Analyzing Ancient Historians

[M. Porcius Cato]

I don't mind being used as an example, but your position is the very one I'm arguing against: I maintain that motives alone are not sufficient to doubt an account. For example, Anne Frank was presumably strongly anti-Nazi, but I don't doubt her diary of life under them at all--why should I? In fact, if Anne Frank said that the Nazis were rounding up Jews while she was in hiding but she was NEUTRAL towards the Nazis, I'd think she was not only unreliable but insane.

 

When it comes to tyranny, moderation is no virtue.

Edited January 20, 2006 by M. Porcius Cato

[tflex]

I don't mind being used as an example, but your position is the very one I'm arguing against: I maintain that motives alone are not sufficient to doubt an account. For example, Anne Frank was presumably strongly anti-Nazi, but I don't doubt her diary of life under them at all--why should I? In fact, if Anne Frank said that the Nazis were rounding up Jews while she was in hiding but she was NEUTRAL towards the Nazis, I'd think she was not only unreliable but insane.

 

When it comes to tyranny, moderation is no virtue.

 

I haven't read the Diary of Anne Frank, but wasn't she writing about her own life and experiences under the Nazi regime? I would see no reason why that would be inaccurate. On the other hand, if she was writing an account on the life of Adolf Hitler, I would think it would be highly unreliable for obvious reasons.

 

Also, tyranny was present and very much alive in the republic era. You hear about it more after the fall of the republic because it is usually associated with emperors who are very well documented. But tyranny existed with the supporters of the republic too, you can believe in such a system and be tyranincal at the same time. I understand the meaning of tyranny in today's world, but what was the definition of tyranny in the Roman world? I would think, what we call tyranny now was normal and maybe even a good thing in the ancient Roman world. After all didn't all Romans indulge in watching violence, does that mean all Romans are tyrannical?

Edited January 20, 2006 by tflex

[M. Porcius Cato]

I haven't read the Diary of Anne Frank, but wasn't she writing about her own life and experiences under the Nazi regime? I would see no reason why that would be inaccurate. On the other hand, if she was writing an account on the life of Adolf Hitler, I would think it would be highly unreliable for obvious reasons.

 

No--not obvious at all. If she practices good methods, that's all that matters--her anti-Nazi sympathies are completely irrelevant.

[M. Porcius Cato]

I forgot to add that the notion that an historical claim is false because it comes from a source you disagree with is an example of the genetic fallacy.

[tflex]

No--not obvious at all. If she practices good methods, that's all that matters--her anti-Nazi sympathies are completely irrelevant.

 

 

My point is there is no way to know if historians from two thousand years practised good methods. We can only assume. Assumptions cannot be relied on entirely.

 

forgot to add that the notion that an historical claim is false because it comes from a source you disagree with is an example of the genetic fallacy.

 

If Hitler had a son, wouldn't you think that his son is more likely to sympathise with his fathers facist ideas. It is also possible that his son may despise his father and his agenda, but even though thats possible, it's less likely for the simple reason that we know people in general form their beliefs according to where they come from. It is the same with historians.

Edited January 20, 2006 by tflex

[M. Porcius Cato]

If Hitler had a son, wouldn't you think that his son is more likely to sympathise with his fathers facist ideas. It is also possible that his son may despise his father and his agenda, but even though thats possible, it's less likely for the simple reason that we know people in general form their beliefs according to where they come from. It is the same with historians.

 

You've pretty provided a perfectly-textbook example of the genetic fallacy. Whether some people or even most people share their parents' beliefs is irrelevant to whether a proposition is true or false. Therefore, brining a person's parents' beliefs into an argument is completely illogical.

[tflex]

You've pretty provided a perfectly-textbook example of the genetic fallacy. Whether some people or even most people share their parents' beliefs is irrelevant to whether a proposition is true or false. Therefore, brining a person's parents' beliefs into an argument is completely illogical.

 

Why is it illogical, all people natuarally have feelings and emotions that influence their thinking and decisions. It is very difficult to be objective when writing an account on the life of an influential figure. If you are writing a resume or a list of achievements on an individual, then that's completely different. But anything alse involves objective and subjective thought, whether conciously or unconsiously your personal feelings will creep into your writing. Thats why the more sources you have the better and a good example of this is today's media newspapers, radio and teleivision. Read the New York times then read the New York Post, watch Fox news then watch CNN, they both report the same events but in a completely different light.

Edited January 20, 2006 by tflex

[Germanicus]

Cato - Perhaps it would help if you gave some examples of historical Roman writings and the reasons you yourself believe them to be inaccurate ?

[Primus Pilus]

You've pretty provided a perfectly-textbook example of the genetic fallacy. Whether some people or even most people share their parents' beliefs is irrelevant to whether a proposition is true or false. Therefore, brining a person's parents' beliefs into an argument is completely illogical.

 

Agreed. We can certainly see influences based on certain connections in history, but to dismiss accuracy based on the connections is a mistake. To accept everything as complete truth without analyzing the connections is also wrong, but its important to avoid both potential pitfalls.

 

This brings us back full circle to Tacitus and his connection to Agricola. It would absolutely be fallacy to dismiss Tactitus' account based simply on his connection to Agricola, but it would also be wrong to accept everything he says verbatim without understanding the potential biases. I respect and love Tacitus' work, and I do not in any way discount his presentation of Agricola. My only concern is that he left out some details or made slight variations to Domitian's role and actions which may have helped to distort the history. (What I mean is that Domitian seems a victim of 'piling on', first for his relationship to the Senate, and later by Christian historians who used the general distaste for his reign to spread the idea of martyrdom and Christian sympathy).

 

Of course, while Domitian was fairly despised by the aristocracy of the time because of his general dismissal of the Senate as a governing/advisory institution, there was a contingent that did support him. The succession of Nerva was important in that he was a relatively neutral politician who did not anger the small remaining Flavian faction after Domitian's assassination. The adoption of Trajan was perhaps even moreso (not only because of his influence with the legions as a general) but because there were certainly still many supporters of the Flavian dynasty within those legions (and of course the Praetorians who were not at all happy with how things turned out). Trajan's support of Domitian during the Rhine revolt was certainly a factor in making him a candidate to appease. While the aristocracy got its revenge by quickly damning Domitian's memory, the supporters in the army may have been satisfied with the trade-off that was Trajan's advancement.

 

The reason I bring this up is because it may be an important factor in understanding whether or not Tacitus could have 'embellished or altered' the record while escaping the scrutiny of contemporaries. The aristocracy largely despised Domitian and since his memory was already damned, a few parting shots by Tacitus was not likely to be a cause of major concern to contemporaries. Compared to the damnatio memoriae, Tacitus' suggestions of jealousy and innuendos of foul play were hardly anything to truly disturb or anger the audience (especially since the audience was largely the very anti-Domitian faction that brought about the damning of his memory).

 

Is this evidence that Tacitus indeed misreported the historical truth? Absolutely not, its just enough of a cloud (coupled with his relationship to Agricola) to give me reason for pause than I may normally have, therefore inspiring deeper scrutiny.

 

PS. Despite how it may appear, I am not at all an admirer of Domitian.

[phil25]

What is accuracy in an historical source?

 

IMHO (inserted for tflex benefit) but I think also more widely recognised by academics, one in analysing historical sources one MUST consider the motive in writing and the position someone held.

 

I recall an article in the London Times about 35 years ago, written by Bernard Levin. It has always been a salutory reminder to me. he wrote that in 1912, the Russian Tsarist authorities were celebrating the 100th anniversary of the battle of Borodino. There were many centenarians living in Georgia (the Russian state) and experts went to see if there was anyone who had fought in the battle who had survived. Eventually they found a man who had been a 16 year old drummer boy in 1812.

 

They asked him about his experiences, and with mounting excitement at last asked, "And did you see Napoleon?"

 

"Yes", replied the drummer boy, he was a big tall man with blond hair."

 

Now the point is that there is no need to doubt the sincerity of the man's testimony, he believed what he said, but it could not have been Napoleon. had he seen Murat, maybe and assumed a magnificently equipped general must be the great Emperor? Had memory played tricks?

 

In evaluating a story like this, surely an historian must ask several questions:

 

a) was the man in a position to see what he saw? (A general might meet important people regularly, a common soldier rarely or never - so how would he interpret what he saw?)

was he educated, equipped or trained to recognise what he saw? (In an age before mass media, how would a farm boy from a remote area know what napoleon looked like?)

c) how long had passed before the memory was recorded - could the mind/time/age have played tricks?

d) what sources were being used, how close was the wtiness to the event? (Anne Frank may have been much more reliable about events in her house or in Amsterdam, but if she reports what was being said in Hitler's HQ, how much reliability should be placed on that?

e) is the material first or second hand?

f) not in the case of the doldier, but is there room for bias, distortion for political reasons (an Appeaser in the 1930s might write a different account and emphasise different points to say WS Churchill, or Moseley (a fascist).

 

I could go on, but i hope you'll take my point.

 

EVERY aspect and issue around an historical source needs to be analysed.

 

Tacitus was writing after the event, from sources, not first hand experience (even human sources must have been old by the time he talked to them). He wrote from a Senatorial perspective, had a grudge against at least one Emperor (for the treatment of his father-in-law). His sources may have been senatorial archives which given fires in Rome may have been incomplete. Tacitus may also have had contemporary political views, lost to us now and irretrievable. He was not an eye-witness, did not know the individuals he wrote about, may have had private motives or tastes in writing or a bias that influenced his interests or choice of material. we do not know what he rejected or his method.

 

All this and more is surely relevant in interpreting and using Tacitus as a source?

 

Phil

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

You know, this kinda goes for the same when theologists examine the Bible using the 5 types of critical methods. In a way, the methods used are really useful in examining the authors of the bibles and its sources. They are:

Text criticism- Textual criticism is a branch of philology that examines the extant copies of a written text to produce a version of the text that is as close as possible to the original. This original is called the archetype. Also, it

is used to decide which is the best text to read.

Form criticism- Form criticism is a method of biblical criticism applied as a means of analyzing the typical features of texts, especially their conventional forms or structures, in order to relate them to their sociological contexts. Form criticism begins by identifying a text's genre or conventional literary form, such as parables, proverbs, epistles, or love poems. Again this is also used to determine which is the best form of writing.

Source criticism- a method of literary study used especially in the field of biblical criticism that seeks to understand a literary piece better by attempting to establish the sources used by the author and/or redactor who put the literary piece together.

redaction criticism- A critical method for the study of the Bible, especially the Gospels and other books whose contents have overlap, is redaction criticism. Redaction criticism is a historical discipline which is concerned to discover the intended purpose of the final author/editor of a book. It focuses on how the author/editor has shaped and molded the material in his sources to express his literary goals for the work, i.e., the reasons he is writing his work.

historical criticism- is simply used to discover the age of the sources, not try to verify the sources or biblical events.

[Andrew Dalby]

Tacitus as author on Germany is unreliable; on what Agricola's opponent said at the battle of Mons Graupius he is utterly lacking in reliability. Suetonius on what Augustus wrote to Livia about Claudius, or on what the troops sang on Caesar's triumphs, is near 100% reliable.

 

Fair enough--but I'm assuming you place Tacitus in the top ten list of all historians *in spite* of his occasional unreliability whereas you place Suetonius nowhere near the top 10 *because* of his fairly consistent unreliability, no?

 

No. For me, being a great historian has to do with lots of qualities, and reliability is not item 1 in the list, though it has to be near the top.

 

There are several separate issues braided in this thread: here are two.

 

1. What do we call a historian? Consider with regard to Suetonius, Anne Frank, Gildas (often called a historian even in otherwise reliable reference books) and lots of other writers from whom we might want to derive our understanding of historical events, but whose purpose in writing was quite different from our eventual wishes.

 

2. If your vocation is to be a historian, what do you try to do? I would say, to narrate and explain human history in some way that helps others to understand it. Consider with regard to Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Tacitus, Gibbon, etc. All these people make errors of fact, sometimes because it would have been impossible for them to do better, sometimes because other issues mattered to them more. They are still greater historians by far (I say) than most academic historians who get all the footnote references right, never make an unsupported statement, are unchallengeably reliable and get their Ph. D.s. Not that I'm against academics, I just use this as a convenient example.

[Primus Pilus]

Tacitus was writing after the event, from sources, not first hand experience (even human sources must have been old by the time he talked to them). He wrote from a Senatorial perspective, had a grudge against at least one Emperor (for the treatment of his father-in-law). His sources may have been senatorial archives which given fires in Rome may have been incomplete. Tacitus may also have had contemporary political views, lost to us now and irretrievable. He was not an eye-witness, did not know the individuals he wrote about, may have had private motives or tastes in writing or a bias that influenced his interests or choice of material. we do not know what he rejected or his method.

 

 

 

Phil

 

Yes thats true (the fact that their work was written years after the facts at hand) in most cases with the ancients (ie Livy, Cassius Dio, Suetonius, and Tacitus with 'The Annals' , etc.) but Tacitus was very much a contemporary of Agricola and Domitian. 'The Life of Agricola' was written and probably published around AD 98 in the reign of Nerva, just prior to Trajan's succession and within two years of Domitian's death.

[phil25]

I was actually thinking of the Annals and the histories in my comments about Tacitus' sources. i don't challenge what you say about the Agricola, but, of course, that has other problems of closeness to the subject and bias.

 

In regard to comparisons of Gibbon and academic historians of today, I think their job is different. I love a good "narrative historian" - among my favorites is Shelby Foot who writes about the American Civil War, but there are tons of others. Their job, IMHO, is to allow a general reader to understand the sweep of events, to grasp the unfolding of a theme.

 

But an academic historian can have much wider aims - to explore and criticise the sources perhaps (understanding the references and allusions, clarifying language, investigating motive and purpose); he might be looking at detailed interconnections between (say) the economy and expansion; health and political vivacity; he might be focusing on interpreting archaeological evidence; or seeking to cross-reference cultures.

 

Where, I ask would the narrative historian be without the academic detail - it is far more likely to be the "scholars" who make the break-throughs and lead to new interpretations of events, than the narrative generalist.

 

I heard an archaeologist say not long agao, that his teams were made up of scientists, being an historian wasn't important, he could buy those in if he wanted them!!

 

But the best academics also write goo narrative - in our period Syme is a key example. Superb scholar, his broadly scoped work was based on his detailed studies.

 

Give me the footnotes and the scholarly paraphenalia - that way I can assess the basis of the writers evidence and how he has used it.

 

But let me curl up with the thick narrative for a long read.

 

Phil

[Andrew Dalby]

Tacitus as author on Germany is unreliable; on what Agricola's opponent said at the battle of Mons Graupius he is utterly lacking in reliability. Suetonius on what Augustus wrote to Livia about Claudius, or on what the troops sang on Caesar's triumphs, is near 100% reliable.

 

Fair enough--but I'm assuming you place Tacitus in the top ten list of all historians *in spite* of his occasional unreliability whereas you place Suetonius nowhere near the top 10 *because* of his fairly consistent unreliability, no?

 

Another point here: I'm surprised at the knocking of Suetonius (not just by you, Cato, but others too of course!) In the early biographies (of people who died before he was born, down to about Claudius) he cites more sources by far than any surviving ancient historian, any other biographer ... He quotes verbatim, too, and practically no other ancient historian does that (Polybius, yes, occasionally). I'm surprised by a claim of 'fairly consistent unreliability'.