close approximation to his model starts with his own name--most graceful
of beginnings, redolent of Attic thyme! Look at it: 'Crepereius
Calpurnianus of Pompeiopolis wrote the history of the war between Parthia
and Rome, how they warred one upon the other, beginning with the
commencement of the war.' After that exordium, what need to describe the
rest--what harangues he delivers in Armenia, resuscitating our old friend
the Corcyrean envoy--what a plague he inflicts on Nisibis (which would
not espouse the Roman cause), lifting the whole thing bodily from
Thucydides--except the Pelasgicum and the Long Walls, where the victims
of the earlier plague found shelter; there the difference ends; like the
other, 'it began in Ethiopia, whence it descended to Egypt,' and to most
of the Parthian empire, where it very discreetly remained. I left him
engaged in burying the poor Athenians in Nisibis, and knew quite well how
he would continue after my exit. Indeed it is a pretty common belief at
present that you are writing like Thucydides, if you just use his actual
words, _mutatis mutandis_. [Footnote: Omitting, with Dindorf, the words
which appear in the Teubner text, after emendation, as: mikra rakia, opos
kai autos au phaiaes, on di autaen.] Ah, and I almost forgot to mention
one thing: this same writer gives many names of weapons and military
engines in Latin--_phossa_ for trench, _pons_ for bridge, and so forth.
Just think of the dignity of history, and the Thucydidean style--the Attic
embroidered with these Latin words, like a toga relieved and picked out
with the purple stripe--so harmonious!
Another puts down a bald list of events, as prosy and commonplace as a
private's or a carpenter's or a sutler's diary. However, there is more
sense in this poor man's performance; he flies his true colours from the
first; he has cleared the ground for some educated person who knows how
to deal with history. The only fault I have to find with him is that he
inscribes his volumes with a solemnity rather disproportioned to the rank
of their contents--'Parthian History, by Callimorphus, Surgeon of the 6th
Pikemen, volume so-and-so.' Ah, yes, and there is a lamentable preface,
which closes with the remark that, since Asclepius is the son of Apollo,
and Apollo director of the Muses and patron of all culture, it is very
proper for a doctor to write history. Also, he starts in Ionic, but very
soon, for no apparent reason, abandons it for every-day Greek, still
keeping the Ionic _es_ and _ks_ and _ous_, but otherwise writing like
ordinary people--rather too ordinary, indeed.
Perhaps I should balance him with a philosophic historian; this
gentleman's name I will conceal, and merely indicate his attitude, as
revealed in a recent publication at Corinth. Much had been expected of
him, but not enough; starting straight off with the first sentence of the
preface, he subjects his readers to a dialectic catechism, his thesis
being the highly philosophic one, that no one but a philosopher should
write history. Very shortly there follows a second logical process,
itself followed by a third; in fact the whole preface is one mass of
dialectic figures. There is flattery, indeed, _ad nauseam_, eulogy
vulgar to the point of farce; but never without the logical trimmings;
always that dialectical catechism. I confess it strikes me as a vulgarity
also, hardly worthy of a philosopher with so long and white a beard, when
he gives it in his preface as our ruler's special good fortune that
philosophers should consent to record his actions; he had better have
left us to reach that conclusion for ourselves--if at all.
Again, it would be a sinful neglect to omit the man who begins like
this:--'I devise to tell of Romans and Persians'; then a little later,
'For 'twas Heaven's decree that the Persians should suffer evils'; and
again, 'One Osroes there was, whom Hellenes name Oxyroes'--and much more
in that style. He corresponds, you see, to one of my previous examples;
only he is a second Herodotus, and the other a second Thucydides.
There is another distinguished artist in words--again rather more
Thucydidean than Thucydides--, who gives, according to his own idea, the
clearest, most convincing descriptions of every town, mountain, plain, or
river. I wish my bitterest foe no worse fate than the reading of them.
Frigid? Caspian snows, Celtic ice, are warm in comparison. A whole book
hardly suffices him for the Emperor's shield--the Gorgon on its boss,
with eyes of blue and white and black, rainbow girdle, and snakes twined
and knotted. Why, Vologesus's breeches or his bridle, God bless me, they
take up several thousand lines apiece; the same for the look of Osroes's
hair as he swims the Tigris--or what the cave was like that sheltered
him, ivy and myrtle and bay clustered all together to shut out every ray
of light. You observe how indispensable it all is to the history; without
the scene, how could we have comprehended the action?
It is helplessness about the real essentials, or ignorance of what should
be given, that makes them take refuge in word-painting--landscapes,
caves, and the like; and when they do come upon a series of important
matters, they are just like a slave whose master has left him his money
and made him a rich man; he does not know how to put on his clothes or
take his food properly; partridges or sweetbreads or hare are served; but
he rushes in, and fills himself up with pea soup or salt fish, till he is
fit to burst. Well, the man I spoke of gives the most unconvincing wounds
and singular deaths: some one has his big toe injured, and dies on the
spot; the general Priscus calls out, and seven-and-twenty of the enemy
fall dead at the sound. As to the numbers killed, he actually falsifies
dispatches; at Europus he slaughters 70,236 of the enemy, while the
Romans lose two, and have seven wounded! How any man of sense can tolerate
such stuff, I do not know.
Here is another point quite worth mention. This writer has such a passion
for unadulterated Attic, and for refining speech to the last degree of
purity, that he metamorphoses the Latin names and translates them into
Greek; Saturninus figures as Cronius, Fronto must be Phrontis, Titianus
Titanius, with queerer transmogrifications yet. Further, on the subject
of Severian's death, he accuses all other writers of a blunder in putting
him to the sword; he is really to have starved himself to death, as the
most painless method; the fact, however, is that it was all over in three
days, whereas seven days is the regular time for starvation; are we
perhaps to conceive an Osroes waiting about for Severian to complete the
process, and putting off his assault till after the seventh day?
Then, Philo, how shall we class the historians who indulge in poetical
phraseology? 'The catapult rocked responsive,' they say; 'Loud thundered
the breach'; or, somewhere else in this delectable history, 'Thus Edessa
was girdled with clash of arms, and all was din and turmoil,' or, 'The
general pondered in his heart how to attack the wall.' Only he fills up
the interstices with such wretched common lower-class phrases as 'The
military prefect wrote His Majesty,' 'The troops were procuring the
needful,' 'They got a wash [Footnote: It was suggested in the Introduction
that Lucian's criticism is for practical purposes out of date; but
Prescott writes: 'He was surrounded by a party of friends, who had
_dropped in_, it seems, after mass, to inquire after the state of his
health, some of whom had remained to partake of his repast.'] and put in
an appearance,' and so on. It is like an actor with one foot raised on a
high buskin, and the other in a slipper.
You will find others writing brilliant high-sounding prefaces of
outrageous length, raising great expectations of the wonders to follow--
and then comes a poor little appendix of a--history; it is like nothing
in the world but a child--say the Eros you must have seen in a picture
playing in an enormous mask of Heracles or a Titan; _parturiunt montes_,
cries the audience, very naturally. That is not the way to do things; the
whole should be homogeneous and uniform, and the body in proportion to the
head--not a helmet of gold, a ridiculous breastplate patched up out of
rags or rotten leather, shield of wicker, and pig-skin greaves. You will
find plenty of historians prepared to set the Rhodian Colossus's head on
the body of a dwarf; others on the contrary show us headless bodies, and
plunge into the facts without exordium. These plead the example of
Xenophon, who starts with 'Darius and Parysatis had two children'; if they
only knew it, there is such a thing as a _virtual_ exordium, not realized
as such by everybody; but of that hereafter.
However, any mistake in mere expression or arrangement is excusable; but
when you come to fancy geography, differing from the other not by miles
or leagues, but by whole days' journeys, where is the classical model for
that? One writer has taken so little trouble with his facts--never met a
Syrian, I suppose, nor listened to the stray information you may pick up
at the barber's--, that he thus locates Europus:--'Europus lies in
Mesopotamia, two days' journey from the Euphrates, and is a colony from
Edessa.' Not content with that, this enterprising person has in the same
book taken up my native Samosata and shifted it, citadel, walls, and all,
into Mesopotamia, giving it the two rivers for boundaries, and making
them shave past it, all but touching the walls on either side. I suspect
you would laugh at me, Philo, if I were to set about convincing you that
I am neither Parthian nor Mesopotamian, as this whimsical colony-planter
makes me.
By the way, he has also a very attractive tale of Severian, learnt, he
assures us on oath, from one of the actual fugitives. According to this,
he would not die by the sword, the rope, or poison, but contrived a death
which should be tragic and impressive. He was the owner of some large
goblets of the most precious glass; having made up his mind to die, he
broke the largest of these, and used a splinter of it for the purpose,
cutting his throat with the glass. A dagger or a lancet, good enough
instruments for a manly and heroic death, he could not come at, forsooth!
Then, as Thucydides composed a funeral oration over the first victims of
that old war, our author feels it incumbent on him to do the same for
Severian; they all challenge Thucydides, you see, little as he can be
held responsible for the Armenian troubles. So he buries Severian, and
then solemnly ushers up to the grave, as Pericles's rival, one Afranius
Silo, a centurion; the flood of rhetoric which follows is so copious and
remarkable that it drew tears from me--ye Graces!--tears of laughter;
most of all where the eloquent Afranius, drawing to a close, makes
mention, with weeping and distressful moans, of all those costly dinners
and toasts. But he is a very Ajax in his conclusion. He draws his sword,
gallantly as an Afranius should, and in sight of all cuts his throat over
the grave--and God knows it was high time for an execution, if oratory
can be felony. The historian states that all the spectators admired and
lauded Afranius; as for me, I was inclined to condemn him on general
grounds--he had all but given a catalogue of sauces and dishes, and shed
tears over the memory of departed cakes--, but his capital offence was
that he had not cut the historian-tragedian's throat before he left this
life himself.
I assure you, my friend, I could largely increase my list of such
offenders; but one or two more will suffice, before proceeding to the
second part of my undertaking, the suggestions for improvement. There are
some, then, who leave alone, or deal very cursorily with, all that is
great and memorable; amateurs and not artists, they have no selective
faculty, and loiter over copious laboured descriptions of the veriest
trifles; it is as if a visitor to Olympia, instead of examining,
commending or describing to his stay-at-home friends the general
greatness and beauty of the Zeus, were to be struck with the exact
symmetry and polish of its footstool, or the proportions of its shoe, and
give all his attention to these minor points.
For instance, I have known a man get through the battle of Europus in
less than seven whole lines, and then spend twenty mortal hours on a dull
and perfectly irrelevant tale about a Moorish trooper. The trooper's name
was Mausacas; he wandered up the hills in search of water, and came upon
some Syrian yokels getting their lunch; at first they were afraid of him,
but when they found he was on the right side, they invited him to share
the meal; for one of them had travelled in the Moorish country, having a
brother serving in the army. Then come long stories and descriptions of
how he hunted there, and saw a great herd of elephants at pasture, and
was nearly eaten up by a lion, and what huge fish he had bought at
Caesarea. So this quaint historian leaves the terrible carnage to go on
at Europus, and lets the pursuit, the forced armistice, the settling of
outposts, shift for themselves, while he lingers far into the evening
watching Malchion the Syrian cheapen big mackarel at Caesarea; if night
had not come all too soon, I dare say he would have dined with him when
the fish was cooked. If all this had not been accurately set down in the
history, what sad ignorance we should have been left in! The loss to the
Romans would have been irreparable, if Mausacas the Moor had got nothing
to quench his thirst, and come back fasting to camp. Yet I am wilfully
omitting innumerable details of yet greater importance--the arrival of a
flute-girl from the next village, the exchange of gifts (Mausacas's was a
spear, Malchion's a brooch), and other incidents most essential to the
battle of Europus. It is no exaggeration to say that such writers never
give the rose a glance, but devote all their curiosity to the thorns on
its stem.
Another entertaining person, who has never set foot outside Corinth, nor
travelled as far as its harbour--not to mention seeing Syria or Armenia
--, starts with words which impressed themselves on my memory:--'Seeing
is believing: I therefore write what I have seen, not what I have been
told.' His personal observation has been so close that he describes the
Parthian 'Dragons' (they use this ensign as a numerical formula--a
thousand men to the Dragon, I believe): they are huge live dragons, he
says, breeding in Persian territory beyond Iberia; these are first
fastened to great poles and hoisted up aloft, striking terror at a
distance while the advance is going on; then, when the battle begins,
they are released and set on the enemy; numbers of our men, it seems,
were actually swallowed by them, and others strangled or crushed in their
coils; of all this he was an eye-witness, taking his observations,
however, from a safe perch up a tree. Thank goodness he did not come to
close quarters with the brutes! we should have lost a very remarkable
historian, and one who did doughty deeds in this war with his own right
hand; for he had many adventures, and was wounded at Sura (in the course
of a stroll from the Craneum to Lerna, apparently). All this he used to
read to a Corinthian audience, which was perfectly aware that he had
never so much as seen a battle-picture. Why, he did not know one weapon
or engine from another; the names of manoeuvres and formations had no
meaning for him; flank or front, line or column, it was all one.
Then there is a splendid fellow, who has boiled down into the compass of
five hundred lines (or less, to be accurate) the whole business from
beginning to end--campaigns in Armenia, in Syria, in Mesopotamia, on the
Tigris, and in Media; and having done it, he calls it a history. His
title very narrowly misses being longer than his book: 'An account of the
late campaigns of the Romans in Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Media, by
Antiochianus, victor at the festival of Apollo'; he had probably won some
junior flat race.
I have known one writer compile a history of the future, including the
capture of Vologesus, the execution of Osroes (he is to be thrown to the
lions), and, crowning all, our long-deferred triumph. In this prophetic
vein, he sweeps hastily on to the end of his work; yet he finds time for
the foundation in Mesopotamia of a city, greatest of the great, and
fairest of the fair; he is still debating, however, whether the most
appropriate name will be Victoria, Concord, or Peacetown; that is yet
unsettled; we must leave the fair city unnamed for the present; but it is
already thickly populated--with empty dreams and literary drivellings. He
has also pledged himself to an account of coming events in India, and a
circumnavigation of the Atlantic; nay, the pledge is half redeemed; the
preface to the _India_ is complete; the third legion, the Celtic
contingent, and a small Moorish division, have crossed the Indus in full
force under Cassius; our most original historian will soon be posting us
up in their doings--their method of 'receiving elephants,' for instance--
in letters dated Muziris or Oxydracae.
These people's uneducated antics are infinite; they have no eyes for the
noteworthy, nor, if they had eyes, any adequate faculty of expression;
invention and fiction provide their matter, and belief in the first word
that comes their style; they pride themselves on the number of books they
run to, and yet more on their titles; for these again are quite absurd:
_--So-and-so's so many books of Parthian victories; The Parthis_, book I;
_The Parthis_, book II--quite a rival to the _Atthis_, eh? Another does it
(I have read the book) still more neatly--'_The Parthonicy of Demetrius of
Sagalassus_.' I do not wish to ridicule or make a jest of these pretty
histories; I write for a practical purpose: any one who avoids these and
similar errors is already well on the road to historical success; nay, he
is almost there, if the logical axiom is correct, that, with
incompatibles, denial of the one amounts to affirmation of the other.
_Well_, I may be told, _you have now a clear field; the thorns and
brambles have all been extirpated, the debris of others' buildings has
been carted of, the rough places have been made smooth; come, do a little
construction yourself, and show that you are not only good at destroying,
but capable of yourself planning a model, in which criticism itself shall
find nothing to criticize._
Well then, my perfect historian must start with two indispensable
qualifications; the one is political insight, the other the faculty of
expression; the first is a gift of nature, which can never be learnt; the
second should have been acquired by long practice, unremitting toil, and
loving study of the classics. There is nothing technical here, and no
room for any advice of mine; this essay does not profess to bestow
insight and acumen on those who are not endowed with them by nature;
valuable, or invaluable rather, would it have been, if it could recast
and modify like that, transmute lead into gold, tin into silver, magnify
a Conon or Leotrophides into Titormus or Milo.
But what is the function of professional advice? not the creation of
qualities which should be already there, but the indication of their
proper use. No trainer, of course,--let him be Iccus, Herodicus, Theon,
or who he may--will suggest that he can take a Perdiccas [Footnote:
Omitting, with Dindorf, a note on Perdiccas which runs thus: 'if
Perdiccas it was, and not rather Seleucus's son Antiochus, who was wasted
to a shadow by his passion for his step-mother.'] and make an Olympic
victor of him, fit to face Theagenes of Thasos or Polydamas of Scotussa;
what he _will_ tell you is that, given a constitution that will
stand training, his system will considerably improve it. So with us--we
are not to have every failure cast in our teeth, if we claim to have
invented a system for so great and difficult a subject. We do not offer
to take the first comer and make a historian of him--only to point out to
any one who has natural insight and acquired literary skill certain
straight roads (they may or may not be so in reality) which will bring
him with less waste of time and effort to his goal.
I do not suppose you will object that the man with insight has no need of
system and instruction upon the things he is ignorant of; in that case he
might have played the harp or flute untaught, and in fact have been
omniscient. But, as things are at present, he cannot perform in these
ways untaught, though with some assistance he will learn very easily, and
soon be able to get along by himself.
You now know what sort of a pupil I (like the trainer) insist upon. He
must not be weak either at understanding or at making himself understood,
but a man of penetration, a capable administrator--potentially, that is,
--with a soldierly spirit (which does not however exclude the civil
spirit), and some military experience; at the least he must have been in
camp, seen troops drilled or manoeuvred, know a little about weapons and
military engines, the differences between line and column, cavalry and
infantry tactics (with the reasons for them), frontal and flank attacks;
in a word, none of your armchair strategists relying wholly on hearsay.
But first and foremost, let him be a man of independent spirit, with
nothing to fear or hope from anybody; else he will be a corrupt judge
open to undue influences. If Philip's eye is knocked out at Olynthus by
Aster the Amphipolite archer, it is not his business to exclaim, but just
to show him as he is; he is not to think whether Alexander will be
annoyed by a circumstantial account of the cruel murder of Clitus at
table. If a Cleon has the ear of the assembly, and a monopoly of the
tribune, he will not shrink on that account from describing him as a
pestilent madman; all Athens will not stop him from dwelling on the
Sicilian disaster, the capture of Demosthenes, the death of Nicias, the
thirst, the foul water, and the shooting down of the drinkers. He will
consider very rightly that no man of sense will blame him for recounting
the effects of misfortune or folly in their entirety; he is not the
author, but only the reporter of them. If a fleet is destroyed, it is not
he who sinks it; if there is a rout, he is not in pursuit--unless perhaps
he ought to have prayed for better things, and omitted to do so. Of
course, if silence or contradiction would have put matters right,
Thucydides might with a stroke of the pen have knocked down the
counterwall on Epipolae, sent Hermocrates's trireme to the bottom, let
daylight through the accursed Gylippus before he had done blocking the
roads with wall and trench, and, finally, have cast the Syracusans into
their own quarries and sent the Athenians cruising round Sicily and Italy
with Alcibiades's first high hopes still on board. Alas, not Fate itself
may undo the work of Fate.
The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened. This he
cannot do, if he is Artaxerxes's physician [Footnote: See Ctesias in
Notes] trembling before him, or hoping to get a purple cloak, a golden
chain, a horse of the Nisaean breed, in payment for his laudations. A
fair historian, a Xenophon, a Thucydides, will not accept that position.
He may nurse some private dislikes, but he will attach far more
importance to the public good, and set the truth high above his hate; he
may have his favourites, but he will not spare their errors. For history,
I say again, has this and this only for its own; if a man will start upon
it, he must sacrifice to no God but Truth; he must neglect all else; his
sole rule and unerring guide is this--to think not of those who are
listening to him now, but of the yet unborn who shall seek his converse.
Any one who is intent only upon the immediate effect may reasonably be
classed among the flatterers; and History has long ago realized that
flattery is as little congenial to her as the arts of personal adornment
to an athlete's training. An anecdote of Alexander is to the point. 'Ah,
Onesicritus,' said he, 'how I should like to come to life again for a
little while, and see how your stuff strikes people by that time; at
present they have good enough reason to praise and welcome it; that is
their way of angling for a share of my favour.' On the same principle
some people actually accept Homer's history of Achilles, full of
exaggerations as it is; the one great guarantee which they recognize of
his truth is the fact that his subject was not living; that leaves him no
motive for lying.
There stands my model, then: fearless, incorruptible, independent, a
believer in frankness and veracity; one that will call a spade a spade,
make no concession to likes and dislikes, nor spare any man for pity or
respect or propriety; an impartial judge, kind to all, but too kind to
none; a literary cosmopolite with neither suzerain nor king, never
heeding what this or that man may think, but setting down the thing that
befell.