Concepts of history and historicism in Ancient Ages

Since philosophy of history is a field of inquiry into history, history has been one of the disciplines that has attracted the attention of not only historians but also philosophers. In connection with this view, our study has been created in order to make explanations on how the concepts of history and historiography were shaped in the Ancient Age. Rather than other civilizations of antiquity, ideas were expressed within the framework of Greek civilization in terms of using the concept of istoria and raising people who are often called historians. In other words, by centering on the Greek civilization that existed in the ancient process, various explanations have been made for this society's understanding of history and historiography.In this respect, in the first part of the three-part thesis, opinions on history, historiography and philosophy of history were expressed in order to understand the scope of the study. These views have been discussed in the context of some historians and philosophers who have put forward ideas about these fields.The second part investigates the roots of the Greek understanding of history. To put it differently, while Greek civilization had not yet become acquainted with the idea of history, the ideas of poets, philosophers and prose writers related to myth and philosophy were explained, as well as the views of Homer and Hesiod, which were thought to point to history. In addition, understandings of the identity and works of the specified persons are presented. Therefore, it is argued that the ideas discussed in this chapter are not independent of the Ancient Greek understanding of history. In the third part, first of all, general explanations were formed about the historical view and historians of Greek society. Later, historians who lived in the Classical Period of the Greek civilization named Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon made statements about their identity and the subject of their works, and evaluations and analyses were made about the historiography of these historians. Keywords: Antiquity, Hesiod, Herodotus, Xenophon, History, Philosophy of History, Thucydides