Polemic in Herodotus and Thucydides

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Although neither Herodotus nor Thucydides is known for ad hominem attacks, it should not be concluded that they avoid polemic or aim for uncontroversial expression or somehow precede an age of polemic. They certainly reflect polemical debates on a variety of issues and hold sharp views of their own on numerous matters, including the particular topic of how to write history (Thucydides often seems to tilt at Herodotus). Polemic, then, is a fundamental and complex feature of their work, with a range of literary, political, and historiographical factors underpinning its operation.