Quomodo historia conscribenda sit

Lucian of Samosata

Lucian, Vol. 6. Kilburn, K., translator. London: William Heinemann, Ltd.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959.

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

v.6.p.39

that by the Graces I just cried and cried with laughing, especially when this orator Afranius at the end of his speech wept and with doleful lamentation reminded us of those expensive dinners and pledges! His last flourish was after Ajax: he drew his sword and with true nobility, as was proper for an Afranius, slew himself on the tomb in the sight of all—by the God of Havoc he deserved to die long before for making such a speech. All the onlookers, he said, when they saw this were amazed and praised Afranius to the skies. For my part I voted against him on every count for just stopping short of recalling the soups and shell-fish and weeping over the memory of the pancakes, but I blamed him most for dying without first cutting the throat of the historian who staged the show.

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.

v.6.p.41