How to write history (13-15)

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.

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

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,

“and one far greater pursued him.” [*]

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.”

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.” [*] 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 [*] in person for that) or what sort of plague he brought down on the people of Nisibis who declined to take

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. [*] )? 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!