Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/34

2 It is evident that history has set itself a tremendous task in trying to understand and picture the entire past life of all men at all times in all places. Probably the and difficulty attempt will never be completely successful. The great difficulty is that history is dependent for its knowledge of the men of the past upon those men themselves. Since they are dead and gone, we have to depend upon the writings, buildings, personal effects, works of art, and other monuments, memorials, and memories which they have left behind them. For many periods and regions such evidence is slight indeed. Another trouble is that former men were in many cases not interested in the same things that we are, and so do not tell us what we should like to know. They loved to dwell upon wars; we wish to hear of commerce and industry in times of peace. They chronicled the deeds of kings; we want to know the life of the people. They took it for granted that their audience would understand the state of civilization, since they lived in the midst of it. Instead of describing the personal appearance of the Roman general and statesman, Titus Flamininus, in his biography of that worthy, Plutarch referred his readers to a bronze statue of him at Rome opposite the Circus Maximus. But to-day the statue has disappeared, and the same is true of most of the manners and customs of the distant past, which were once too familiar for historians to think it worth while to mention them to their readers.

The story of the past as it has reached us is, indeed, in many respects like the ruin of some ancient amphitheater or medieval monastery. Some sections are better preserved than others, some parts are gone entirely, others have been faultily restored by later writers who failed to catch the spirit of the original. In some places nothing is left but a shapeless core of vague statements or a few bare dates and facts. Elsewhere we get a vivid glimpse of the life of the past in its original coloring. Sometimes the story has improved with age, as ruins are sometimes beautified by becoming weather-beaten or