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Wellsprings
history

Impartiality and Truth-Telling (Without Favor)

ἄνευ ὀργῆς καὶ φιλίας

The historian must praise his enemies and blame his friends: truth is the eye of history, blind to patriotism and favor.

Greek historians insisted that the truth must come before loyalty: a good chronicler praises even an enemy who acted well and condemns even a friend who acted badly. Thucydides set the tone by refusing crowd-pleasing legend in favor of hard accuracy, and Polybius sharpened it into a rule, calling truth the very "eye" of history that no patriotism or grudge should be allowed to blind. The Lucianic tradition later distilled the ideal into a writer's creed: tell it "without anger and without partiality."

Where this idea shows up

6 Greek sources

Where to read it