How to write history (36-40)

You would not say that the intelligent man has no need of technique and instruction where he is ignorant—otherwise he would play the lyre, blow the pipe, and understand everything without learning. As it is, he could not do any of this without first learning, and with someone to guide him he will learn most easily and perform them well for himself.

So give us now a student of this kind—not without ability to understand and express himself, keen-sighted, one who could handle affairs if they were turned over to him, a man with the mind of a soldier combined with that of a good citizen, and a knowledge of generalship; yes, and one who has at some time been in a camp and has seen soldiers exercising or drilling and knows of arms and engines; again, let him know what “in column,” what “in line” mean, how the companies of infantry, how the cavalry, are manoeuvred, the origin and meaning of “lead out”

Above all and before everything else, let his mind be free, let him fear no one and expect nothing, or else he will be like a bad judge who sells his verdict to curry favour or gratify hatred. He must not be concerned that Philip has had his eye put out by Aster of Amphipolis, the archer at Olynthus—he must show him exactly as he was. Nor must he mind if Alexander is going to be angry when he gives a clear account of the cruel murder of Clitus at the banquet. Neither will Cleon with his great power in the assembly and his mastery of the platform frighten him from saying that he was murderous and lunatic: nor even the entire city of the Athenians if he records the disaster of Sicily, the capture of Demosthenes, and the death of Nicias, the thirst of the troops, the sort of water they drank, and how most of them were slain as they drank it. For he will think quite rightly that no man of sense will blame him if he gives an account of unlucky or stupid actions—he has not been responsible for them, he has merely told the tale. So that if they are ever defeated in a sea-fight it is not he who sank them and if they run away it is not he who drives them on, unless he neglected to say a prayer when he ought. Surely if by ignoring them or reversing them he could set them right, it would have been very easy for Thucydides with one insubstantial pen to overturn the counter-wall at Epipolae, and sink the trireme of Hermocrates, to transfix that cursed man Gylippus in the

The historian’s sole task is to tell the tale as it happened. This he cannot do as long as he is afraid of Artaxerxes when he is his physician or hopes to get a purple cufta, [*] a gold necklet, and a Nisaean horse as a reward for the eulogies in his work. [*] No Xenophon (a just historian), no Thucydides will do that. On the contrary, even if he personally hates certain people he will think the public interest far more binding, and regard truth as worth more than enmity, and if he has a friend he will nevertheless not spare him if he errs.

This, as I have said, is the one thing peculiar to history, and only to Truth must sacrifice be made. When a man is going to write history, everything else he must ignore. In short, the one standard, the one yardstick is to keep in view not your present audience but those who will meet your work hereafter. Whoever serves the present will rightly be counted a flatterer—a person on whom history long ago right from the beginning has turned its back, as much as has physical culture on the art of make-up. For example they record this remark of Alexander’s: “I should be glad, Onesicritus,” he said, “to come back to life for a little while after my death to discover