of Two Major School’s in Written History.

All human actions make up history. Indeed everything that has been done in the past has influenced our future in some way. However, while there are some coincidences and likenesses found in history and our present, it is impossible to say that the present is based on the past. One thing that can be certain is that the written history of man is based on one thing: perception. Depending on the author, whether you are Herodotus, Ptolemy, Machiavelli, or Van Ranke, history has always been written from the perception of the author who has written it. It is these perceptions that influence the way we view history today, and even formulate perceptions of our own. One of the major trends in written history that must be looked upon is not in the way histories were written, or even what they were written about, but the manner of objectivity they were written. In other words, one of the greatest trends, and most changing, is the change in the reasons for writing the histories of man in the first place. Whether a history was written to tell a story as Herodotus is guilty of, or writing i

While Antiquity was a marvel in the advent of written history, it was far from perfect. It would not be until the Medieval period that Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ purposes of writing history would take a turn to a more religious bias. During this period one historian sticks out more than any of the others. Josephus Flavius, followed by Augustus and Bede, would make a transformation from writing history as a story or informative essay on Grecian self-history to history as a written record to the greatness of God. To these writers, history is a tool to be used in justifying and bringing glory to Christianity. In a sense, their writing could be seen as a record of worship towards God. Flavius writes, “the main lesson to be learned from history…is that men who conform to the will of God, and do not venture to transgress laws…prosper in al things beyond belief….” Augustine and Bede say similar things in their histories with the exception of their primary subjects: Christian doctrine being Augustine’s, and great men being Bede’s. This movement away from the classical antiquity writers is significant in that the form of writing history for over a thousand years has finally made a deliberate move away from the revered fathers of history. Still, however, one can see that the two schools of written history begun by Herodotus and Thucydides continue to prevail. While Flavius and Bede stick to the Fact school of thought, Augustine obviously writes in a novelistic form that is common to the Story school of thought.

From the Ancient times two great authors have been quoted time and time again as the fathers of history. Each of these authors spawning two different schools of thought that exist still today. For simpler purposes these two schools of thought shall be termed as the Story school, and the Fact school, each in turn contributing and expanding on the purpose of written history. The first of these two writers is Herodotus. “The subject of his book is the confrontation of East and West, of barbarism and civilization; the book ends with the salvation of this civilization through the heroic efforts of the Athenians.” While Herodotus sought to distinguish from myth and reality, as his predecessor Homer had not done, he believed that history should be written to not just inform, but take away from its boredom through entertainment

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