Hellenic historiography

Science of Greek historical writing

Hellenic, Greek, or ancient Greek historiography involves efforts made by the Ancient Greeks to track and record historical events. By the 5th century BC, it became an integral part of ancient Greek literature and held a prestigious place in later Roman historiography and Byzantine literature.

## Overview

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The historical period of ancient Greece is exclusive in world history as the first period attested directly in proper historiography, while earlier ancient history or proto-history is known by much more circumstantial evidence, such as annals, chronicles, king lists, and pragmatic epigraphy.

Herodotus is widely known as the "father of history," his Histories being eponymous of the entire field. Written between the 450s and 420s BC, the scope of Herodotus' work reaches about a century in the past, discussing 6th century BC historical figures such as Darius I of Persia, Cambyses II, and Psamtik III and alludes to some 8th century BC ones such as Candaules.

Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, and Aristotle. Most of these authors were either Athenians or pro-Athenians, which explains why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than of most other contemporary cities. Their scope is further limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, generally ignoring economic and social history.[1] However, while works approaching modern ethnography arose primarily amongst the Romans, some Greeks did include ancillary material describing the customs and rituals of different peoples, Herodotus himself being a prime example in his descriptions of the Egyptians, Scythians, and others.

## See also

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Library resources about
Hellenic historiography

* * *

* Online books
* Resources in your library
* Resources in other libraries

* Ancient Greek historians
* List of Graeco-Roman geographers
* List of Greek historiographers
* Chinese historiography
* List of historians
* Modern Greek literature
* Roman historiography

## References

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1. ^ Grant, Michael (1995). Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation. London and New York: Routledge. p. 74\. ISBN 978-0-415-11770-8.

## Further reading

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* Barcelo, P. (1994). "The Perception of Carthage in Classical Greek Historiography". Acta Classica. 37: 1–14.
* Grethlein, Jonas (2010). The Greeks and their Past: Poetry, Oratory and History in the Fifth Century BCE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Hornblower, Simon, ed. (1994). Greek Historiography. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* Hornblower, Simon (2004). Thucydides and Pindar: Historical Narrative and the World of Epinikian Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Luce, T. J. (1997). The Greek Historians. London and New York: Routledge.
* Marincola, John (2001). "Greek Historians". Greece & Rome, New Surveys in the Classics. 31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Parmeggiani, Giovanni, ed. (2014). Between Thucydides and Polybius: The Golden Age of Greek Historiography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
* Pitcher, Luke (2009). Writing Ancient History: An Introduction to Classical Historiography. London and New York: I. B. Tauris.
* Sacks, Kenneth S. (1990). Diodorus Siculus and the First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
* Sacks, Kenneth S. (1981). Polybius on the Writing of History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Shrimpton, Gordon S. (1997). History and Memory in Ancient Greece. Montreal and Buffalo, NY: McGill-Queen's University Press.
* Skinner, Joseph E. (2012). The Invention of Greek Ethnography: From Homer to Herodotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Woodman, A. J. (1988). Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies. London: Routledge.

* v
* t
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Historiography

* Historians
* list / by area of study
* History

* historians
* historicity
* history
* theories of history

Historical sources

| Types|

* Primary sources
* Secondary sources
* Tertiary sources

|

Sources|

* Annals
* Archives
* Artifacts
* Archaeological site
* Chronicles
* Codices
* Deeds
* Facsimiles
* Features
* Hieroglyphs
* Historical documents
* Logbooks
* Manuscripts
* Illuminated
* Oral tradition
* Papyri
* Religious texts
* Scrolls
* War diaries
* Service records

Fields of study

| By scale|

* Big History
* World history
* Human history
* Local history
* Microhistory

|

By source|

* Archival science / Library and information science (template)
* Books / Writing systems
* Chorography
* Chronology
* dating
* Diplomatics
* Encyclopaedistics
* Epigraphy
* Genealogy
* Heraldry
* Numismatics (Money)
* Onomastics
* Oral history
* preservation
* Phaleristics
* Philology
* Postage stamps
* Prosopography
* Sigillography
* Toponymy
* Vexillology

By topic|

* Anthropology / Paleoanthropology
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Methodology

* Case study
* Periodization
* Historical eras
* Tarikh
* Three-age system

| Approaches,
schools|

* Annales school
* History of mentalities
* Nouvelle histoire
* Historiometry / Cliometrics
* Comparative historical research
* Critical
* Decoloniality
* Feminist
* Historical anthropology
* Historical determinism
* Historism
* Historical-critical method
* Humanistic
* Indiscipline of history [pt]
* Leninist
* Marxist
* Historical materialism
* Nationalist
* Ancestral civilisation
* Nationalization of history
* People's history
* Subaltern Studies
* Pop history
* Quantitative history
* Revisionist
* Transnational
* Whig
* Great Man theory

|

Concepts

| General|

* Change and continuity
* Historic preservation
* Historic recurrence
* Historical significance
* Historicity
* Historiology [es]
* Theory of history [de]
* Philosophy

|

Specific|

* Black legend
* Coloniality and decolonization of knowledge
* Dark Ages
* Historical negationism
* Historian's fallacy / Presentism
* Invented tradition
* Modernisation theory
* Narratives
* Paradigm shift
* Pax
* list
* Thirty-year rule
* Transhistoricity
* Translatio imperii / Translatio studii
* Vaticinium ex eventu

| Periodization of
modern history|

* Age of Discovery
* Age of Enlightenment
* European Civil War / Second Thirty Years' War
* Long 18th / 19th century
* Renaissance
* Continuity thesis

|

By country or region

| Africa|

* African historiography
* Egypt
* Pyramid construction techniques
* Black Egypt Thesis [es]
* Ethiopia
* Morocco
* Greater Morocco
* Rwanda
* Double genocide theory
* Maafa

|

Americas|

* Canada
* Metropolitan-hinterland thesis
* Residential schools
* Staples thesis
* Indigenous population history

| Latin America|

* Argentina
* May Revolution / Causes
* Revisionist [es]
* Peru
* Iquicha Royalism
* Colonial Spanish America
* Casta

|

United States|

* African-American history
* Nadir of American race relations
* Neoabolitionism
* Reconstruction era
* Consensus history
* Cyclical theory
* Frontier thesis
* Political history
* Eras
* Progressive-era historians

Eurasia|

* Albania
* Dealbanisation
* Austria
* Habsburg myth
* Balhae
* Belarus
* Litvinism
* Bulgaria
* Byzantine Empire [de]
* Early [ru]
* Croatia
* Europe
* Ancient [ru]
* Medieval [ru]
* New Age [ru]
* Georgia
* Aryan Kartli
* Greek
* Ages of Man
* Iran
* 2,500-year celebration
* Japan
* Korea
* Nationalist
* Goguryeo controversies
* North Macedonia
* Philippines
* Early settlements
* Portugal [pt]
* Lusotropicalism
* Romania
* Great Union
* Serbia
* Kosovo Myth
* Sweden
* Götaland theory
* Switzerland
* Taiwan
* Ukraine
* Executed Renaissance
* Vietnam
* Nam tiến
* Trưng sisters

| Ancient Rome|

* Catilinarian conspiracy
* Christianization
* Constantinian shift
* Expansion
* Fall of Western Rome
* Prosopography
* Succession
* Byzantine succession
* Moscow, third Rome
* Ottoman claim
* Problem of two emperors

|

China|

* 5000-year civilization assertion
* Archaeology
* Wunu School [zh]
* Century of humiliation
* Conquest dynasty
* "Chineseness" debate
* New Qing History
* Golden ages
* Hua–Yi distinction
* Four Barbarians
* Sinocentrism
* Self-Strengthening Movement
* Sprouts of capitalism
* Tibetan sovereignty debate

France|

* Cordon sanitaire
* Frankish Interregnum [fr]
* Grand Siècle
* Legendary Saracen [fr]
* Location of Alésia [fr]
* Lyon [fr]
* Historiography of Vichy France

Germany|

* Alltagsgeschichte
* Borussian myth
* Historikerstreit
* Sonderweg
* Strukturgeschichte [de]
* Sybel-Ficker controversy
* Vergangenheitsbewältigung

India|

* Greater Magadha
* Indocentrism
* Indigenous Aryanism

Ireland|

* Great Famine
* "More Irish than the Irish themselves"
* Revisionism
* Revolutionary period

Italy|

* Fascist Italy
* Fourth Italian War of Independence
* Historiae Patriae Monumenta
* Historical Series of the Bank of Italy
* Italians, the good people
* Rerum italicarum scriptores
* Revisionism of Risorgimento
* Southern question
* Neo-Bourbonism

Poland|

* Golden Liberty
* Sarmatism
* Deluge
* Partitions
* Polish People's Republic [pl]

Russia|

* Anti-Normanism
* Pre-Revolutionary Russia [ru]
* Skeptic School [ru]
* Soviet Union
* October Revolution
* Soviet famine of 1930–1933
* Causes of the Holodomor
* Holodomor genocide question
* Holodomor in modern politics

Spain|

* Black legend / White legend
* Hispanism
* Carlism in the Francoist era
* Convivencia
* Inquisition
* Limpieza de sangre controversy [es]
* Reconquista
* Islamic revolution of Spain [es]
* Revisionist
* Colonies or Provinces
* Spanish decline [es]
* Ser de España [es]

Turkey|

* Kemalist
* Ottoman Empire
* Ghaza thesis
* Decline thesis

United
Kingdom|

* Poor Laws
* Scotland
* Kingdom of Alba
* Westminster Stone
* Storm over the gentry
* Suffragette Campaign
* Tudor myth
* Ricardians
* Winter of Discontent

| British
Empire|

* Cambridge School
* Porter–MacKenzie debate
* Second colonial occupation

|

Oceania|

* Colonial Australia

By war, conflict

* v
* t
* e

Military historiography

* Military history
* List of military museums

Pre-18th century
conflicts|

* Albigensian Crusade
* Catharism debate
* Crusades
* Islamic views
* Eighty Years' War
* Origins
* Fall of Babylon
* Gallic Wars
* Late Bronze Age collapse
* Dorian invasion
* Sea Peoples
* Peloponnesian War

18th and 19th
century conflicts|

| Coalition Wars
(1792–1815)|

* French Revolution
* Causes
* War in the Vendée
* Napoleonic era
* Invasion of Russia
* Waterloo

|

* American Civil War
* Origins
* Turning point
* Franco-Prussian War
* Causes
* Paris Commune
* Great Game
* Indian Rebellion of 1857
* Causes
* Paraguayan War
* War of 1812
* Origins
* War of the Pacific
* Causes

World War I|

* Causes (Color books / Fischer thesis)
* Late Ottoman genocides (Causes of the Armenian genocide)
* Patriotic consent
* Persian famine of 1917–1919
* Powder keg of Europe
* Schlieffen Plan
* Spirit of 1914 / 1917
* Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Germany imposed this on Russia in 1918

| Treaty of
Versailles|

* Reparations
* War guilt question
* Article 231
* Reichstag inquiry

|

Interwar period|

* Burning of Smyrna
* Polish–Soviet War
* Causes
* Spanish Civil War
* Background

World War II|

* Causes
* "Blitzkrieg" concept
* Broad vs. narrow front
* German resistance to Nazism
* Nazi foreign policy debate

| Eastern Front|

* Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
* Soviet offensive plans
* Soviets and the Warsaw Uprising
* Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
* Winter War
* Background
* Spirit

|

The Holocaust|

* Auschwitz bombing debate
* Awareness in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe
* Functionalism–intentionalism debate
* In relation to the Armenian genocide / Nakba
* Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
* Pius Wars
* "Polish death camp"
* Responsibility
* Slovakia
* Uniqueness

Pacific War|

* Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
* "Battle for Australia"
* Bengal famine
* Second Sino-Japanese War
* Nanjing Massacre

Western Front|

* Battle of France
* Guilty Men
* Résistancialisme
* Vichy France

Cold War|

* Origins
* 1948 Palestine war
* Palestinian expulsion and flight / Ongoing Nakba
* Zionism as settler colonialism
* New Historians
* Malayan Emergency
* Causes
* Algerian War
* Six-Day War
* Origins
* Iranian revolution
* Causes
* Iran–Iraq War
* Falklands War
* Sovereignty dispute
* Sri Lankan civil war
* Origins

Post-Cold War|

* Russo-Georgian War
* Background
* Responsibility
* Syrian revolution
* Causes

Related|

* Conflict thesis
* Gunpowder and gun transmission
* War and genocide

* Category

By person

| Political
leaders|

* Adolf Hitler
* Alexander the Great
* Amin al-Husseini
* Aurangzeb
* Cato the Younger
* Che Guevara
* Chiang Ching-kuo [zh]
* Chiang Kai Shek [zh]
* Constantine the Great
* Gregory Palamas
* Horatio Nelson
* Hypatia
* Jiang Zemin [zh]
* Joseph Stalin [ru]
* José de San Martín
* Juan Manuel de Rosas
* Klemens von Metternich
* Leonid Brezhnev
* Louis Riel
* Mao Zedong [zh]
* Muammar Gaddafi
* Napoleon
* Neville Chamberlain
* Pedro II of Brazil
* Simon Bolivar
* Cult of personality [es]
* Bolivarianism
* Saladin
* Sun Yat-sen [zh]
* Thomas Aquinas
* Thomas Jefferson
* Ulysses S. Grant
* Warren G. Harding
* Yuan Shikai [zh]
* Zhou Enlai [zh]
* Zhuge Liang [zh]

| Historical
rankings|

* Australia
* Canada
* Modern Germany
* Netherlands
* United Kingdom
* United States

|

Others|

* The Beatles
* Charles Darwin
* Friedrich Nietzsche
* H. P. Lovecraft
* Jane Austen
* Muhammed
* Historicity
* Judaism
* Medieval Christian
* Jesus
* Historicity
* Resurrection
* Religious perspectives
* Christianity
* Judaism
* Islam
* J. R. R. Tolkien
* The Lord of the Rings
* Madonna
* Robert Falcon Scott
* Socrates
* Søren Kierkegaard
* William Shakespeare

Other topics

* Bears in antiquity
* Crisis of historiography [pt]
* Feudalism
* Library of Alexandria
* Nationalism in the Middle Ages
* Professionalization and institutionalization of history
* Salons
* Western European colonialism and colonization
* Desacralization of knowledge

| Economics|

* Industrial Revolution
* Great Recession
* Great Depression
* School of Thoughts
* Historical school of economics
* English historical school of economics

|

Religion|

* Avestan geography
* Early Christianity
* Background
* Historical reliability of the Gospels
* Primacy of Peter
* Opposition to Papal supremacy
* Proto-orthodox Christianity
* Early Islam
* Criticism of the Quran
* Succession to Muhammad
* Islamic golden age
* Kharijites
* Ecclesiastical history of the Catholic Church
* Second Vatican Council
* Hermeneutics of Vatican Council II [it]
* Hesychast controversy
* Protestant Reformation
* Proto-Protestantism
* Criticism of Protestantism
* Protestant work ethic
* Jesuit historiography
* Modern Jewish history
* Wissenschaft des Judentums
* Schools of thought
* Biblical criticism
* Catholic theology
* Panbabylonism
* Urreligion
* Perennial
* Religionsgeschichtliche Schule
* Roman
* Revisionist school of Islamic studies

Science /
Technology|

* Merton thesis
* Protestant Ethic and Capitalism
* Heroic theory of invention and scientific development
* Gunpowder and gun transmission
* Torsion mangonel myth

Organizations, publications

* Heritage registers
* Historical society (list)
* History institutes
* History journals
* template

Related

* Commemorative plaque
* Documentary film
* Hagiography
* Historical fiction
* Historical realism
* Historiographic metafiction
* Historical geographic information system

* Category
* Multimedia

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