“Historians Have to Make Things Up” says Thucydides.
August 26, 2012 By peteenns (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/08/historians-have-to-make-things-up-says-thucydides/) Over at Mere Student, John Oliff posted on the Greek historian Thucydides’s (c.460-c.395 BC) take on the nature of historiography. Sounds like a real snoozer, but grab a cup of coffee if you have to and read this quote from The History of the Peloponnesian War . In this history I have made use of set speeches some of which were delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation. Translation: When recording speeches, Thucydides made things up that he felt fit the overall picture. Remember, Thucy...