A highly topical issue is the demand for objective reporting by the various media; their consumers demand illusion-free, truthful clarification of events and event contexts. This desire and the attempt to implement it in the best possible way - currently a criterion for the quality of journalism and historiography - is not a phenomenon of globalised modernity.

As early as the 5th century BC, there were endeavours to offer the recipient of a depiction of the past today's ideals of scientific historiography - objectivity and accuracy of facts. The Greek historian Thucydides is often regarded as the founder of this literary approach to historical events, which endeavoured to be accurate and useful. His "highest methodological maxim"[1], as he himself emphasises in his treatise on the Peloponnesian War, is to orientate the main content as closely as possible to what really happened. His ideals can be named so precisely because - as the first historian ever to do so - he sketches a picture of his ideas about the possibilities, duties and hurdles of the profession within a chapter on methodology and thus precedes the actual description of the war, thus providing his audience with an exceptionally detailed insight into his historiographical work. With unparalleled candour and sincerity - or so it seems - the historian allows the reader to participate in his particularly critical and reflective approach. Thucydides' goal is also epochal: "a possession forever"[2] is the aim of the work, which provides insight into the innermost, universal forces of human history and enables a penetrating understanding of it.

The postulated Thucydidean claim to objectivity, which is often praised in research - this view is also bitterly debated and sometimes shared in the literature - contradicts the concessions to subjectivity inherent in the work, leading to doubts about the credibility and reliability of the historian and his work. The speeches, the historian informs his audience, are "reproduced as closely as possible to the overall meaning of what was said"[3]. However, the extent to which we can speak of a historiographical loss of authenticity in Thucydides' work as a result of a conceded fictionality that manifests itself in various formulations will be analysed in the decisive chapters.

In the course of an in-depth analysis of noteworthy passages as well as the style and expression of the historian, it becomes increasingly apparent that Thucydides takes on a constructive activity of his own, which, as it were, adapts his understanding of truth and objectivity to an overarching goal. This objective includes the endeavour to uncover underlying anthropological forces as well as historical regularities and thus to be an orientation aid for the readership in the political and social structure independent of time. The focus on what the historian calls the "overall sense",[4] thus guides his working and writing process and produces an innovative definition of the concept of truth. In the Thucydidean understanding, truth is not to be equated with absolute fidelity to facts. For the ancient historian, truth is closely linked to the facilitation of understanding. The key concept of action-orientated understanding is therefore less focused on the communication of isolated knowledge and facts, but rather on the disclosure of an overall tendency that ultimately elevates the work to a constant source of anthropological dispositions - in the sense of its author to a "possession forever."