Herodotus and Thucydides Case

Herodotus and Thucydides take two different approaches in recording history. They are both considered fathers of their respective branches of historiography. Herodotus, although he has some interest in the facts, is mostly writing to entertain his audiences. He writes a history of the Persian Wars, but spends most of his time writing about the histories of different places involved in the story. He sensationalizes stories to make them more interesting, and changes facts in order to show a moral or lesson, and sometimes completely makes things up (like giant gold digging ants, ect.) Its unsure to what extent he consciously made these things up, or if he believed them and had just heard them from unreliable sources. There is truth to his writing, but one must consciously glean what is true from what is false, and go into his work knowing that you can't trust everything he says.

Thucyidides, on the other hand, is the father of scientific history. He does not attribute events to the supernatural, but instead tires to show what real events caused the Peloponnesian War to break out. He also did not care particularly about being interesting or sensational(as he states in his introduction to the History of the Peloponnesian War), but he tries to be as factually accurate as possible. Thucydides doesn't care about proving a moral lesson, he just reports facts as they happened. As a result, his history of the Peloponnesian War is a dry and more difficult text, but it is widely regarded for its accuracy.