If Greece and Rome are held to be the cradles of Western civilization, this is in part due to the fact that they are the cradles of written history. Between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D. men such as Herodotus, Thucydides and Tacitus virtually invented the discipline of history as we know it. To these men history was a dual art; the art of recording the truth as accurately as possible and the art of writing as lucidly as the great men of letters.