Contemporary vs. Merely Ancient

I mentioned below that Herodotus and Livy were the natural places to start reading ancient history. That raises the question of whether they are equally valid sources, considering Herodotus wrote about events within the previous generation to his writing, and specifically mentioned that he was able to interview people who were involved in the events described. Livy, on the other hand, write from the founding of the city of Rome (the title of the work meaning that in Latin: Ab Urbe Condita) all the way up to his own lifetime about 750 years later. But then can I really say that they're equally valid sources? The answer, I believe, is a qualified yes.

I have long believed that, for modern history, a lag time of around fifty years is necessary in order to achieve something close the objectivity. Opinions last quite a long time, one would say entire adult lifetime. Now, in the ancient world, when lives were shorter and without any mass media or even daily newspapers, a shorter lag time is probably effective enough at giving some distance and perspective. Herodotus, I believe, was within the sweet spot for perspective; Thucydides, on the other hand, probably was not. While he was intimately involved in the events of the Peloponnesian War, he had no perspective. I'm sure I will be getting into this in some detail in a later post.

Livy wrote around the turn of the eras. Thirty-five of the first forty-five books in his history survive, covering around six hundred years, while the more recent 150 years in the final 98 books are only now available in summaries and short excerpts. This tells us something about the relative degree of detail between the two periods. Livy had access to several works by earlier authors that have not survived; for example, Cato the Elder was, by all accounts, a self-serving history, but by a man of great importance – having served in the Second Punic War in his youth, he attained the highest offices of the Roman Republic, and as an elder statesmen he was the lead advocate for the Third Punic War. Unfortunately this work is totally lost, although I will be getting into the work of his that has survived in the future. I believe the loss of Cato and the survival of Livy (at least for most of the period on which Cato wrote) indicates something about the way the readers, and most likely audiences as well, felt about the merit and value of the two. Livy had become superior to Cato. This suggests that even if Cato was more detailed, or had some slightly different spin, by the time of Livy and his readers in future generations, Livy's version of events was preferred. Quite often similar logic can apply to any other pair or group of authors.

Had they all survived intact, Livy, Tacitus, and Ammianus Marcellinus alone could provide a Roman history from the founding of the city to the sack of Adrianople and the death of Valens some eleven centuries later. From what I can tell, these three authors would provide the best understanding of the way the Romans themselves understood how their history unfolded. Unfortunately, much of it is lost: much of the third century and the final century and a half from Livy are no longer extent, Tacitus is spotty in parts, and the portions of Ammianus Marcellinus before his own time are gone. Thus we must rely upon another source. Sometimes the other sources are more contemporary, sometimes they are less. Especially among sources written in the Greek language, Byzantine writers of the Middle Ages compiled the writings into collections or summaries of classical works. Sometimes these are the best we, as modern historians, can do. Possibly the most important fault-line to consider is whether book was written before or after the invention of the printing press (1440). As long as the author I'm reading had access to a work that I do not, he has something to contribute. Is this ideal? No, of course not. But, it's the best we can do.

I prefer history that was written closer to the time period the events occurred. The closer the historian to the event, the fewer other sources I should probably require. Still, authors of a later time may have had access to different authors of earlier times. I mentioned in an earlier post the historians of Alexander the Great. None of them wrote within a quarter millennium of Alexander's tine, yet it is clear that they had access to at least three or four writers who'd taken part in Alexander's campaign. It would be nice if we had the works of Ptolemy or Aristobulus, but we do not. We can hope that the later authors preserved the truth in their sources faithfully, while adding perspective and other information to what was in the received material. By the time of the authors that do survive had passed, they were providing what the general understanding of Alexander had become; the new authors were also the new standard. It is my continual working hypothesis that it is the same with most other circumstances. Historical traditions can be variable, which is why I usually attempt to find multiple sources for an event. When variation can end and any new "information" about an old event must be dismissed as fiction is by no means clear line, but if the author can conceivably be thought ancient in culture, in knowledge, in technology, in resources (certain ancient libraries of great importance survived some centuries into the common era) I consider the author to be a good enough ancient source, in lieu of something better.