Page "Historian" Paragraph 11

Other noteworthy and famous Greek historians include Plutarch ( 2nd century AD ), who wrote several biographies, the Parallel Lives, in which he wanted to assess the morality of its characters by comparing them in pairs, and Polybius ( 3nd century BC ), who developed Thucydides's method further, becoming one of the most objective historians of classical antiquity.

Polybius is also credited for being the first historian to write a History of the World, and to offer argued explanations and interpretations of history facts, and not only a record of them.

The most important Roman historian of the classical world was Tacitus ( late 1st and early 2nd century AD ).

The foremost Roman historian, he wrote an extremely influential account on Rome in the first century, the Annals.

Due to his literary style and the thoroughness of his research — which seemingly included studying Roman imperial archives and heavily relying on Thucydides — and his apparent rigor — for he tended not to support any character or subject, taking an impartial point of view — he was by far the most read and admired historian during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the early Modern Era.

Thus, his historian style has been imitated all through the ages, and had a strong impact in Edward Gibbon and Montesquieu.