historians’ primary concern was not detailing exactly what happened in the past as much as it was showing how the “causes” of the past brought about the “effects” of the present, in other words, interpreting the meaning of the past for the present. The cause-effect explanations employed by ancient history writers were not scientific in nature as they might be today but typically had to do with moral and religious matters. Greek historians, for instance, used what we would classify as myth or legend