Herodotus - Historiography
ANCIENT HISTORY – BOOK ONE
HISTORIOGRAPHY - the body of techniques, theories, and principles of historical research and presentation; methods of historical scholarship.
HERODOTUS’S METHODS FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Herodotus preserves the ‘memory of the past’ (our history) by recording in his book, all of the astonishing achievements of the people of the past worlds. Herodotus not only looks at his own lineages achievements, e.g.: the Greeks, Egyptians etc... But everyone else’s as well.
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES WITH UNDERSTANDING ANCIENT HISTORY?
There are many issues that can arise when studying ancient history, some of them being the issue of reliability, usefulness and how bias a source can be. In this specific text the issues of reliability and biasness come up.
Even though in the text we often read Herodotus saying things like, “in their view” or “this according to the Persian account was ... “ we cant help but question the reliability of it or wether he wrote it from a bias point of view, while, yes, Herodotus may have written it from many point of views – and necessarily a bias one there is always the chance that he was influenced by someone or something to take a side and record the stories in one persons or in one groups favour.
The reliability of the source can also be questioned greatly as Herodotus says, “I prefer to rely on my own knowledge…” while he may acknowledge the fact that he was relying a lot on his own knowledge when it came to writing this text, his own knowledge may have become very limited at some points or if he was writing from a bias point of view, may have again favoured one group of people.
HISTORIOGRAPHY - the body of techniques, theories, and principles of historical research and presentation; methods of historical scholarship.
HERODOTUS’S METHODS FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY:
Herodotus preserves the ‘memory of the past’ (our history) by recording in his book, all of the astonishing achievements of the people of the past worlds. Herodotus not only looks at his own lineages achievements, e.g.: the Greeks, Egyptians etc... But everyone else’s as well.
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES WITH UNDERSTANDING ANCIENT HISTORY?
There are many issues that can arise when studying ancient history, some of them being the issue of reliability, usefulness and how bias a source can be. In this specific text the issues of reliability and biasness come up.
Even though in the text we often read Herodotus saying things like, “in their view” or “this according to the Persian account was ... “ we cant help but question the reliability of it or wether he wrote it from a bias point of view, while, yes, Herodotus may have written it from many point of views – and necessarily a bias one there is always the chance that he was influenced by someone or something to take a side and record the stories in one persons or in one groups favour.
The reliability of the source can also be questioned greatly as Herodotus says, “I prefer to rely on my own knowledge…” while he may acknowledge the fact that he was relying a lot on his own knowledge when it came to writing this text, his own knowledge may have become very limited at some points or if he was writing from a bias point of view, may have again favoured one group of people.