History Shorts
Thucydides Invents History
12:25
In 424 BCE, an Athenian general arrived too late to save a city from a Spartan attack. Athens exiled him for it. In that exile, he invented something that had never existed before — historical writing as a rigorous discipline, based on evidence, cross-checked accounts, and the honest separation of what witnesses knew from what they guessed.
His name was Thucydides. His book is still read by…