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How to Write History

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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

  • Edward Gibbon, who wrote of “the inimitable Lucian”, owned the 1776 edition of Quomodo Historia Conscribenda Sit (Oxford)[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ Lucian and Historiography
  2. ^ Butcher, S. H. (1904). Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd. p. 249. Retrieved 18 March 2020 – via Internet Archive.
  3. ^ M Winkler, Fall of the Roman Empire (2012) p. 181-2
  4. ^ Butcher, S. H. (1904). Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd. p. 250. Retrieved 18 March 2020 – via Internet Archive.
  5. ^ P J Rhodes, Intro, Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War (OUP 2009) p. l
  6. ^ D Marsh, Lucian and the Latins (1998) p. 29
  7. ^ E Gibbon, Abridged Decline and Fall (Penguin 2005) p. 63 and p. 782