What Historians from antiquity -> 1500s are worth reading?

Lots of stuff. Check out any "History of Historical Writing." Something old like Barnes will probably be more here-is-a-list-of-names-y, while something recent like Burrow's History of Histories is more detailed but less comprehensive. Maybe check out Alan Megill's Historical Knowledge, Historical Error for a look at the evolution of historical epistemology in the West.

The Renaissance can be try because its neo-classical "rhetorical" historians don't really resonate much. They often get seen as a dead zone of stylized circlejerking before interesting guys like Machiavelli and the unusually precocious Giuccardini come along, and the Reformation is likewise seen sort of as "critical philology, but no great historical insight." A lot of medieval writers were great, surprisingly often simple chroniclers who were cut off from the kinds of self-consciousness and education that a Florentine rhetorical historian might have, but managed to be weirdly precocious and insightful. And of course a lot of stuff that is mostly interesting because it's our major source for a difficult or scarcely sourced period, which is another metric altogether, stuff like Gregory of Tours is far better known than more insightful later historians simply because of how important he is as a source.

Trying to remember who is a good read on Reformation and Enlightenment historians but I can only remember a sludge of Georg Iggers, who has good coverage (somewhere) of Reformation/Enlightenment historiography that is often ignored because it was submerged/tentative/conceptually too early.

Even the rhetorical historians can be good btw. There are some really great books out there on how to read rhetorical history (and classical/renaissance rhetoric in general) from the perspective of its contemporaries. It's a lot less artificial and "phony" than it seems, it just has different priorities. But honestly I still find it hard to get into.

Islam has some good ones too though rarely any titans t b h f a m. Good ethnologists though, al-Biruni i dunno

Just read some modern Barnes equivalent and check out what seems interesting.

Oh, church historians of later Rome are great. I can't remember if it was Eusebius or Lactantius saying that when Galerius died his rotting ass stunk up the whole town.

>>7594070
Gs and Rs?

>>7594110
Greek and Romans, desu senpai.

An OP, the Byzantines. Try Nicetas, tons of Greek and New Testament references and cool history too with Muslims and stuff about the 4th crusade. There was also a woman Byzantine historian who covered another crusade.

>>7594070
Sima Qian is the father of Chinese historiography. Stylistically he's sort of a combination between Herodotus and Plutarch, super cool stuff. He traveled all around China in his youth, piecing together histories, visiting battlefields. Later he backed the wrong guy at court and ended up getting his nuts chopped off. He decided to go through with castration rather than committing suicide because his historiographical project needed to be finished, as related in his letter to Ren An. Worth checking out m8.

>>7594106

Cool anon, thanks for the knowledge!