How to write history (26-30)

Then since Thucydides made a funeral speech over the first to die in that famous war [*] 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

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.

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

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

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.