Introduction

Abstract

No discipline has been more praised or more criticized than the writing of history. Cicero claimed that history teaches men how to live. Aristotle denied it the very name of science and regarded poetry as the higher wisdom. At various times history has been assigned a commanding or a demeaning status in the hierarchy of sciences. Today one can admire the increasing precision and sophistication of the methods used by historians. On the other hand, Thucydides’ History of the Felo- ponesian War still serves as the ideal model of how to reconstruct the historical past. Even those who deny the possibility of an objective reconstruction of the past would themselves like to be recorded by historians, “objectively”or not. Dislike of history and fear of its verdict are not incompatible with reverence and awe for its practitioners, the historians. So man’s attitude to history is ambiguous.