Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/107

 I, on my side, might justly censure those erudite Greek writers, who, living in times of such stirring actions as by comparison reduce to insignificance the wars of antiquity, yet sit in judgement on these current events and revile those who make them their special study—authors whose principles they lack, even if they have the advantage of them in literary skill. They take as their themes the Assyrian and Median. empires, as if the narratives of the ancient historians were inadequate, although these modern writers are their inferiors no less in literary power than in judgement. The ancient historians set themselves severally to write the history of their own times, a task in which their connexion with the events added lucidity to their record; while mendacity brought an author into disgrace with readers who knew the facts.

The truth is that the work of committing to writing events which have not previously been recorded and of commending to posterity the history of one's own time is one which merits praise and acknowledgment. The industrious writer is not one who merely remodels the scheme and arrangement of another's work, but one who, besides having fresh materials, gives the body of his history a framework of his own.

For myself, at the cost of much money and severe labour, I, a foreigner, present to Greeks and Romans this memorial of great achievements. As for the native (Greek) writers, where personal profit or a lawsuit is concerned, their mouths are at once agape and their tongues loosed; but in the matter of history, where veracity and laborious collection of the facts are essential, they are mute, leaving to inferior and ill-informed writers the task of describing the exploits of rulers. Let me at least hold historical truth in honour, since by the Greeks it is disregarded—B.J. I. 1-5 (1-16).