- Prominent ancient Greek historians were Herodotus, Thucydides and Polybius. After them few of them continued with Greek tradition.
- Posidonius wrote “History” that continued the work of Polybius.
- Arrian of Bithynia wrote History of Rome in 8 volumes.
Author:
- To Herodotus enquiry included the Geographical features of land and occupations and achievement of people.
- Thucydides wanted history to be objective approach.
- Aristotle involved research and analysis and discovery of true knowledge.
- Polybius shifted from enquiry to narrative. Yet he transplanted historical writing of Greek to Roman.
Character:
- Under Greeks historical writing assumed essential characteristics. It dealt with what humans did and not super natural forces. Work of man was the theme of historical writing.
- Scientific writing was made based on enquiry, criticism and analysis.
- Reliance of on sources and presentation received due attention.
Greeks:
- None other than Greeks contributed to history. They took interest in what man did rather than divine powers did.
- As developers and observers they developed a curiosity to seek truth.
- This age marked developments in democracy, struggle among city states for supremacy, wars with Persia, expansion of Macedonia, spread of Hellenic civilization and imperialism of Rome. They had rich material for writing.
- The Greek writers felt that not only to rescue the passing events, but want to pass on to the coming generations to interpret.
- Though focused on political development, did not ignore the social life. They mainly concentrated on contemporary history and not the past.
