Two accounts of one famine survive. An official report says relief reached people adequately

Why

Treating a clash as a lie is a natural first move, and sometimes it is the right one — sources really do lie. But look closely and these two are not even answering the same question. One is about relief coming IN, the other about grain going OUT, and both can be entirely accurate at once: relief camps may have run exactly as reported while grain left the district for markets that could pay. That combination is not a contradiction, it is a description, and a far more damning one than either sentence alone. Notice also what each writer had at stake: an official is judged on the relief he reports, a merchant has no reason to invent shipments. Test: check quantities against each other — how much relief, how much grain leaving. Both could be true, and the historian's job starts, rather than ends, when two sources disagree.