How to write history (55-57)

After the preface, long or short in proportion to its subject matter, let the transition to the narrative be gentle and easy. For all the body of the history is simply a long narrative. So let it be adorned with the virtues proper to narrative, progressing smoothly, evenly and consistently, free from humps and hollows. Then let its clarity be limpid, achieved, as I have said, both by diction and the interweaving of the matter. For he will make everything distinct and complete, and when he has finished the first topic he will introduce the second, fastened to it and linked with it like a chain, to avoid breaks and a multiplicity of disjointed narratives; no, always the first and second topics must not merely be neighbours but have common matter and overlap.

Rapidity is everywhere useful, especially if there is no lack of material; and one must look to the subject matter to provide this rather than to the words and phrases—I mean, if you run quickly over small and

You need especial discretion in descriptions of mountains, fortifications, and rivers, to avoid the appearance of a tasteless display of your word-power and of indulging your own interests at the expense of the history; you will touch on them lightly for the sake of expediency or clarity, then change the subject, avoiding the limed twig set there and all temptation of this sort, as you see Homer doing in his greatness of mind: poet though he is he runs by Tantalus, and Ixion and Tityus and the rest. But if Parthenius or Euphorion or Callimachus were the narrator, think how many words he could have used to carry the water to Tantalus’ lips! How many to set Ixion whirling! Take Thucydides himself: he makes little use of this sort of writing, and see how quickly he gets away when he has been describing an engine or explaining a necessary and useful plan of investment, or the plan of Epipolae, or the harbour of Syracuse. When he appears long-winded in his account of the plague just think of the facts and you will realise his rapidity and how the pressure of events holds him as he tries to get away.