SOME OF THE GREATEST HISTORIANS:

1. DIODORUS SICULUS

Diodorus Siculus was an ancient Greek Historian, born around c. 90 BC in Sicily. He is universally renowned for writing the monumental 'Bibliotheca Historica', between 60 BC to 30 BC, much of which still survives.

Not much information is available about Diodorus. His 'Universal History', which he named 'Bibliotheca Historica', was immense and consisted of 40 books, of which 1-5 and 11-20 have survived till date. Fragments of the lost books are preserved in Photius and the excerpts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.

The 'Bibliotheca Historica' is arranged in three parts. The first part covers mythic history up to the destruction of Troy, arranged geographically and describe the history and culture of Ancient Egypt (book I), of Mesopotamia, India, Scythia, and Arabia (book II), of North Africa (book III), and of Greece and Europe (book IV-VI).

The 2nd part covers the Trojan War to the death of Alexander the Great, whilst the 3rd part covers the historical events from the successors of Alexander down to either 60 BC or the beginning of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. Bibliotheca, meaning 'library', acknowledges the fact that he was drawing on the work of many other authors. Identified authors on whose works he drew include Hecataeus of Abdera, Ctesias of Cnidus, Ephorus, Theopompus, Hieronymus of Cardia, Duris of Samos, Diyllus, Philistus, Timaeus, Polybius, and Posidonius.

His account of gold mining in Nubia in eastern Egypt is one of the earliest extant texts on the topic, and describes in vivid detail the use of slave labour in terrible working conditions.

He also gave an account of the Gauls stating that the Gauls were terrifying in aspect and their voices were deep and altogether harsh; when they met, they conversed with few words and in riddles, hinting darkly at things for the most part and using one word when they meant another; and they liked to talk in superlatives, to the end that they extolled themselves and depreciated all other men. They were proud and haughty and had a nature of threatening others and were fond of pompous language, and yet they have sharp wits and are not without cleverness at learning."

Diodorus died at around 30 BC and his supposed Tombstone reads: "Diodorus, the son of Apollonius".

2. EUSEBIUS PAMPHILI

Eusebius of Caesarea, also known as Eusebius Pamphili, was born around 260/265 AD and was a historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist. He became the Bishop of Caesarea Maritima at about 314 AD. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the Biblical Canon and is regarded as an extremely learned Christian of his time. He wrote 'Demonstrations of the Gospel', 'Preparations for the Gospel', and 'On Discrepancies between the Gospels', studies of the Biblical text. As "Father of Church History", he produced the 'Ecclesiastical History', 'On the Life of Pamphilus', the 'Chronicle' and 'On the Martyrs'. He also produced a biographical work on the first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, who ruled between 306 and 337 AD.

Although Eusebius' works are regarded as giving insight into the history of the early church, he was not without prejudice, especially in regard to the Jews, for while "Eusebius indeed blames the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus, but he nevertheless also states that forgiveness can be granted even for this sin and that the Jews can receive salvation." Nor can his works be trusted to be from subjectivism, for some scholars believe that "Eusebius is a notoriously unreliable historian, and so anything he reports should be critically scrutinized." This is especially true of his 'Life of Constantine', which he wrote as an eulogy shortly after the emperor's death in 337 A.D.

Little is known about the life of Eusebius. Eusebius' own surviving works probably only represent a small portion of his total output. In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius writes ofDionysius of Alexandria as his contemporary. If this is true, Eusebius' birth must have been before Dionysius' death in autumn 264; most modern scholars date the birth to some point in the five years between 260 and 265. He was presumably born in the town in which he lived for most of his adult life, Caesarea Maritima.

Eusebius succeeded Agapius as Bishop of Caesarea soon after 313 and was called on by Arius who had been excommunicated by his bishop Alexander of Alexandria. He enjoyed the favour of the Emperor Constantine. Because of this he was called upon to present the creed of his own church to the 318 attendees of the Council of Nicaea in 325. However, the anti-Arian creed from Palestine prevailed becoming the basis for the Nicene Creed. Much like his birth, the exact date of Eusebius' death is unknown. However, there is primary text evidence from a council held in Antioch that by the year 341, his successor Acacius had already filled the seat as Bishop. Socrates and Sozomen write about Eusebius' death, and place it just before Constantine's son Constantine II died, which was in early 340. They also say that it was after the second banishment of Athanasius, which began in mid 339. This means that his death occurred some time between the second half of 339 and early 340.

3. HERODOTUS

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey) around 484 B.C. He is known for having written the book 'The Histories', a detailed record of his "inquiry" on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars. He is widely considered to have been the first writer to have treated historical subjects using a method of systematic investigation-specifically, by collecting his materials and then critically arranging them into a historiographic narrative. On account of this, he is often referred to as "The Father of History", a title first conferred on him by the first-century BC Roman Orator Cicero.

Despite Herodotus' historical significance, little is known about his personal life. His Histories primarily deals with the lives of Croesus, Cyrus, Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius, and Xerxes and the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale; however, his many cultural, ethnographical, geographical, historiographical, and other digressions form a defining and essential part of the Histories and contain a wealth of information. Herodotus has been criticized for the fact that his book includes a large number of obvious legends and fanciful accounts. Many authors, starting with the late fifth-century BC historian Thucydides, have accused him of making up stories for entertainment. However, Herodotus states that he is merely reporting what he has been told. A sizable portion of the information he provides has since been confirmed by historians and archaeologists.

Herodotus's family was influential and that he was the son of Lyxes and Dryo, and the brother of Theodorus, and that he was also related to Panyassis - an epic poet of the time.

In 443 BC or shortly afterwards, Herodotus migrated to Thurium as part of an Athenian-sponsored colony. Aristotle refers to a version of 'The Histories' written by "Herodotus of Thurium", and some passages in the 'Histories' have been interpreted as proof that he wrote about southern Italy from personal experience there. Intimate knowledge of some events in the first years of the Peloponnesian War indicate that he might have returned to Athens, in which case it is possible that he died there during an outbreak of the plague. Possibly he died in Macedonia instead, after obtaining the patronage of the court there; or else he died back in Thurium. There is nothing in the Histories that can be dated to later than 430 BC with any certainty, and it is generally assumed that he died not long afterwards, possibly before his sixtieth year.

Herodotus was of the opinion that: while the gods never make personal appearances in his account of human events, Herodotus states emphatically that "many things prove to me that the gods take part in the affairs of man".

Herodotus was both a historian and a teller of tales.

In Book One, passages 23 and 24, Herodotus relates the story of Arion, the renowned harp player, "second to no man living at that time," who was saved by a dolphin. Herodotus prefaces the story by noting that "a very wonderful thing is said to have happened," and alleges its veracity by adding that the "Corinthians and the Lesbians agree in their account of the matter." Having become very rich while at the court of Periander, Arion conceived a desire to sail to Italy and Sicily. He hired a vessel crewed by Corinthians, whom he felt he could trust, but the sailors plotted to throw him overboard and seize his wealth. Arion discovered the plot and begged for his life, but the crew gave him two options: that either he kill himself on the spot or jump ship and fend for himself in the sea. Arion flung himself into the water, and a dolphin carried him to shore.

Herodotus is said to have died somewhere around c. 425 BC.

4. LEOPOLD VON RANKE

Leopold von Ranke born 21 December 1795, was a German historian and a founder of modern source-based history. Ranke was probably the most important historian to shape the historical profession as it emerged in Europe and the United States in the late 19th century. He was able to implement the seminar teaching method in his classroom and focused on archival research and analysis of historical documents. Building on the methods of the Göttingen School of History, Ranke set the standards for much of later historical writing, introducing such ideas as reliance on primary sources (empiricism), an emphasis on narrative history and especially international politics.

Ranke was born in Wiehe, then part of the Electorate of Saxony. He came from a family of Lutheran pastors and lawyers. He was educated partly at home and partly in the high school at Schulpforta. His early years engendered a lifelong love of Ancient Greek, Latin and Lutheranism. In 1814, Ranke entered the University of Leipzig, where his subjects were Classics and Lutheran theology. At Leipzig, Ranke became an expert in philology and translation of the ancient authors into German. His teachers included Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann. As a student, Ranke's favourite authors were Thucydides, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schelling and Friedrich Schlegel. Ranke showed little interest in the work of modern history because of his dissatisfaction with what he regarded as history books that were merely a collection of facts lumped together by modern historians.

Between 1817 and 1825, Ranke worked as a schoolmaster teaching classics at the Friedrichs Gymnasium in Frankfurt an der Oder. During this time, he became interested in history in part because of his desire to be involved in the developing field of a more professionalized history and in part because of his desire to find the hand of God in the workings of history.

In 1824, Ranke launched his career with the book 'Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514' (Histories of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples from 1494 to 1514) in which he used an unusually wide variety of sources for a historian of the age, including "memoirs, diaries, personal and formal missives, government documents, diplomatic dispatches and first-hand accounts of eye-witnesses". In that sense, he leaned on the traditions of philology but emphasized mundane documents instead of old and exotic literature. Ranke was given a position in the University of Berlin, where he was a professor for nearly fifty years, starting in 1825.

Ranke became the first historian to utilize the forty-seven volumes that comprised the diplomatic archives of Venice from the 16th century and 17th centuries

At the behest of the Prussian government, Ranke founded and edited the Historische-Politische Zeitschrift journal from 1832 to 1836. Ranke, who was a conservative, used the journal to attack the ideas of liberalism. In his 1833 article "The Great Powers" and his 1836 article "Dialogue on Politics", Ranke claimed that every state is given a special moral character from God and individuals should strive to best fulfil the "idea" of their state. Thus, in this way, Ranke urged his readers to stay loyal to the Prussian state and reject the ideas of the French Revolution, which Ranke claimed were meant for France only.

In 1841, his fame in its ascendancy, Ranke was appointed Historiographer Royal to the Prussian court. In 1845, he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In Paris, Ranke met the Irish woman Clarissa Helena Graves (born 1808) from Dublin in July 1843. She had been educated in England and the continent. They were engaged on 1 October and married in Bowness.

In 1854-1857, Ranke published 'History of the Reformation in Germany' (Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation), using the 96 volumes of correspondence from ambassadors to the Imperial Diet he found in Frankfurt to explain the Reformation in Germany as the result of both politics and religion.

In 1859-1867, Ranke published the six-volume 'History of England Principally in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries' (Englische Geschichte vornehmlich im XVI and XVII Jahrhundert), followed by an expanded nine-volume edition in 1870-1884, extending his huge reach even farther. At this point, he was eighty years old and had shot his bolt, devoting the rest of his career to shorter treatises on German history that supplement his earlier writings.

After his wife died in 1871, Ranke became half-blind, depending on assistants to read to him. A diary entry from January 1877 contains his mature thoughts about being a historian.

in 1880, Ranke began a huge six-volume work on world history which began with ancient Egypt and the Israelites. By the time of his death in Berlin on 23 May 1886 at the age of 90, Ranke had reached only the 12th century, although his assistants later used his notes to take the series up to 1453.

5. SIMA QIAN

Sima Qian, the son of Sima Tan, was a Chinese historian born at around c.154 BC in the Han dynasty. Till date he is considered as the father of Chinese historiography. His Records of the Grand Historian - a general history of China, covers more than 2,000 years, starting from the rise of the legendary Yellow Emperor and the formation of the first Chinese polity to the reigning sovereign of Sima Qian's time, Emperor Wu of Han. As the first universal history of the world as it was known to the ancient Chinese, the Records of the Grand Historian served as a model for official history-writing for subsequent Chinese dynasties and the Chinese cultural sphere (Korea, Vietnam, Japan) up until the 20th century.[2]

It was Sima Qian's father who first conceived of writing a complete history of China, but only managed to complete a few sketches by the time of his death. Sima Qian inherited his father's position as court historian in the imperial court and was determined to fulfill his father's dying wish of composing and putting together this epic work of history. He is universally remembered for the Records, surviving works indicate that he was also a gifted poet and prose writer, and he was instrumental in the creation of the Taichu calendar, which was officially promulgated in 104 BC.

Later generations accorded him the honorific title of "Lord Grand Historian" for his monumental work. His magnum opus was completed many years after his tenure as Grand Historian ended in disgrace and after his acceptance of severe actions against him, including imprisonment, castration, and subjection to servility. He was acutely aware of the importance of his work to posterity and its relationship to his own personal suffering.Sima Qian added a text to the end of the Records, stating that other authors of the classics of his day such as Lisao by Qu Yuan, the Art of War by Sun Bin and the Guoyu by Zouqiu Ming, all sufferered great personal misfortunes before their magnum opuses would come to prominence.

After his release from prison in c. 97/96 BC, Sima Qian continued to serve in the Han court as a court archivist, reserved for eunuchs with considerable status and with higher pay than his previous position of historian. There are no reliable records establishing when he died. However, it is believed that Sima Qian spent his last days as a scholar in solitude, perhaps dying around the same time as Emperor Wu in 87/86 BC.

Sima's famous letter to his friend Ren An about his sufferings during the Li Ling Affair and his perseverance in writing Shiji is today regarded as a highly admired example of literary prose style, studied widely in China even today. He wrote eight rhapsodies which are listed in the bibliographic treatise of the Book of Han. All but one, the "Rhapsody in Lament for Gentleman who do not Meet their Time", have been lost, and even the surviving example is probably not complete.

Before compiling Shiji, Sima Qian was involved in the creation of the 104 BC Taichu Calendar became the new era name for Emperor Wu and means "supreme beginning", a modification of the Qin calendar. This is the first Chinese calendar whose full method of calculation has been preserved.

The minor planet "12620 Simaqian" is named in his honour.

Leave us a message...