Let us first say that a fact (L. factum, “thing done”) is that which has occurred, and an event (ex- “out” + venire “to come”) a series of related facts.

Memory (L. memor, “mindful”) is the mind’s preservation of facts and events, and the ability to recollect them. Unfortunately, the insurmountable condition of human mortality requires that memory expire with the biological human body, which is why a more permanent instrument is needed for preserving facts and events. Without death, no history.

A document (L. docere, “to teach”) is a written account of one’s thoughts. In addition to other services, documents allow humans to transfer memories from the fleeting and mortal human consciousness to a more stable physical object. Memories blink out of existence when humans expire, but documents are the memories of humankind.

The memorial document is a form of poetry, a fiction (L. fingere, “to shape, form”) of fact, which is to say the shape of things done. The question is whether the memorial document illuminates or obscures the past.

The inherent tension of the memorial document is the tension between realism (L. res “matter, thing”), which reveals the shape of things done, and formalism (L. forma “mold, shape”), which gives shape to things done. The realist wants to know the past from the ground up, accumulating as many particular facts as possible and allowing a shape to emerge from this collection. Conversely, the formalist thinks we only know the past from the top down, so that preconceived shapes order our very perception of raw data. Fiction is the realist’s instrument for presenting fact, the formalists instrument for collecting it. The realist is the audience of the past, the formalist the author.

There are three increasingly-sophisticated kinds of memorial documents: annals, chronicles, and histories.

Annals can be distinguished from chronicles according to their organization (Gk. οργανον, “tool, instrument”), or the tool used to order the information in the document, which might proceed by sequence or by narrative. Organization is sequential (L. sequi, “to follow”) when the document follows the order of the facts it records. Organization is narrative (L. narrare, “to relate, recount”) when the document rearranges facts in groups that make for a coherent event, even if out of sequence.

Chronicles can be distinguished from histories based on their narrative structure (L. struere, “to build”), or the author’s system for building relationships between the events in a document, which may be either episodic or unified. A narrative structure that is episodic (Gk. εις, “into” + οδος, “way”) depicts multiple and often unrelated facts, loosely intertwined events, making for a digressive and inconclusive plot that never ends or ends only to begin again. A narrative structure that is unified (L. uni “one” + facere “to make”) depicts a single event, all facts related to one distinct plot with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Annals (L. annus, “year”) catalog the facts of a given year, organized sequentially and thus without narrative form, so that annals do not conclude so much as simply stop.

A chronicle (Gk. χρονος, “time”) is a mostly sequential organization of facts that is also narrated so that events are either evident or explicitly stated. Chronicles and annals both present facts sequentially and conclude inorganically, but chronicles offer events while annals only register facts. Chronicles are organized by narrative, but structured episodically.

A history (Gk. ιςτωρ, “wise man, judge”) is an account of an event, organized not by sequence but by a narrative – unified, not episodic – thus presenting a story with a beginning, middle, and end while also expressing judgment as to the meaning of this story. A history not only documents facts and synthesizes them into events but also suggests an interpretation of them. History always has an argument.

Annals document what Alcibiades did. A chronicle documents the Peloponnesian War. A history documents the miserable collapse of Athenian democracy.

Traditionally it is said that history is about particulars and philosophy about universals, but this formulation must be revised in any mature understanding of memorial documents. A chronicle is about particulars, annals even more so, but a history is not only a sequence of particular facts – that’s annals – nor even the synthesis of events – that’s a chronicle – but also an interpretive statement of ideas that can be drawn from a collection of facts and events: claims about the way things were, about truth and knowledge, and about good and evil. Like philosophy, history is about universals.