| Summary: | The present article revolves around the interest in contemporary history from ancient writers to humanist historians. Its objective, which forms part of a broader purpose devoted to elucidating the characteristics of the so-called History of the Present, is to examine the forms this interest has traditionally adopted. In this way, we put for consideration the following hypothesis: from classical historians onwards, the concern with contemporary history was always considered a hard and inevitable task to be undertaken, since it affected rulers and living people. Nevertheless, the long-standing doctrine of history as memory of events for centuries had prevented historians from facing paradoxes that result from the interest in contemporary past; in other words, how can historians confront the political uses, memories and demands of public opinion to deal with the recent past without jeopardizing historical truth?
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