Excerpt

Herodotus of Halicarnassus, 484 BC-c. 425 BC, was a Greek historian who is regarded as the “father of history.” He is almost exclusively known for writing The Histories, a collection of ‘inquiries’, the Greek word which passed into Latin and took on the modern connotation of ‘history.’ His work looked into the origins of the Persian invasions of Greece which occurred in 490 and 480/479 BC. Herodotus included a narrative account of that period that was poorly documented and had many long digressions concerning the various places and peoples he encountered during wide-ranging travels around the Mediterranean. His work was written between 431 BC and 425 BC and was divided by later editors into nine books. Herodotus also earned the twin titles of The Father of History and The Father of Lies, as there has been a long debate concerning the truthfulness of his tales and the extent to which he knew himself to be creating fabrications. By his day’s standards, he was reasonably accurate, respectful of evidence and a master of narrative.9 Herodotus wrote, “Throughout the entire history it is my underlying principle that it is what people severally said to me, and what I have heard that I must write down.”10

Thucydides tends to be paired up with a near contemporary, Herodotus, who was more “story-teller” versus Thucydides the “scientific.”17 Thus, Thucydides assumes the role of the ancient historian by which follow-on scientific historians might be compared. “No one can, as we mentioned, have a pretension to be greater historian than Thucydides.” lectured Leopold von Ranke.18 As we will see later, an opinion from such as von Ranke carries much weight. Under Herodotus above, I mentioned that Thucydides gained much long term fame for attacking Herodotus’ methods. In the opening paragraph of the introduction, I quoted Paul Kennedy. Eric Foner, a 20th and 21st century historian, mentions in his preface that an eager young reporter from Newsweek asked him, “Professor, when did historians stop relating facts and start all this revising of interpretations of the past?” Foner answered her that it started about the time of Thucydides.19

Zosimus’ manuscript, described above, is an example of the situation regarding historical documents in Europe. From Constantine in 325 until Martin Luther’s Reformation in 1517, the Roman Catholic Church was the most single dominate religious and economic power in Europe. It was usually triumphant in its “secular” battles with normal secular royalty as the two forces were in continual conflict/accord over the “little” people. It was able to easily squash competition, usually by excommunicating people or killing them during the 600-year long Inquisition. The Church had the motivation and resources to record, conceal, and distort history to its own benefit. It did this ruthlessly for almost twelve hundred years. After Luther it had serious competition from the Protestant churches and the rise of nation states. Thus, Zosimus’ manuscript was a non-Christian history critical of Christianity held in the Vatican Library to prevent historians from learning another version of events. The Vatican seldom allows non-Catholics to enter its library. Who knows what other documents and revelations might be there?