No discipline has been more praised or more criticized than the writing of history. Cioero claimed that history teaches men how to live. Aris totle denied it the very name of science and regwded poetry as the higher wisdom. At various times history has been assigned a command ing or a demeaning statIUs in the hierarchy of sciences. Today one can admire the increasing precision and sophistication of the methods used by historia: ns. On the other hand, Thucydides' History of the PeZo ponesian War still serves as the ideal model of how to reconstruct the historical past. Even those who deny the...