Where the historians define their craft — the programmatic prefaces, side by side · 史家自道其术 · 序言比观
Ancient history begins each time with a proem: a first-person declaration of what the writer
will do, how, and why it can be trusted. Read together, these prefaces are the genre arguing with
itself — over accuracy (akribeia), utility, impartiality, and the very difference between
history and the tales it displaces. Below, the self-definitions of the historians on this site,
each linking into its full-text reader so you can read the proem in the original.
The first proem · Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 500 BCE)
“Hecataeus of Miletus speaks as follows. I write these things, as they seem to me to be true. For the tales of the Greeks are many and ridiculous, as they seem to me.”
Hecataeus FGrH 1 F 1a (= ps.-Demetrius, De elocutione 12); Greek verbatim from BNJ 1 (Pownall). The first surviving prose declaration of a critical method — the seed of every proem that follows.
The Greek historians · 希腊史家
From inquiry as spectacle to history as a lasting possession and a statesman's training.
The Roman historians · 罗马史家
The moral preface, the storehouse of examples, and the claim to write without partisanship.