Quomodo historia conscribenda sit

There is another not unimportant matter: because he is an out-and-out Atticist and has purified his speech down to the last syllable, he thought fit to change the Latin names and use Greek forms—Kronios for Saturninus, Phrontis for Fronto, Titanios for Titianus, and others much more ridiculous.

And where, my dear Philo, are we to put those who use poetic words in their history, who say “The siege-engine whirled, the wall fell with a big thud,” and again in another part of this fine work, “Edessa thus was girt with the crash of arms and all was clangour and alarum,” and “the general mused how best to attack the wall.” [*](These writers use words with a poetical tradition from Homer, Hesiod and other poets.) Then in the middle of this sort of thing he stuffed a lot of words that were cheap, vulgar, and mean—“the prefect sent His Majesty a despatch” and “the soldiers got themselves the necessaries” and “by now they’d had their baths and were hanging about” and so on. It’s as if a tragic actor had mounted a high buskin on one foot and had a sandal tied under the other.

Again, you may see others writing introductions that are brilliant, dramatic, and excessively long, so that you expect what follows to be marvellous to hear, but for the body of their history they bring on something so tiny and so undistinguished that it resembles

Yet we can put up with all these things as far as they are faults of expression and arrangement of material; but to misplace localities even, not just by parasangs but by whole days’ marches, what fineness of style does that resemble? One man, for example, who had never met a Syrian nor even heard as they say “barber-shop gossip” about such things, assembled his facts so carelessly that when speaking of Europus he said: “Europus is situated in Mesopotamia, two days’ journey from the Euphrates; it was colonised

By Zeus, that, too, is a highly plausible story the same fellow told about Severianus, taking his oath that he heard it from a man who had survived this very action: he said that Severianus did not want to die by the sword nor take poison nor hang himself, but thought of a dramatic death, strange and novel in its boldness: he happened to have huge drinking-glasses of the finest crystal, and when he had decided to die at all costs he broke the largest of the bowls and used one of the pieces to kill himself by cutting his throat with the glass. As if there were no dagger, no javelin to be found to bring him a manly and heroic death! .

Then since Thucydides made a funeral speech over the first to die in that famous war [*](The Peloponnesian War. Thuc. II, 34–36.) he thought he too ought to make a speech over Severianus. For all of them vie with Thucydides, who was in no way responsible for our troubles in Armenia. So after burying Severianus in magnificent style he makes a centurion, an Afranius Silo, mount the tomb as a rival to Pericles; his rhetoric was so strange and so exaggerated

I could count off many more writers like these, my friend, but I shall name just a few before turning to my other undertaking, my advice how to write history better. There are some who leave out or skate over the important and interesting events, and from lack of education, taste, and knowledge of what to mention and what to ignore dwell very fully and laboriously on the most insignificant happenings; this is like failing to observe and praise and describe for those who do not know it the entire grandeur and supreme quality of the Zeus at Olympia, and instead admiring the “good workmanship” and “good finish” of the footstool and the “good proportions” of the base, and developing all this with great concern.

For instance, I myself heard a man cover the Battle of Europus in less than seven complete lines, but he spent twenty or even more measures of the water-clock on a frigid description that was of no interest to us of how a Moorish horseman, Mausacas by name, was wandering over the mountains because he was thirsty and found some Syrian country-folk setting out their lunch; at first they were afraid of him, but then when they found he was one of their friends they welcomed him and gave him food; for one of them happened to have been abroad and visited Mauretania, as a brother of his was campaigning in that country. Long stories and digressions followed as to how he had gone hunting in Mauretania and how he had seen many elephants grazing together at one spot and how he was almost eaten by a lion and how big the fish were he bought in Caesarea. And our famous historian forgot the great killings, charges, imposed truces, guards, and counter-guards at Euro-pus, and until late evening stood watching Malchion the Syrian buying huge wrasses cheap in Caesarea. If night had not come down he might have dined with him when the wrasses were cooked. If this had not been painstakingly included in the history we should have missed some important details and it would have been an intolerable loss to the Romans if Mausacas, the Moor, had not found a drink when he was thirsty but returned to the camp supperless. Yet how much else far more essential am I willingly leaving out at this point! How a flute-girl came to them from the neighbouring village, how they exchanged gifts, the Moor giving to Malchion a spear

Another man, my dear Philo, is also quite ridiculous: he had never set a foot outside Corinth nor even left home for Cenchreae; he had certainly not seen Syria or Armenia; yet he began as I recall as follows: “Ears are less trustworthy than eyes. I write then what I have seen, not what I have heard.” And he has seen everything so keenly that he said that the serpents of the Parthians (this is a banner they use to indicate number—a serpent precedes, I think, a thousand men), he said that they were alive and of enormous size; that they are born in Persia a little way beyond Iberia; that they are bound to long poles and, raised on high, create terror while the Parthians are coming on from a distance; that in the encounter itself at close quarters they are freed and sent against the enemy; that in fact they had swallowed many of our men in this way and coiled themselves around others and suffocated and crushed them. He himself had been an eyewitness of this, he said, making his observations, however, in safety from a tall tree. He was quite right in not meeting the beasts at close quarters: we should not now have such an excellent historian, who off-hand did great and glorious deeds in this war; for he faced many a battle and was wounded near Sura, obviously in a walk from Cornel Hill to Lerna. He read all this to an audience of Corinthians who knew for a fact that he had not

One fine historian compressed all that had happened from beginning to end in Armenia, Syria, Mesopotamia, by the Tigris, in Media into less than five hundred lines, incomplete at that, and after this says he has composed a history. Yet the title that he attached to it is almost longer than the book: “A description of recent exploits of Romans in Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Media, by Antiochianus the victor sacred to Apollo”—I suppose he has once been winner in the long foot race in the boys’ competition.

I have heard of one who even included the future in his history: the capture of Vologesus, the killing of Osroes—how he was going to be thrown to the lions and, to cap everything, the triumph we have longed for so much—, in such a prophetic state was he as he hastened to the end of his composition. Why he even founded a city in Mesopotamia, outstanding in size, and of unsurpassed beauty. He is still considering and taking thought, however, whether he should call it Nicaea, after the victory, or Concord or Peacetown. It is still undecided and we have no name for that beautiful city full of copious nonsense and historical drivel. He has promised to write of

This is the sort of nonsense they talk in floods through their lack of schooling. They neither see what is worth looking at nor, if they did see it, have they the ability to give it suitable expression. They invent and manufacture whatever “comes to the tip of an unlucky tongue,” as they say, and pride themselves in the number of their books and in particular on the titles, which again are completely ridiculous: “So-and-so’s Parthian victories in so many books”; and again: “Parthis I and II,” like “Atthis” of course. Someone else did it much more stylishly—I have read it myself—“The Parthonicica of Demetrius of Sagalassus” . . . [*](There is a gap in the MSS here.) not to make fun of them and pour scorn on histories so fine but with a practical end in view. For whoever avoids these faults and their like has already mastered a great part of what makes correct historical writing, or, rather, needs but little more, if logic is right when it says that to abolish one of two direct opposites is to establish the other instead.

Well now, someone will say, you have carefully cleared your ground and cut out all the thorns and

I maintain then that the best writer of history comes ready equipped with these two supreme qualities: political understanding and power of expression; the former is an unteachable gift of nature, while power of expression may come through a deal of practice, continual toil, and imitation of the ancients. These then need no guiding rules and I have no need to advise on them; my book does not promise to make people understanding and quick who are not so by nature. It would be worth a good deal—everything rather—if it could remodel and transform things to that extent, or make gold out of lead or silver from tin, or manufacture a Titormus from a Conon or a Milo from a Leotrophides. [*](Conon and Leotrophides were little men, Titormus and Milo of great size and strength.)

Then where is technique and advice helpful? Not for the creation but for the appropriate employment of qualities. For instance, Iccus, Herodicus, Theon, and the other trainers would not promise you to take on Perdiccas—if indeed he and not Antiochus, the

You would not say that the intelligent man has no need of technique and instruction where he is ignorant—otherwise he would play the lyre, blow the pipe, and understand everything without learning. As it is, he could not do any of this without first learning, and with someone to guide him he will learn most easily and perform them well for himself.

So give us now a student of this kind—not without ability to understand and express himself, keen-sighted, one who could handle affairs if they were turned over to him, a man with the mind of a soldier combined with that of a good citizen, and a knowledge of generalship; yes, and one who has at some time been in a camp and has seen soldiers exercising or drilling and knows of arms and engines; again, let him know what “in column,” what “in line” mean, how the companies of infantry, how the cavalry, are manoeuvred, the origin and meaning of “lead out”

Above all and before everything else, let his mind be free, let him fear no one and expect nothing, or else he will be like a bad judge who sells his verdict to curry favour or gratify hatred. He must not be concerned that Philip has had his eye put out by Aster of Amphipolis, the archer at Olynthus—he must show him exactly as he was. Nor must he mind if Alexander is going to be angry when he gives a clear account of the cruel murder of Clitus at the banquet. Neither will Cleon with his great power in the assembly and his mastery of the platform frighten him from saying that he was murderous and lunatic: nor even the entire city of the Athenians if he records the disaster of Sicily, the capture of Demosthenes, and the death of Nicias, the thirst of the troops, the sort of water they drank, and how most of them were slain as they drank it. For he will think quite rightly that no man of sense will blame him if he gives an account of unlucky or stupid actions—he has not been responsible for them, he has merely told the tale. So that if they are ever defeated in a sea-fight it is not he who sank them and if they run away it is not he who drives them on, unless he neglected to say a prayer when he ought. Surely if by ignoring them or reversing them he could set them right, it would have been very easy for Thucydides with one insubstantial pen to overturn the counter-wall at Epipolae, and sink the trireme of Hermocrates, to transfix that cursed man Gylippus in the

The historian’s sole task is to tell the tale as it happened. This he cannot do as long as he is afraid of Artaxerxes when he is his physician or hopes to get a purple cufta, [*](A Median garment with sleeves.) a gold necklet, and a Nisaean horse as a reward for the eulogies in his work. [*](Referring to Ctesias of Cnidus. He spent seventeen years at court and wrote a history of Persia.) No Xenophon (a just historian), no Thucydides will do that. On the contrary, even if he personally hates certain people he will think the public interest far more binding, and regard truth as worth more than enmity, and if he has a friend he will nevertheless not spare him if he errs.

This, as I have said, is the one thing peculiar to history, and only to Truth must sacrifice be made. When a man is going to write history, everything else he must ignore. In short, the one standard, the one yardstick is to keep in view not your present audience but those who will meet your work hereafter. Whoever serves the present will rightly be counted a flatterer—a person on whom history long ago right from the beginning has turned its back, as much as has physical culture on the art of make-up. For example they record this remark of Alexander’s: “I should be glad, Onesicritus,” he said, “to come back to life for a little while after my death to discover