Aviezer Tucker Historiographic Ancients and Moderns: The Difference between Thucydides and Ranke This paper identifies the theoretical and methodological turning point that dis- tinguishes modern from ancient historiography. Since Thucydides is considered rightly to be the greatest ancient historian and Ranke is the founder of modern scientific historiography, the question about the difference between ancient and modern historiography can be personalised as asking what Ranke revised or added methodologically to Thucydides’ achievements? Krieger puzzled at the consideration of Ranke as the “Copernicus” or “Kant” of historiography: The critical attitude to sources dates back to Thucydides.¹ The cru- cial significance of original documents for historiographic reasoning had already been recognised in humanist scholarship since the fifteenth century and was de- fended systematically by Jean Mabillon and the Maurists in the seventeenth century. The theories and methods of philology developed in seminars in the early nine- teenth century and were applied ‘spectacularly’ to Roman historiography by Bart- hold Georg Niebuhr,whom Ranke acknowledged as his mentor. I argue that modern “Rankean ” historiography is distinguishable from its ancient predecessors by a spe- cial relation with the evidence. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, scholars from apparently different fields all began to use a form of probabilistic inference from multiple units of evidence like testimonies, languages and texts that allowed them to obtain new knowledge of the past. Ranke’s attempt was the first successful application of this probabilistic method to historiography. Thucydides, though crit- ical of his sources, did not infer from multiple testimonies as Ranke and his succes- sors did; therefore he did not mention his sources.² Historians, like other professionals such as scientists, lawyers or politicians have only a limited abstract systematic understanding of their methods and practices. People often rationalise and excuse their own practices; they attempt to present them as exemplifying the values they imagine their target audience shares. Experts are no different. Experts often possess tacit knowledge. Historio- graphic institutional practices display the hallmarks of what Collins called “col-  Krieger , .  Kosso , . Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 30.03.16 11:13