Hellenic historiography

Hellenic, Greek, or ancient Greek historiography involves efforts made by the Ancient Greeks to track and record historical events. By the 5th century BC, it became an integral part of ancient Greek literature and held a prestigious place in later Roman historiography and Byzantine literature.

Overview

The historical period of ancient Greece is exclusive in world history as the first period attested directly in proper historiography, while earlier ancient history or proto-history is known by much more circumstantial evidence, such as annals, chronicles, king lists, and pragmatic epigraphy.

The ancient Greeks told myths and legends about their past, such as the legends associated with the Trojan War. In the 6th century BC, skeptical authors cast doubt on the irrational aspects of these stories while maintaining their basic core. According to Moses Finley, the first steps towards history writing by Greeks were taken in Ionia, where Greeks were in closest contact with foreign peoples and later came under the rule of non-Greek polities: Lydia and Persia. Wishing to learn something about their rulers, Greek writers began to collect information on the geography, customs, and pieces of history of the Lydians and Persians. Only disparate quotations of these works survive.

Hecataeus of Miletus has been described as the author who "foreshadows Herodotus". In his Genealogies, he examined legendary tales, behind which he saw "historical facts distorted by exaggeration or by literal interpretation of metaphors." He also wrote a work of geography, the Periēgēsis or Periodos gēs (Journey round the World), which contains information about the countries and peoples located along the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Sea.