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This account was originally written by Plutarch, who was more interested in telling a good moralistic story than sticking to the facts (of ~150 years before).
by Luc 3y ago
This account was originally written by Plutarch, who was more interested in telling a good moralistic story than sticking to the facts (of ~150 years before).
- gadders 3y agoPlutarch's Parallel Lives is a great read though.
- nabla9 3y agoPlutarch is generally as reliable as his source material in the sense that things he wrote happened, but not necessarily in the way he tells them. Plutarch selected the stories he told and modified them into moralistic narratives, but he didn't completely make them up. He is not reliable historian in modern sense, of course.
- xg15 3y agoSounds like today's "based on a true story"...
- RajT88 3y agoI have seen fiction outright stating, "This is a true story" - i.e. Fargo, or the rather-less-good "The Sleep Experiment". The former at least has great production values and is actually taking inspiration from real events. The latter is 110% made up.
- ed 3y agoIn the case of Fargo the cohen brothers chose to make a movie in the “real crime story” genre, and that title card sets the tone. Any overlap with actual crimes is almost beside the point. (As a viewer this really bugs me — there is such a thing as truth!)
- basch 3y agoThe show also heavily plays with fable. UFO sightings were a real common thing in Minnesota, so in the show a real UFO comes, because it’s people telling the story as they saw it. The true part is that people truly tell the stories, and in that sense, since they told this story it truly is a true story.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoStupid show. I watched the entire first season waiting for the guy to turn out to be an alien and then I find out it's in the second season and it's just a UFO sighting.
- basch 3y agoDid you watch the whole first season since I made my comment? Or why did you think somebody was going to be an alien in S01?
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoI saw a screenshot that showed a UFO in a review of the show and I figured it must have aliens in it.
- civilitty 3y agoThe original movie had Steve Buscemi. He kind of looks like an alien. Does that count?
- basch 3y agoThere aren’t UFOs in season 1 though. Did you somehow watch season 2 without watching season 1? I’m also not sure if none of the characters being aliens really makes the show stupid. That analysis would apply to quite a few shows.
- santiagobasulto 3y agoThere's like a gradient of "truthiness" in movies that ranges from "This is a true story" to "inspired by real events" (which is the least reliable of all).
- AlwaysRock 3y agoWell based on a true story has no real percentage of trueness. Cocaine Bear is based on a true story. It might be more correct to say inspired by a true story but it is based on a true story. Based on a true story just means someone somewhere said something like this happened. Bloodsport is a great example of a movie that is based on a true story but that true story turned out to be entirely false.
- metabagel 3y agoPaul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story”. Stories that were often too good to be true, because many of them weren’t.
- smitty1110 3y agoStill puts him ahead of Herodotus. When Aristophanes takes the time to write a whole play to mock you, you done goofed.
- nverno 3y agoHe was like the original historian, though. Everyone's a critic.
- virissimo 3y agoThe books of Samuel and Kings from the Hebrew Bible predate Herodotus' Histories by quite some time.
- dmoy 3y agoThucydides is imo the original historian from that era. Herodotus was much more of a storyteller
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yawboakye 3y agonot to nitpick but originally a history was a story/narrative, which inadvertently made the historian a storyteller. herodotus remains unparalleled in that sense, imo.
- gadders 3y agoHerodotus is also a good read.
- smitty1110 3y agoGreat stories, but even in his day he was considered to be factually incorrect. I'll grant that he makes for a good read (his greek is certainly more engaging the Xenophon), but if you read what he has to say about Cyrus it's pretty obvious he's outright lying. This paragon of rulers, after many years of good administration, is suddenly going to act completely out of character and get himself killed stupidly. And incidentally, Herodotus is the ONLY ancient source that so much as mentions Tomyris, full stop.
- yawboakye 3y agoplutarch admits when he’s propagating folklore, or unconfirmed history with moral tones. see for example his narration of the encounter between solon and croesus. that said let’s not forget that history as understood by the ancients were stories told for the purposes of education, not a disinterested recording of facts.
- maxverse 3y agoSo, are we reading The Social Network of Caesar's life?
- nemo 3y agoWhile this account comes from Plutarch, Suetonius also relates the same story. Suetonius, of course, was much more interested in a good story than any concept of truth and was writing in roughly the same period as Plutarch relating tales told and retold long after whatever original events there were transpired.
- Phoenix12052023 3y agoIt's probable that the story had a basis in truth-otherwise, someone would have instantly used it against the young Caesar-but grew in the telling. Caesar, as his commentaries show, was no slouch at bolstering his own legend.
- thisisauserid 3y agoI bet it's more accurate than if Caesar wrote it. Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars is considered "prone to exaggeration" at best.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NoLsAfterMid 3y ago[dead]
- dang 3y agoOk, let's put Plutarch up there too. Thanks!
- robviren 3y agoWhat is history, but a fable agreed upon?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]