History

An account of facts, particularly of facts respecting nations or states; a narration of events in the order in which they happened, with their causes and effects.

E.M. Remarque, 'All quiet on the western front', Little, Brown and Company: 1975.
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M. Mayer, 'They thought they were free: the Germans 1933-1945', University of Chicago Press: 1966.
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G.J. Caesar, 'The Gallic War', Dover Publications: 2012.
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'Caesar (...) fearing the fickleness of the Gauls, because they are capricious in forming designs and intent for the most part on change, he considered that no trust should be reposed in them.

It is indeed a regular habit of the Gauls to compel travellers to halt, even against their will, and to ascertain what each of them may have heard or learnt upon every subject; and in the towns the common folk surround traders, compelling them to declare from what districts they come and what they have learnt there.

Such stories and hearsay often induce them to form plans upon vital questions of which they must forthwith repent; for they are the slaves of uncertain rumours, and most men reply to them in fictions made to their taste.' (Book IV, 5-8)

Ceasar's account of the Gauls resonates with the King James bible, the book of Acts, chapter 17, verse 21:

'(...) all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing (...)'

And in Ecclesiastes, chapter 1, verses 9 and 10, it concludes:

'The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.'

History

Further reading