Evaluate Herodotus and Thucydides as historians and their methodologies.

• A. They both rejected evidence and relied on myth
• B. They had no influence on later history writing
• C. Herodotus pioneered narrative history with ethnographic detail and inquiries into causes; Thucydides emphasized evidence, critical analysis, and a rational cause-and-effect approach, though with political biases; together they shaped historical method
• D. They created a purely archival, non-narrative approach

Answer: (C)

The test here is how evidence, explanation, and narrative approach shape historical writing. Herodotus lays out history as a broad inquiry that travels across cultures, mixing ethnographic detail, geography, and competing testimonies to ask why events happened. He collects many accounts, compares them, and presents a wide-ranging story that seeks underlying causes, even when marvels are part of the tale. Thucydides, in contrast, builds a more focused, argumentative account aimed at uncovering rational causes, relying on eyewitness reports and official records, and tracing clear cause-and-effect connections. He minimizes divine intervention and emphasizes disciplined evidence and logical analysis, while acknowledging his own political perspective. Together these approaches established a tradition where history is a narrative grounded in sources and reasoned inquiry rather than a simple chronicle, shaping how later historians think about method, reliability, and the motivations behind events.