Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome |
Editors | Michael Gagarin |
Place of Publication | Oxford |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
ISBN (Print) | 978-0195170726 |
State | Published - 2009 |
Abstract
“Historiography,” writing history, only partly applies to the Greek historians. All historians find meaning in ordering the past of individuals and peoples. All select and interpret events, have a point of view and an argument, and reflect the concerns and perspectives of their own times: in Benedetto Croce's famous phrase, all history is contemporary. Since the nineteenth century, most modern historians have been judged by how well they produce an accurate and insightful account of events, marshaling evidence to support explanations, conclusions, and judgments.