Holy fuck why is Greek History so hard to read? Its like I'm

If this isn't a fucking joke, then congratulations on taking babby's first step to understanding how history was once written and how it's progressed since then. How do you think you even got to the point of believing that history should be factual and useful and backed up by evidence? Because these guys stumbled around in the dark for your sorry ass 2400 years ago and invented a genre of writing just so you could whine about some of the greatest writers of all time not catering exactly to your expectations thousands of years later.

>>9929739

Oh come on. You're telling me these schizophrenic freaks wrote about monsters and gods as an actual depiction of life back then? Like they genuinely believed a minotaur guarded their buildings? No way, either the Greeks were a buncha liars hyping their own bullshit or people found some fiction and somehow interpreted it as fact. Like how people from the future are gonna discover books like 1984 and believe that's how it really was.

>>9929724
Maybe finish Herodotus and move on to Thucydides.

>>9930253
/thread

>>9930232
History and myths were intertwined until these two >>9930253 began to be interested in historical accuracy.
Consider for a second that there was a time before scientific empiricism you closed minded bitch.

>>9930399

You telling me facts never existed before Thucydides? Everyone just told big fat lies and everyone believed each other?

>>9931039
Are you dense? Read the first sentence of his reply to you, or, preferably, return whence you came.

>>9931039
The esoteric still knows that the lie is truth and truth is lie.

>>9931046
You write posts in an irritating way. It doesn't help that you even fucked it up.
*return FROM whence you came

>>9931046

>>9931046

I did read it. That's pretty much what it implied, the line between fact and fiction doesnt exists to the greeks. Its like that friend that tells you a story that starts off believable then just becomes ridiculous to listen to.

>>9931129
You should have noticed Herodotus devotes a generous amount of time to culture (in addition to geography etc), and through that he's saying there is far more to history than battles and heroes, that instead there are major factors that drive those from without and within. It's massively important that he relates the events not as they "happened" but as the Athenians say happened or the Egyptians said happened, so it's not so much about a chronicle of events but a chronicle of how the people in their respective cultures thought, which is a thousand times more valuable. for example to understand 9/11 you need to not only relate the story of the towers but also the massive cultural psychosis that followed, things of which reality or falsity don't even apply to. in other words, myth. Herodotus was acutely aware of the role of myth and employed those myths in their proper context, with his own occasional commentaries on what he himself thought of it.
Basically you're missing the point by focusing on what's important as if there is something wrong with it.

>>9930232
You fail to understand that back then every fucking thing was terribly documented and most of the time nobody could even fucking read so lots of this shit was passed on through verbal stories. Eventually these get written down and they too get passed on through generations. At the time, they were history, they were gospel. Now of course we know much more than the people who came before us and what we consider "history" is vastly different than what was considered "history" to them.

History to them was passing along these embellished tales of travel and triumph. People believed it because they wanted to, some needed to believe in a world grander than themselves. Some of it was just so fantastical that you couldn't help be fascinated by it.

You think we're so different from those people, but we're not. Think back to when the original Pokemon games came out and how that bullshit story of Mew under the struck spread like wildfire and was believed vehemently by idiots for the longest time despite nobody ever actually finding anything.

We still have dumbass parts of our "history" it's just not recorded the same way their's was.

>>9931129

Well, the Greeks believed that the Homerian epics were legitimate historical chronicles. To try an analyze the world without paying due respect to Gods and religion was looked down upon. (see Socrates).

>>9929724
How far into Herodotus are you?

>>9931189
>>9931250
>>9931257

Okay so what you're all saying is I've been meme'd. "Starting with the greeks" is a meme because the greeks were a bunch of myth spreading memelords. What the hell should I start with if I want to learn about the evolution of the human condition and advancement of society then?

>>9931316
with myths you fucking dipshit

>>9931316
Stay there until you get it. If you think you were memed wait until you get to guys like Spinoza or Wittgenstein.

I imagine bullshit stories would be the ideal way to unwind after a busy day of living in ancient Greece. Its like coming home from work and playing vidya or watching anime

>>9931316
Your life is still based on myth, not fact. You are not very different from the Greeks.

>>9931316
>the greeks were a bunch of myth spreading memelords

>What the hell should I start with if I want to learn about the evolution of the human condition and advancement of society then?

That is the first step in the (written) evolution of the human condition, retard.