Some Notes on historical Thought and historical Science in Antiquity (Ancient Greece)

Abstract

The article deals with the major factors of emergence of historical science (exactly as science, which presupposes investigation rather than a pure appraisal of facts) in Greece on the verge of Archaic and Classical periods. The author mentions factors of the most general character (the birth of the “Greek miracle”) as well as more concrete ones: emergence of prose as a literary genre, formation of general historical views (beginning already from Homer and Hesiod), of notions of unity of the historical process and abilities to describe that unity, creation of techniques of rational thinking and its verbal expression. In the article, a question is also posed on mutual relations between early Greek historiography and rhetoric.

Keywords

• ancient greece
• historiography
• historical thought
• historical science
• early historians
• herodotus
• thucydides
• xenophon
• rhetorical historiography