeping with his poetic tendencies, he did little to distinguish between fact and fiction. Although he frequently plagiarized previous authors, he hoped that moral lessons from the past would serve to advance the Roman society of his day. Livy's work was originally composed of 142 books, of which only 35 are extant.

ReceptionLivy's work met with instant acclaim. His highly literary approach to his historical writing renders his works very entertaining, and they remained constantly popular from his own day, through the Middle Ages, and into the modern world. Dante speaks highly of him in his poetry, and Francis I of France commissioned extensive artwork treating Livian themes. That he was chosen by Rome's first emperor to be the private tutor to his successor indicates Livy's renown as a great writer and sage. As topics from his history appear to have been used for writing topics in Roman schools, it is more than likely that his works were used as textbooks. The two ten-book sets that remained popular throughout the millennia are describing the founding of Rome and its conquest of Italy, and the third set of ten books recounting the war with Hannibal, which he himself indicates is his greatest theme. He can be looked upon as the prose counterpart of Vergil in Golden Age Latin literature.

Many of Livy's comments on Roman politics seem surprisingly modern today.