Have you ever wondered about the things passed down to us by history?  Ever doubted the accuracy of a given account?  Ever heard a modern or … <gasp> … “revisionist” historian cast shade on an ancient, long-accepted account?  Have you ever thought about what makes an oral or written account “history” rather than just the idiotic ramblings of some random man or woman plucked from the endless sea of global humanity?  I have, and do, sometimes, but never more so than when conducting research for a new story.

I’m currently working a couple research projects which, unfortunately, have no overlap whatsoever.  One deals with the comprehensive military history of Korea, and the other, the pre-Roman history of what used to be called Illyria, specifically what is now the Croatian and Albanian coastal region.  While there is a lot of material on Korea beginning with the Japanese invasions of the 1590s, there’s little in English from before that time.  Similarly, there seems to be a real paucity of English language works on the varied peoples of ancient Illyria.  Lots after the Romans took over, but precious little from before that—no doubt traumatic—time period.

For the Korean case this means the different historical sections of the article I’m writing will become longer and longer as the piece continues, the later—more recent—sections depending upon a wider range of historical sources than those at the beginning.  This will work itself out nicely, I think, as the same phenomenon is true for many historical works addressing events from so far in the past, and in that context, will seem almost normal.

But for the Illyrian case, this is research required to set up the sequel to “Q.Fulvius: Debt of Dishonor” and I find myself much in need of basic background information on the tribes, the languages, the customs, the fashion, the architecture … in short, all the things that make for a compelling historical tapestry upon which to weave my story.  For the first book, I found a wealth of information on the Gauls (Celts) of Northern Italy in the Third Century BC, or at least enough to build upon.  But for Illyria this just doesn’t seem to be the case.

How interesting—or maybe sad—that I can tell you what an average Roman generally ate for breakfast 1,900 years ago, but can’t reliably describe for you what their Illyrian counterparts even looked like?  Sure, after the Romans crushed the Illyrian peoples and assimilated them into first the Republic and later the Empire, there’s suddenly a lot written about the people who survived.  But a quick survey of the few sources available make clear that many of the Illyrian tribes and budding nation states died resisting Roman influence and control and so were long gone by then.

A minor irritant for me and other writers of historical fiction, perhaps, but it should make you wonder at the historical lens through which we view our past.  Winston Churchill once said “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.”  There’s a lot of truth in the concept behind his statement of intent, isn’t there?  How do we know, in such exquisite detail, of the Roman subjugation of Gaul?  The Roman commander—none other than Julius Caesar himself—wrote the story and left it to posterity.  How much of Caesar’s biases and political machinations made their way into that telling?  Would it change the reader’s view if the author were instead unknown?  How does knowing up front the biases (and future) of Caesar change your reading of that historical document?  What effect does the utter lack of a comparable Celtic version of the story have on our knowledge and understanding of what transpired?  Yet in the end, aren’t we left with no choice but to accept Caesar’s account as truth, even when we’re pretty sure he’s exaggerating or even lying to achieve some political goal back in Rome.

Think about that for a second, and then apply the same line of questioning to other ancient accounts you’ve read.  What do we know of the Achaemenid Persian campaigns in Greece?  Only what Herodotus (an Ionian Greek) told us.  There really is no other source to lean upon.  You either accept Herodotus’s take on things or not, but if you don’t, you struggle to fill the historical gap, a point podcaster Dan Carlin brings out on multiple occasions.

Contrast those examples with Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea in 1592.  You can find accounts by the Japanese who invaded, Europeans who accompanied them, Koreans who defended their country, and Chinese who came to their aid, with many of these accounts having been long since translated into English.  Of course, the truth lies where these accounts overlap, but the multiple viewpoints provide an excellent historical record which can be relied upon.  Yet the further back you look in history, the fewer incidents of mutually verifiable facts you find, the more often we’re forced to rely on a single individual’s telling of a story.  And these stories generally only cover a given author’s society or those peoples in close proximity.

But what of the rest of the world?  The historical accounts that have been passed down to us generally emanate from the larger, more organized, and more literate civilizations in our past.  The farther a given “other” people lived from those societies, the less we know about them even today.  Thus I can reproduce with some accuracy a legionary’s breakfast menu from two millennia ago, can go online and order a complete reproduction set of that soldier’s military kit, can recite a ribald limerick from the era that would have made him laugh, but can’t tell you what an Illyrian of the time even looked like.

Bearing this phenomenon in mind should make you more critical when reading historical accounts.  It’s always a good idea to keep in mind, I think, what you do and don’t know about the people and times you’re reading about.  And never be afraid to ask yourself, “Why do I think I know this?”  Chances are you’ve been overly influenced by one ancient writer or another—or more likely today, one Hollywood producer’s interpretation of said writer—than you might think. 

M. G. Haynes