part I

do not think that real buildings differ so much from those in stage-scenery, nor history from rhetorical compositions, as a narrative drawn from actual and personal experience differs from one derived from hearsay and the report of others. But Timaeus had no such experience: and he therefore naturally supposed that the part of an historian’s labour which is the least important and lightest, that namely of collecting records and making inquiries from those who had knowledge of the several events, was in reality the most important and most difficult. And, indeed, in this particular department of research, men who have had no personal experience must necessarily fall into grave errors. For how is a man, who has no knowledge of such things, to put the right questions as to manœuvering of troops, sieges of cities, and fights at sea? And how can he understand the details of what is told him? Indeed, the questioner is as important as the narrator for getting a clear story. For in the case of men who have had experience of real action, memory is a sufficient guide from point to point of a narrative: but a man who has had no such experience can neither put the right questions, nor understand what is happening before his eyes. Though he is on the spot, in fact, he is as good as absent....

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