How to write history (31-35)

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

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” . . . [*] 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.

Well now, someone will say, you have carefully cleared your ground and cut out all the thorns and

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. [*]

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