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I will quote something another historian, Alessandro Barbero (who is getting quite popular in Italy), often likes to point out when asked about similar "unanswe

I will quote something another historian, Alessandro Barbero (who is getting quite popular in Italy), often likes to point out when asked about similar "unanswered questions". For any historian, even just determining what happened in the past requires a lot of work already. Finding primary sources that clearly describe facts, are reliable, and not too biased is hard, and reconciling contradictory sources is even harder. Explaining why these things happened, or what would have happened if something else happened differently is much harder still, because you must use this incomplete information to establish causality or (even worse) simulate an actual alternate reality. Just try for a second to ask yourself what would 2021 look like had 9/11 never happened. It's a daunting task, even though we have a massive amount of information about that time period (having literally lived through it). Doing the same with remote history with historical rigour is essentially out of reach.

lmm 5y ago
It's hard, sure, but it's also the whole job. Just knowing what happened is meaningless in itself.
Naga 5y ago
I'm in the midst of reading Rome is Burning, Anthony A. Barrett's new book (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172316/rome-is-burning https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172316/ro...) about the Great Fire of Rome in 64AD (the one where Nero fiddled). I'm a relative novice to the field of Roman history (studied early modern history in university, never touched ancient history). The key thing to know about the fire is that it is very unclear basic facts like 1) how long did the fire last? Some sources say 6 days, some 9, 2) which buildings burnt down? 3) how far did the fire reach? 4) how many people died? There are lots of ancient references to it but when you get down to the details it's actually quite vague.

lmm 5y ago

It's hard, sure, but it's also the whole job. Just knowing what happened is meaningless in itself.

Naga 5y ago

I'm in the midst of reading Rome is Burning, Anthony A. Barrett's new book (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172316/rome-is-burning https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172316/ro...) about the Great Fire of Rome in 64AD (the one where Nero fiddled). I'm a relative novice to the field of Roman history (studied early modern history in university, never touched ancient history). The key thing to know about the fire is that it is very unclear basic facts like 1) how long did the fire last? Some sources say 6 days, some 9, 2) which buildings burnt down? 3) how far did the fire reach? 4) how many people died? There are lots of ancient references to it but when you get down to the details it's actually quite vague.