Origins of History in Greece and Rome

What's the history of `History'? The first ancient historians wrote about commoners and kings, conquest and power - those who had it, those who wanted it, those without it. Their powerful ways of recounting the past still resonate today and can be harnessed to tell new stories. We will look at how ancients like Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Livy turned stories about the past into compelling narratives of loss, growth and decline - inventing 'History' as we know it. All readings in English.