Tachikoma said:
Neither Tacitus, Livy, Caesar, Suetonius nor Sallust wrote of future events, just various intepretations of past roman history. Some historians may choose to make predictions based off of what they learn through analysis of historical records, but that prediction is not encapsulated by the term historian nor is it the norm for such predictions to be made, the large majority of predictions that ARE made are massively off base, too. So lets be clear here, being a historian does not mean you deal with the future, it means you deal with the past, if you make a prediction BASED off of the past, it is simple that, a prediction, and has no bearing at all on being a historian beyond the ill perceived notion that a future event will result based from past events alone. The correct term for someone who explicitly deals with the future BASED off of the past is "futurist" Try harder. |
Everything about the future is a prediction, you realize that the future hasn't happened yet do you? ;)
You do realize that Romans used the past to look for ways to change their future? If you can't even understand one of the most basic thoughts in Roman thinking than I'm not sure why I'm having this discussion. Ancient Roman historians wrote pragmatic histories in order to benefit future statesmen (i.e how not to rule or how to rule by giving past examples). Suetonius is probably the biggest example of that. Tacitus wasn't an objective historian, his works served a moral function. Roman historians never made any pretenses about being objective, that was not the aim.
As for Caesar's work, it's self-promotion and a way to justify his (illegal) actions in Gaul. It served a much more important function than telling an objective story of the past.
