Author(s)

Qihan Long

Corresponding Author

Qihan Long

Abstract

Chinese and western historiography have their long historical traditions. They not only shown many common features, but also formed various distinctive differences during its development for thousands of years. This paper compares the most famous three ancient historians, who are Herodotus, Thucydides and Sima Qian. Herodotus traveled to different places to write down the deeds of human kind. He recorded as many things as possible was not because of the lack of consideration of the accuracy of the sources, but because of the possibilities of losing the truth during the process of selecting sources. Thucydides, on the other hand, was extremely paranoid about the accuracy of his sources. He was not tolerant to any possible mistake in his book. Sima Qian was a combination of Herodotus and Thucydides. The accuracy and reliability of the sources had been under the primary concern of historians since the ancient time.

Keywords

Ancient Historians, Recording History, Sima Qian