Tenuous as the definition of historical writings may have been and much as the ancienthistorical text was unreliable, some would say even baseless, it seems that history, as aunique field of human inquiry first conceived of by the Greeks, was based on some sortof distinction between truth and fiction. All writing had to be coherent to carry meaning, but history alone was shouldered with the task of describing what truly happened. Poetrycould conjure up an endless number of possible worlds. History alone set itself the task ofreconstructing the real world, its genesis and transmutations.