XXI. Seneca reduces the want of truth in history, to three principles or
causes, which are credulity, negligence, and a propensity to lying in
historians: _Quidam creduli, quidam negligentes sunt: quibusdam mendacium
obrepit, quibusdam placet: illi non evitant, hi appetunt._ (lib. 7.
Natur. Quæst. cap. 16.) He omitted to point out two other principles,
which are sometimes the impossibility of coming at the truth, and at
others the want of critical judgment to discern it.
XXII. Lying historians occasion others who are not lyars to relate many
fables. It seems as if the greatest diligence of an historian, who
relates the event of remote ages, can enable him to do no more than
examine carefully the authors who lived at that time, or immediately
after it, and to give the sum of their relations faithfully. But how
often has flattery or resentment been known to warp the pens of those
very authors? The first of these faults was remarked by Tacitus, in
those writers, who related the affairs of Tiberius, Cayus, Claudius,
and Nero, in the life-time of those Cæsars; and the second, in those
who gave an account of them a short time after their deaths: _Tiberii,
Caiique, Claudii, ac Neronis, res florentibus ipsis, ob metum falsæ,
postquam occiderant, recentibus odiis compositæ sunt._ By so much the
nearer historians are to the circumstances they relate, in so much a
nearer point of view do they see the truth, and are so much the better
enabled to distinguish it; but in proportion to these opportunities of
their knowing it, are the suspicions that various affections induce them
to conceal it. Fear, hope, love, and hatred, are four strong winds which
violently agitate the pen, and will not permit the nib of it to rest or
dwell on the point of truth. We shall select two examples, out of a great
number of others, that might be produced to prove this assertion, which
are Procopius a Greek historian, and Velleius Paterculus a Roman one.
The last of these, after having given an excellent account of the things
appertaining to Rome, in the anterior ages, when he came to relate those
of his own times, fouled the page of his history with gross adulations of
Tiberius, and his favourite Sejanus; and heaped the highest eulogiums,
on the heads, of two of the most perfidious and flagitious men that were
known in that corrupt age. Procopius, in his _Secret History_, describes
the Emperor Justinian, and the Empress Theodosia, as the most abominable
prince and princess upon earth. Paterculus lived under Tiberius, and
Procopius under Justinian; and, as they were both men of rank, and filled
considerable employments, could not be ignorant of the reality of things.
But envy in one, and dependence in the other, caused them both, equally
to deviate from the truth.
XXIII. This was the reason why Mons. du Haillan, a noble French
historian, terminated his general history of France with the reign of
Charles the seventh; nor have we a trace of his pen, respecting the
monarchs who succeeded immediately after that time. But let us hear
what Mons. du Haillan says in the prologue to his history, because it
is admirably suited to the subject we are upon. He says, _although
we must admit Francis the first was a great and an excellent king,
nevertheless, because all the histories which speak of him were written
in his own time, or in that of his son Henry, the authors of them were
more lavish of their eulogiums of him than his merit deserved, or than
were consistent with the obligations they owed to truth as historians;
and that this is a vice which all those are apt to fall into who write
histories of their own times, or of the princes of whom they are the
immediate subjects_. Thus we see, those _who write the history of their
own times, are agitated by many passions which seduce them to lie
openly, either to favour or blazon their own prince and nation, or to
misrepresent and blacken their enemies_.
XXIV. The saying of Pescenius Niger, to a man who wanted to repeat to him
a panegyric which he had written in his praise, is very applicable to
this matter: “Compose,” says he, “panegyrics upon Marius, Hannibal, and
other great captains who are dead; for blazoning living emperors, from
whom you entertain hopes and expectations, or of whom you stand in fear,
favours more of banter than encomium.”