Misinformation, Disinformation, and Propaganda in Greek Historiography

This volume explores the modalities of fact, fiction and propaganda in ancient Greek historiography.

Mindful of the present state of discourse on ancient Greek historiography, this edited volume explores the major themes of pursuing factuality, managing witness/source bias, falling into historical error and creating or confronting propaganda. Even the greatest ancient historians, striving for factuality and truthfulness, must commence from subjectivity. Their works, when studied closely, reveal biases and conceptual or ideological distortions – their own and others’. For this reason, Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda in Greek Historiography strives to evaluate the issues which stand in the way of factuality in historical texts and records.

The contributors, all experts in the field, explore and question the accuracy of the historiography in question; the ancient author’s fidelity to their sources; and the evidence presented in relation to inherited oral traditions. In this way, an ancient author’s methodology is evaluated in terms of its probability, the awareness of its cultural variation and the influences which we can deduce within the texts. This volume presents an important contribution to the study of what constitutes fact and fiction within ancient Greek historiography.