Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Chinese whispers was a fun game.  Curious to see that Wikipedia says North Americans call this game "telephone".
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Not particularly curious given how teens use to gossip on the telephone. Yes, there is that particular aspect, we don't know if a writer is accurately conveying the information in the book, but then again, we know that copyist frequently will either miscopy or slip in something when they copy. For the most part, we can be reasonably confident in broad actions, i.e. that Alexander existed, the various battles and such. The details, not so much. There are a couple of different versions of how he died. That's why it's best to have multiple unique sources (i.e. not two people using the same source material) and compare them. Not really an option when you go back farther and farther in history.