ABSTRACT
The relationship of truth to the writing of history may seem at first sight to be a trivial one, but it is a problem that has preoccupied historians ever since its emergence as a self-conscious practice. Both in theory and in practice historians not only debated whether it was right or appropriate to concentrate (exclusively) on the truth, but also employed a wide variety of different types of truths in their work. This complex relationship to truth was only one part of a broader engagement with the past in ancient culture, an engagement, indeed, out of which history itself emerged and a context against which it continued to operate. The function of truth in history was itself entirely open for discussion. The very multiplicity of truths in ancient engagement with history is the topic of this book.
