Quomodo historia conscribenda sit
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They say, my dear Philo, that in the reign of King Lysimachus the people of Abdera were smitten by an epidemic. These were its symptoms: at first every one of them fell ill of a fever, violent and obstinate right from the start; about the seventh day it was broken, in some cases by a copious flow of blood from the nostrils, in others by heavy sweating; but their minds were left in a ridiculous state; they all went mad with tragedy, shouting iambics and creating a din; and they mostly sang solos from Euripides’ “Andromeda,”
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rendering Perseus’ speech in song; the city was full of these seventh-day tragedians, all pale and thin, roaring,
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“Love, you tyrant of gods and men”
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and the rest in a loud voice, hour after hour, day after day, until winter and a severe cold spell stopped their noise. Archelaus the actor seems to me to blame for such goings on. He was popular then, and in the middle of summer in the blazing heat had played the “Andromeda” for them, so that most of them brought their fever away from the theatre with them, and later when they left their beds relapsed into tragedy;
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the “Andromeda” kept haunting their memory, and his Perseus with Medusa’s head still flitted round everyone’s brain.
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To make as they say a comparison, that Abderite complaint has now taken hold of most of the literary world. They don’t act tragedy—they would be less out of their wits if they were in the grip of other men’s verses, not shoddy ones at that. No, ever since the present situation arose—the war against the barbarians, the disaster in Armenia and the run of victories—every single person is writing history; nay more, they are all Thucydideses, Herodotuses and Xenophons to us, and very true, it seems, is the saying that “War is the father of all things”
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since at one stroke it has begotten so many historians.
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As I saw and heard all this, friend, I was reminded of the story of the man of Sinope. When Philip was said to be already on the march, all the Corinthians were astir and busy, preparing weapons, bringing up stones, underpinning the wall, shoring up a battlement and doing various other useful jobs. Diogenes saw this, and as he had nothing to do—nobody made any use of him—he belted up his philosopher’s cloak and very busily by himself rolled the crock in which, as it happens, he was living up and down Cornel Hill. When one of his friends asked: “Why are you doing that, Diogenes?” he replied: “I’m rolling the crock so as not to be thought the one idle man in the midst of all these workers.”
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So in my own case, Philo, to avoid being the only mute in such a polyphonic time, pushed about open-mouthed without a word like an extra in a comedy, I thought it a good idea to roll my barrel as best I could; not to produce a history or even merely chronicle the events—I’m not so bold as that: don’t be afraid that I should go that far. I know the danger of rolling it over rocks, particularly a poorly baked little barrel like mine. Just as soon as it hits against a tiny piece of stone we shall have to pick up the pieces. I shall tell you then what I have decided to do and how I shall take part in the war in safety, keeping well out of range myself. “From your spray and surge’’ Homer, Od. xii, 198, describing the whirlpool of Charybdis. and all the cares that attend the writer of history I shall keep myself aloof and rightly so. In fact, I shall offer a little advice and these few precepts to historians, so that I may share in the erection of their building, if not the inscription on it, by putting at any rate my finger-tip on the mortar.
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Yet most of them think they don’t even need advice for the job any more than they need a set of rules for walking or seeing or eating; no, they think it is perfectly simple and easy to write history and that anyone can do it if only he can put what comes to him into words. As to that, I’m sure you know as well as I do, my dear friend, that history is not one of those things that can be put in hand without effort and can be put together lazily, but is something which needs, if anything does in literature, a great deal of thought
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if it is to be what Thucydides calls “a possession for evermore.” Now I know that I shall not convert very many: some indeed will think me a great nuisance, particularly anyone whose history is already finished and has already been displayed in public. And if in addition he was applauded by his audience it would be madness to expect his sort to remodel or rewrite any part of what has once been ratified and lodged, as it were, in the royal palace. Nevertheless it is as well to address my remarks to them also so that if ever another war comes along, whether Celts against Getans or Indians against Bactrians (no one would dare to fight us—we’ve beaten everybody already), they may write better by applying this yard-stick if they think it accurate; if they don’t, then they must use the same rule to do their measuring as now. The doctor will not be greatly annoyed if every man of Abdera
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plays the “Andromeda” and is happy to do it.
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Advice works in two ways: it teaches us to choose this and avoid that. So first let us say what the writer of history has to avoid, from what contaminations he must in particular be free; then what means he must use in order not to lose the right road that carries him straight ahead—I mean how to begin, how to arrange his material, the proper proportions for each part, what to leave out, what to develop, what it is better to handle cursorily, and how to put the facts into words and fit them together. These and kindred matters will come later. But now let us mention the vices which follow on the heels of shoddy historians. To recount the faults of diction in single and combined words, of meaning and other marks of bad workmanship which are common to all literary genres would take a long time and not be peculiar to our present enquiry.
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But as to faults in historical writing, you will probably find by observation that they are of the same sort as I have noticed in many attendances at readings, especially if you open your ears to everyone. But it will not be out of place in the meantime to recall by way of example some of the histories already written in this faulty manner. To begin with, let us look at this for a serious fault: most of them neglect to record the events and spend their time lauding rulers and generals, extolling their own to the skies and slandering the enemy’s beyond all reserve; they do not realise that the dividing line and frontier between history and panegyric is not a narrow isthmus but rather a mighty wall; as musicians say, they are two diapasons apart, since the encomiast’s sole concern is to praise and please in any way he can the one he praises, and if he can achieve his aim by lying, little will he care; but history cannot admit a lie, even a tiny one, any more than the windpipe, as sons of doctors say, can tolerate anything entering it in swallowing.
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Again, such writers seem unaware that history has
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aims and rules different from poetry and poems. In the case of the latter, liberty is absolute and there is one law—the will of the poet. Inspired and possessed by the Muses as he is, even if he wants to harness winged horses to a chariot, even if he sets others to run over water or the top of the corn,
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nobody gets annoyed; not even when their Zeus swings land and sea together suspended from a single cord
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are they afraid it will break and everything fall and smash. If they want to praise Agamemnon there is no one to prevent his having a head and eyes like Zeus, a chest like Zeus’ brother Poseidon, and a belt like Ares,
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and in general the son of Atreus and Aerope must be a compound of all the gods for not Zeus nor Poseidon nor Ares alone is adequate to give the fullness of his beauty. But if history introduces flattery of that sort, what else does it become but a sort of prose-poetry, lacking indeed the high style of poetry, but showing the rest of poetry’s sorcery without metre, and for that reason in a more conspicuous way? So it is a great deal—all too great a fault—not to know how to keep the attributes of history and poetry separate, and to bring poetry’s embellishments into history—myth and eulogy and the exaggeration of both: it is as if you were to dress one of our tough, rugged athletes in a purple dress and the rest of the paraphernalia of a pretty light-o’-love and daub and paint his face. Heavens!
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how ridiculous you would make him look, shaming him with all that decoration.
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I do not say that there is no room for occasional praise in history. But it must be given at the proper time and kept within reasonable limits to avoid displeasing future readers. In general such matters should be controlled with a view to what posterity demands; I shall treat of them a little later. Now some think they can make a satisfactory distinction in history between what gives pleasure and what is useful, and for this reason work eulogy into it as giving pleasure and enjoyment to its readers; but do you see how far they are from the truth? In the first place, the distinction they draw is false: history has one task and one end—what is useful—, and that comes from truth alone. As for what gives pleasure, it is certainly better if it is there incidentally—like good looks in an athlete; but if it isn’t there, there is still nothing to prevent Nicostratus, the son of Isidotus, a true blue and a stouter fellow than either of his rivals, from becoming “a successor of Heracles A title or quasi-title awarded for victory in both wrestling and the pancratium on the same day. Nicostratus was the seventh to do this (Pausanias, V, 21, 9–18). The young Quintilian saw him in his old age about A.D. 50 (Quint. II. 8, 14). though he be ugly to look at, while his opponent is Alcaeus of Miletus, the handsome fellow who, they say, was loved by Nicostratus. So it is with history—if she were to make the mistake of dealing in pleasure as well she would attract a host of lovers, but as long as she keeps only what is hers alone in all its fullness—I mean the publication of the truth—she will give little thought to beauty.
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Moreover, this too is worth saying: in history complete fiction and praise that is heavily biased on one side does not even give pleasure to an audience, if you leave out the common rabble and take note of those who will listen in the spirit of judges and indeed of fault-finders as well. Nothing will get past their scrutiny: their eyes are keener than Argus’s and all over their body; they test each expression like a money-changer, rejecting at once what is false but accepting current coin that is legal tender and correctly minted. These are the people to keep in mind when you write history; do not give the slightest thought to the rest even if they burst themselves with applauding. But if you neglect them and sweeten your history beyond reason with stories and eulogies and the other kinds of flattery, you will make it like Heracles in Lydia. You have probably seen pictures of him as slave to Omphale, dressed in a most outlandish way: Omphale is wearing his lion’s skin and carrying his club in her hand, as if she were Heracles for certain, while he has on a saffron and purple gown and is carding wool and getting rapped with Omphale’s sandal. It’s a shocking spectacle: the clothing hangs off his body and is ill–fitting, and his divine masculinity is disgracefully feminised.
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The majority will possibly applaud you for this, but those few whom you despise will laugh delightedly till they are sated when they see the incongruity, lack of proportion, and loose structure of the work, for each part has its own peculiar beauty and if you alter that you make it ugly and futile. I need not say that eulogies may be pleasing to one man, him who is praised, and annoying to others, especially if they contain monstrous overstatements, the kind that most people make when they seek favour from those who are praised, persisting until they have made their flattery obvious to everyone. They do not know how to do it with any skill nor do they cover up their obsequiousness; no, they rush at it laying it all on thick, so implausible and so naïve. So they do not get what they want most: those they praise hate them the more and turn their backs on them as toadies, and rightly so, especially if they are manly in spirit.
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That is what happened to Aristobulus when he wrote of the single combat between Alexander and Porus; he read this particular passage in his work to Alexander thinking to give great pleasure to the King by ascribing falsely to him certain deeds of valour and inventing achievements too great to be true. They happened to be sailing on the River Hydaspes at the time, and Alexander took the book and threw it straight into the water with the remark: “You deserve the same treatment, Aristobulus, for fighting single-handed duels for my sake like that and killing elephants with one throw of the javelin.” Indeed it was certain that Alexander would be angry at such a thing—he had not put up with the effrontery of the engineer who had promised to fashion Athos into his portrait and shape the mountain to the King’s likeness. Alexander at once realised that the man was a flatterer and had no longer employed him.
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Where then is the pleasure in this, unless a man is so utterly stupid as to enjoy praise that can be proved groundless there and then? Take the case of the ugly men and women, particularly women, who ask the painter to make them as beautiful as possible, thinking they will be better looking if the painter bedecks them with a richer red and mixes plenty of white into his pigment. Most of our historians today are like that, courting private whim and the profit they expect from their history. One might well loathe them as blatant flatterers of no ability in their own time, while to posterity they make the whole business of written history suspect by their exaggerations. If anyone supposes that giving pleasure has to be mixed into all historical writing, there are other refinements of style that combine pleasure with truth. The run of historians neglect these and pile up tasteless incongruities one upon the other.
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Well then, I’ll tell you what I remember hearing some historians say recently in Ionia, and indeed only the other day in Achaïa, when they were describing this very war. And in the name of the Graces let no one disbelieve what I am going to say. I would swear to its veracity—if it were in good taste to attach an affidavit to an essay. One of them began straightway with the Muses, summoning the goddesses to help him with his work. You see how appropriate this opening was, how apt for historical writing, how suited to this type of book! Then a little further on he compared our general to Achilles, and the Persian King to Thersites, not understanding
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that Achilles would have been a better name for him if he was killing a Hector rather than a Thersites and if a hero fled before,
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“and one far greater pursued him.” Homer, Il. xxii, 158. The quotation is not quite accurate.
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Then he brought in a bit of praise on his own account, telling how worthy he was to record such outstanding deeds. Now he was on his way home and praising his native Miletus, adding that this was an improvement on Homer, who had not mentioned his native land at all. Then at the end of this introduction he made a clear and explicit promise to glorify the achievements of our side and beat down the barbarians on his own with all his might. Then he began his narrative by relating the causes of the war in this way: “That cursed scoundrel Vologesus began the war for the following reason.”
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So much for him. Another, a keen emulator of Thucydides, modelling himself closely on his original, like him began with his own name—the most graceful of all beginnings, redolent of Attic thyme. Listen: “Crepereius Calpurnianus of Pompeiopolis wrote the history of the war between the Parthians and the Romans beginning at its very outset.”
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After a beginning like that why should I tell you the rest—the sort of speech he made in Armenia (he brought in the Corcyrean orator
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in person for that) or what sort of plague he brought down on the people of Nisibis who declined to take
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the Roman side (he lifted that from Thucydides in its entirety except just for the Pelasgicum and the Long Walls where those who had at that time caught the plague had settled.
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)? Then again it even “began in Ethiopia,” as in Thucydides, then “descended into Egypt” and “the vast territory of the great King,” where it stayed—and a good thing too! For my part I left him still burying his wretched Athenians at Nisibis and went away knowing just what he was going to say after I had gone. But this is quite a fashion just now, to suppose that you’re following Thucydides’ style if you reproduce, with some small alterations, his own expressions. Oh, here is a point I almost left out: this same historian has called many arms and war-engines by their Latin names, as well as the words for ditch, bridge and so on. Imagine please the high quality of his history and how it suits Thucydides to have these Italic words mixed up with the Attic, adding a distinctive touch of colour like purple dye—a perfect match!
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Another of them has compiled a bare record of the events and set it down on paper, completely prosaic and ordinary, such as a soldier or artisan or pedlar following the army might have put together as a diary of daily events. However, this amateur was not so bad—it was quite obvious at the beginning what he was, and his work has cleared the ground for some future historian of taste and ability. The only fault I found was this: his headings were too pompous for the place his books can hold—“Callimorphus, surgeon of the Sixth Lancers, History of the Parthian War, Book so-and-so”—there followed the number of each book. Another thing, his preface was very frigid: he put it like this: it was proper for a surgeon to write history, since Asclepius was the son of Apollo and Apollo was leader of the Muses and lord of all culture; also because, after beginning in Ionic, for some reason I can’t fathom he suddenly changed to the vernacular, using indeed the Ionic forms of “medicine,” “attempt,” “how many,” “diseases,” but taking the rest from the language of everyday, most of it street-corner talk.
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If I have to mention a philosopher let his name remain unknown. I shall speak only of his general views and his recent writings in Corinth. They went beyond all expectation. Right at the beginning in the first sentence of his introduction he used dialectic on his readers in his eagerness to show off a very clever argument. This was to the effect that only the philosopher was fit to write history. Then a little later came one syllogism, then another. In short his introduction was sheer dialectic in every figure of the syllogism. His flattery was nauseating: his eulogies were vulgar and downright low; even they were syllogistic and dialectical in form. I certainly thought it in poor taste and not at all becoming a philosopher and a long, grey beard to say, as he did in his introduction, that it will be a special distinction of our commander that even philosophers think fit to recount his deeds. Such a comment he should have left for us, if anybody, to think of and not made it himself.
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Again it would not be right to omit the one who began as follows: “I come to speak of Romans and Persians,” and a little later said: “The Persians were foredoomed to come to grief,” and again: “It was Osroes, whom the Greeks call Oxyrhoes” and many more things of this sort, all in Ionic. Do you see? He was like Crepereius, only Crepereius was a wonderful copy of Thucydides, this man of Herodotus.
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Another, renowned for his powerful eloquence, was also like Thucydides or a little better. He described all cities, mountains, plains, and rivers in the most detailed and striking way, as he thought. May the Averter of Evil turn his detail and vigour against the enemy, so much frigidity was there in it, worse than Caspian snow and Celtic ice! For example, he only just got through his description of the emperor’s shield in a whole book, with its Gorgon on the boss, her eyes of blue, white, and black, her girdle like the rainbow, the ringlets and curls of her serpents. The trousers of Vologesus and the bit of his horse—Heavens! how many thousands of words on each, and his descriptions of Osroes’ hair as he swam across the Tigris, and the cave where he fled for safety, with its jungle of ivy, myrrh, and laurel making it completely dark. Think how essential this is to history: without it we should not have known what happened there!
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Because of weakness in matters of importance or ignorance of what to say, they turn to this sort of description of scenery and caves; when they chance on a host of great doings they are like a newly-rich servant who has just inherited his master’s fortune: he knows neither how to dress nor how to take his meal in the proper way: no, he plunges in, when for instance birds and pork and hares are put before him, stuffing himself with a soup or kippers until he bursts from eating. Well, this man I mentioned described incredible wounds and monstrous deaths, how one man was wounded in the big toe and died on the spot, and how Priscus the general just gave a shout and twenty-seven of the enemy fell dead. And in the number slain he even contradicted the officers’ despatches with his false figures: at Europus, he said, the enemy lost 70,236 killed, while the Romans lost just two and had nine wounded. I do not think anyone in his senses would accept that.
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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. Again, concerning the death of Severianus, this same man wrote that all the others had been deceived in supposing he perished by the sword—he died by fasting because he thought this the most painless way of dying. He was unaware that the whole business only took, say, three days while those who keep away from food generally last a week—unless one assumes that Osroes was standing about waiting for Severianus to die from hunger and for that reason did not attack during the week.
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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.”
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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.
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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 a child, some Cupid Little slave-boys were called “Cupids.” —you may have seen one playing and putting on a huge mask of Heracles or a Titan. The audience there and then are calling out to them “a mountain was in labour.” In my opinion the right way to do it is not like this: there must be a general uniformity, a unity of colour, and the body must be in proportion with the head, so that when you get a golden helmet the breastplate is not a silly patchwork of rags or rotten hides with a wicker-work shield and pigskin greaves. You can see plenty of writers like that, who put the head of the Colossus of Rhodes on the body of a dwarf. Then again others produce bodies without any heads—works lacking an introduction that begin at once with the narrative; in support they quote Xenophon, where he begins “Darius and Parysatis had two sons,” The opening of the Anabasis. and other old writers, not knowing that there are such things as virtual prefaces I.e., prefaces by function not by form. unrecognised by most people; we shall demonstrate this elsewhere.
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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
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by men of Edessa.”
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Even this was not enough for him: my own birthplace, Samosata, this fine writer in the same book lifted, acropolis, walls and all, and transplanted to Mesopotamia, so as to surround it by both rivers, which passed close to it on either side and almost touched the walls. How ridiculous, Philo, if I were now to argue a proof with you that I am not a Parthian or from Mesopotamia, where this wonderful historian has taken and transplanted me!
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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! .
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Then since Thucydides made a funeral speech over the first to die in that famous war
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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
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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.
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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.
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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 and he giving Mausacas a buckle, and many other similar incidents, the high-spots of the Battle of Europus! To sum up, one might rightly say that such people do not look at the rose itself, but accurately observe its thorns that grow along the stem.
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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 even seen a battle painted on a wall. In fact he had no knowledge of what weapons or engines were like or of the words “regiments” or “muster-rolls.” A lot he cared if he spoke of a movement in column as a transverse battle-line and a frontal movement in line as a movement in column!
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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.
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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
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future happenings in India and the circumnavigation of the outer sea—and this is not just a promise; the introduction to his “Indian History” is already done, and the Third Legion, the Celts, and a small detachment of Moors have all crossed the River Indus with Cassius. What they are going to do and how they will receive the charge of the elephants, our wonderful historian will tell us before very long by letter from Muziris
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or the Oxydraci.
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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” . . .
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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.
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Well now, someone will say, you have carefully cleared your ground and cut out all the thorns and
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brambles, and all the debris has been carried away and all the rough places are now smooth, so now build something yourself to show you are good not only at overturning other peoples’ edifices but at thinking out something clever yourself which no one, not even Momus,
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could censure.
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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.
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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 son of Seleucus, is the one who fell in love with his stepmother and wasted away because of it—and make him an Olympic victor, a rival to Theagenes the Thasian, or Polydamas of Scotussa, but only that if they were given a subject inclined by nature to receive athletic training they would by their technique make him much better. So let me too not suffer this reproach when I make my promise and say that I have discovered a technique in a matter so important and so difficult, for I do not promise to take on anyone you like and make him an historian; no, merely to demonstrate to a man who is intelligent by nature and well trained in expressing himself certain direct routes (if indeed that is what they appear to be) which if he will use them will help him more quickly and more easily to the attainment of his goal.
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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.
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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” and “lead around”, in short not a stay-at-home or one who must rely on what people tell him.
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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
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act of blocking the roads with walls and ditches, and finally to throw the Syracusans into the stone-quarries while the Athenians sailed round Sicily and Italy as Alcibiades had first hoped. No, when what is done is done I fancy that even Clotho could not un-spin their destiny or Atropus change their course.
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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,
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a gold necklet, and a Nisaean horse as a reward for the eulogies in his work.
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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.
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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 how men read these present events then. If now they praise and welcome them do not be surprised: they think, every one of them, that this is a fine bait to catch my goodwill.” Homer indeed in general tended towards the mythical in his account of Achilles, yet some nowadays are inclined to believe him; they cite as important evidence of his truthfulness the single fact that he did not write about him during his lifetime: they cannot find any motive for lying.
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That, then, is the sort of man the historian should be: fearless, incorruptible, free, a friend of free expression and the truth, intent, as the comic poet
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says, on calling a fig a fig and a trough a trough, giving nothing to hatred or to friendship, sparing no one, showing neither pity nor shame nor obsequiousness, an impartial judge, well disposed to all men up to the point of not giving one side more than its due, in his books a stranger and a man without a country, independent, subject to no sovereign, not reckoning what this or that man will think, but stating the facts.
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Thucydides laid down this law very well: he distinguished virtue and vice in historical writing, when he saw Herodotus greatly admired to the point where his books were named after the Muses. For Thucydides says that he is writing a possession for evermore rather than a prize-essay for the occasion, that he does not welcome fiction but is leaving to posterity the true account of what happened. He brings in, too, the question of usefulness and what is, surely, the purpose of sound history: that if ever again men find themselves in a like situation they may be able, he says, from a consideration of the records of the past to handle rightly what now confronts them.
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That then is the sort of mind the historian should have, please, when he comes along. Now as to his language and power of expression, he need not at the beginning of his work sharpen his teeth to perfect proficiency in that vehement, sharp-fanged style that you know, packed with periods, and intricate with logical reasoning or other features of clever rhetoric. No, his tone should be more pacific, his thought coherent and well-knit, his language exact and statesmanlike, of a kind to set forth the subject with the utmost clarity and accuracy.
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For just as we set free expression and truthfulness as the target for the historian’s mind, so for his language this should be the first aim: to set forth the matter exactly and to expound it as lucidly as possible, using neither unknown or out-of-the-way words nor that vulgar language of the market-place, but such as ordinary folk may understand and the educated commend. Then, let figures adorn the work that give no offence and in particular appear unlaboured; otherwise he makes language seem like highly-seasoned sauces.
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Let his mind have a touch and share of poetry, since that too is lofty and sublime, especially when he has to do with battle arrays, with land and sea fights; for then he will have need of a wind of poetry to fill his sails and help carry his ship along, high on the crest of the waves. Let his diction nevertheless keep its feet on the ground, rising with the beauty and greatness of his subjects and as far as possible resembling them, but without becoming more unfamiliar or carried away than the occasion warrants. For then its greatest risk is that of going mad and being swept down into poetry’s wild enthusiasm, so that at such times above all he must obey the curb and show prudence, in the knowledge that a stallion’s pride in literature as in life is no trifling ailment. It is better, then, that when his mind is on horseback his exposition should go on foot, running alongside and holding the saddle-cloth, so as not to be left behind.
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Again, in putting words together one should cultivate a well-tempered moderation, without excessive separation or detachment—for that is harsh—and not, as most people, almost link them by means of rhythm; the latter deserves our censure, the former is unpleasant to the audience.
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As to the facts themselves, he should not assemble them at random, but only after much laborious and painstaking investigation. He should for preference be an eyewitness, but, if not, listen to those who tell the more impartial story, those whom one would suppose least likely to subtract from the facts or add to them out of favour or malice. When this happens let him show shrewdness and skill in putting together the more credible story.
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When he has collected all or most of the facts let him first make them into a series of notes, a body of material as yet with no beauty or continuity. Then, after arranging them into order, let him give it beauty and enhance it with the charms of expression, figure, and rhythm.
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In brief let him be then like Homer’s Zeus, looking now at the land of the horse-rearing Thracians, now at
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the Mysians’ country
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—in the same way let him look now at the Roman side in his own way and tell us how he saw it from on high, now at the Persian side, then at both sides, if the battle is joined. In the engagement itself let him not look at a single part or a single cavalryman or foot soldier—unless it be a Brasidas leaping forward or a Demosthenes beating off his attempt to land
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; but first, the generals (and he should have listened to any exhortations of theirs), the plan, method, and purpose of their battle array. When the battle is joined he should look at both sides and weigh the events as it were in a balance, joining in both pursuit and flight. All this should be in moderation, avoiding excess, bad taste, and impetuosity; he should preserve an easy detachment: let him call a halt here and move over there if necessary, then free himself and return if events there summon him; let him hurry everywhere, follow a chronological arrangement as far as he can, and fly from Armenia to Media, from there with a single scurry of wings to Iberia,
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then to Italy, to avoid missing any critical situation.
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Above all, let him bring a mind like a mirror, clear, gleaming-bright, accurately centred, displaying the shape of things just as he receives them, free from distortion, false colouring, and misrepresentation. His concern is different from that of the orators—what historians have to relate is fact and will speak for itself, for it has already happened: what is required is arrangement and exposition. So they must look not for what to say but how to say it. In brief, we must consider that the writer of history should be like Phidias or Praxiteles or Alcamenes or one of the other sculptors—they certainly never manufactured their own gold or silver or ivory or their other material; no, their material was before them, put into their hands by Eleans or Athenians or Argives, and they confined themselves to fashioning it, sawing the ivory, polishing, glueing, aligning it, setting it off with the gold, and their art lay in handling their material properly.
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The task of the historian is similar: to give a fine arrangement to events and illuminate them as vividly as possible. And when a man who has heard him thinks thereafter that he is actually seeing what is being described and then praises him—then it is that the work of our Phidias of history is perfect and has received its proper praise.
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After all his preparations are made he will sometimes begin without a preface, when the subject matter requires no preliminary exposition. But even then he will use a virtual preface to clarify what he is going to say.
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Whenever he does use a preface, he will make two points only, not three like the orators. He will omit the appeal for a favourable hearing and give his audience what will interest and instruct them. For they will give him their attention if he shows that what he is going to say will be important, essential, personal, or useful. He will make what is to come easy to understand and quite clear, if he sets forth the causes and outlines the main events.
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The best historians have written prefaces of this sort: Herodotus, writing history to preserve events from time’s decay, great and glorious as they were, telling of Greek victories and barbarian defeat; Thucydides too, with his expectation that the war would be great, more memorable, and more important than any that had gone before; and in fact the sufferings in that war were considerable.
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After the preface, long or short in proportion to its subject matter, let the transition to the narrative be gentle and easy. For all the body of the history is simply a long narrative. So let it be adorned with the virtues proper to narrative, progressing smoothly, evenly and consistently, free from humps and hollows. Then let its clarity be limpid, achieved, as I have said, both by diction and the interweaving of the matter. For he will make everything distinct and complete, and when he has finished the first topic he will introduce the second, fastened to it and linked with it like a chain, to avoid breaks and a multiplicity of disjointed narratives; no, always the first and second topics must not merely be neighbours but have common matter and overlap.
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Rapidity is everywhere useful, especially if there is no lack of material; and one must look to the subject matter to provide this rather than to the words and phrases—I mean, if you run quickly over small and less essential things, while giving adequate treatment to matters of importance; indeed, a great deal should even be omitted. When you feast your friends and all is ready you do not for that reason in the middle of all your pastries, fowl, oysters, wild boars, hare, and choice fish cutlets, serve up salt fish and peaseporridge because, that, too, is at hand—you will ignore the humbler fare.
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You need especial discretion in descriptions of mountains, fortifications, and rivers, to avoid the appearance of a tasteless display of your word-power and of indulging your own interests at the expense of the history; you will touch on them lightly for the sake of expediency or clarity, then change the subject, avoiding the limed twig set there and all temptation of this sort, as you see Homer doing in his greatness of mind: poet though he is he runs by Tantalus, and Ixion and Tityus and the rest. But if Parthenius or Euphorion or Callimachus were the narrator, think how many words he could have used to carry the water to Tantalus’ lips! How many to set Ixion whirling! Take Thucydides himself: he makes little use of this sort of writing, and see how quickly he gets away when he has been describing an engine or explaining a necessary and useful plan of investment, or the plan of Epipolae, or the harbour of Syracuse. When he appears long-winded in his account of the plague just think of the facts and you will realise his rapidity and how the pressure of events holds him as he tries to get away.
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If a person has to be introduced to make a speech, above all let his language suit his person and his subject, and next let these also be as clear as possible. It is then, however, that you can play the orator and show your eloquence.
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Eulogy and censure will be careful and considered, free from slander, supported by evidence, cursory, and not inopportune, for those involved are not in court, and you will receive the same censure as Theopompus, who impeached nearly everybody in a quarrelsome spirit and made a business of it, to the extent that he was a prosecutor rather than a recorder of events.
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Again, if a myth comes along you must tell it but not believe it entirely; no, make it known for your audience to make of it what they will—you run no risk and lean to neither side.
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In general please remember this—I shall repeat it time and again—: do not write with your eye just on the present, to win praise and honour from your contemporaries; aim at eternity and prefer to write for posterity: present your bill for your book to them, so that it may be said of you: “He was a free man, full of frankness, with no adulation or servility anywhere, but everywhere truthfulness.” That, if a man were sensible, he would value above all present hopes, ephemeral as they are.
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Do you know what the Cnidian architect did? He built the tower on Pharos, the mightiest and most beautiful work of all, that a beacon-light might shine from it for sailors far over the sea and that they might not be driven on to Paraetonia, said to be a very difficult coast with no escape if you hit the reefs. After he had built the work he wrote his name on the masonry inside, covered it with gypsum, and having hidden it inscribed the name of the reigning king. He knew, as actually happened, that in a very short time the letters would fall away with the plaster and there would be revealed: “Sostratus of Cnidos, the son of Dexiphanes, to the Divine Saviours, for the sake of them that sail at sea.” Thus, not even he had regard for the immediate moment or his own brief life-time: he looked to our day and eternity, as long as the tower shall stand and his skill abide.
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History then should be written in that spirit, with truthfulness and an eye to future expectations rather than with adulation and a view to the pleasure of present praise. There is your rule and standard for impartial history. If there will be some to use this standard it will be well and I have written to some purpose. If not, well I have rolled my crock on Cornel Hill!
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