ABSTRACT
H intellectual discipline that goes back to the ancient Greeks. e fi rst real historian, ucydides, did a remarkable thing. He set out to distance himself from his own political system and to write a work that examined critically what happened to Greece in the Peloponnesian Wars. He not only told of his own side’s virtues and victories but of its mistakes and disasters. ucydides also distanced himself from his own culture and religion. Instead of the mythical tales that all previous human societies had used to affi rm their place in the cosmos, he faced the fact that the Greek oracles could not foretell their future and that the Greek gods could not ensure their fortunes. In short, what was remarkable about ucydides, and all those who have followed him, was that they made a clean break with myths and legends. Instead, they defi ned history as the pursuit of truth about the past.
