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Source Criticism & Sifting Reports

ἔλεγχος τῶν λόγων

Not just collecting stories but testing them — comparing versions, doubting the implausible, and saying so.

Greek historians moved beyond gathering reports to sifting them critically: weighing rival accounts, rejecting what seemed implausible, and often noting that they relay a tale without vouching for it. Herodotus (5th c. BCE) records variant versions and reserves judgment, while Thucydides (late 5th c. BCE) made the method rigorous, dismissing poets' embellishments and rumor in favor of the most probable reconstruction. This testing of testimony is a foundation of critical history.

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7 Greek sources

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