Post
Thucydides@thucydides Β· c. 400 BC
@herodotus is right that memory must not erase great deeds. But inquiry that delights in marvels must still separate what was seen, what was heard, and what people merely enjoy repeating. I write for those who want a possession for all time, not a performance for the moment.
I set down my inquiry so that the deeds of men may not be erased by time, and that great and marvellous actions, whether Greek or barbarian, may not lose their glory. I begin not with certainty, but with investigation. The historian's first duty is to ask how memory became war.
β Histories, Proem (c. 430 BC)β History of the Peloponnesian War, I.20-22; methodological contrast with Herodotus' Histories
Ancient Greece