CHAPTER XI
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EXCEPTIONS TO WHICH THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORIANS, ON PARTICULAR POINTS, MAY BE LIABLE.
From the very nature of the case the authenticity of an historical work can be affirmed only in a restricted sense, and must be understood to be open to exceptions in particular instances. Such exceptions may be taken without impeaching the character of the writer for veracity, or even for general accuracy. It is easy to suppose that he may have been imposed upon in certain cases, by his informants; or he may have reported things that were currently believed in his time, without thinking himself personally pledged for their truth: he may not have thought himself called upon, as an historian, to discuss questions which might more properly be taken up by philosophers; or he may merely have been negligent--here and there, in the course of a voluminous work. Yet allowances of this sort must, as it is evident, be confined to cases of an accidental kind, and should only then be brought forward in the way of apology for a writer’s mistakes, when he is giving an account of facts that were not immediately known to himself. For in a narrative of events, of which the writer professes himself to have had a personal knowledge, we must either admit his veracity, and with it the truth of the facts; or we must deny both.
The first point to be considered, when the affirmation of an historian in a particular instance is doubted, is--_The nature of the fact in question_.
1. If, for example, it be a question of numbers, measures, or dates, it is always to be remembered--as already remarked--that a peculiar uncertainty attaches to these matters, in ancient authors, owing to the method of notation _by letters_, which were easily mistaken, one for another. The numbers of which armies were composed--the numbers of the slain in battle--the population of cities--the revenues of states--the distances of places--the weight or measure of bodies, and computations of time, must, therefore, always be held open to question, as to what was actually intended and written by the author: this doubt may be entertained without in the least derogating from the credit of the work in which they occur. Besides the probable corruption of copies in such instances, it is to be remembered as to many of the particulars above named, that they are far more liable to uncertainty, or mistake, than other facts, so that scarcely any degree of diligence and care on the part of an historian, will entirely secure him from errors on such points.
2. Geographical details, descriptions of the objects of natural history, or accounts of natural phenomena, must also, generally, be considered as open to a degree of uncertainty, on account of the imperfect information upon such subjects, which was possessed by the ancients. And yet the names and relative distances of places in all the countries bordering upon the Mediterranean sea, as reported by ancient geographers and historians, have been to so great an extent authenticated by the researches of modern scholars, that any apparent inconsistencies should not hastily be assumed as proofs of ignorance. But as to whatever relates to countries remote from Greece and Italy, or lying beyond the bounds of the Persian, Macedonian, Carthaginian, and Roman empires, it must of course be received with hesitation. Many of these descriptions of remote countries, when they come to be compared with the accounts of modern travellers, afford, at once, amusing instances of exaggeration, and striking attestations of the substantial authenticity of the works in which they occur. For the coincidence of these accounts, in many respects, with the facts, as they are now fully known, puts it beyond doubt that the historian had actually conversed with natives of those countries, or with travellers; while at the same time the distortion of the picture is precisely such as might be expected from the channels through which the information was derived.
3. The descriptions so frequently met with in ancient writers, of monstrous men or animals--griffins--dragons--hydras--pygmies--giants; or of trees bearing golden fruit, of fountains flowing with perfumed liquids, or even with the precious metals, may, in most cases, be now traced to their origin in actual facts, which, passing to the writer through the medium of ignorant, fanciful, or interested reporters, assumed the characteristic extravagance of fables. On occasions of this kind it is much more becoming to an intelligent student of history to make search, among the stores of modern science, for the probable source of such accounts, than to pass them by with the sneer of indolent scepticism. Some writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took so much offence at certain passages of this sort in the history of Herodotus, as to treat the entire work of that industrious and generally accurate writer with contempt, as if it were little better than a repository of fables. But these rash censures now fall back upon themselves; for modern travellers, in visiting the countries described by the father of history, find frequent occasion for noticing the correctness of his statements, or their substantial truth, even in those descriptions or relations which may seem the most open to suspicion.
4. In narrating or describing natural phenomena, such as meteors, tempests, eruptions of volcanoes, earthquakes, eclipses, all that is needed is to remove from the narrative of the historian those explanations, or those decorative phrases, by which he endeavoured to accommodate such occurrences to the political events of the moment, at the suggestion of popular superstitions.
And here we may take occasion to point out a remarkable difference, which forms a characteristic distinction in comparing the Jewish writers with those of other nations, as to the nature of those marvellous or supernatural facts which they describe. The marvellous events reported by the Greek and Roman authors may, with few exceptions, be classed under two heads; namely--allegorical and poetical combinations, which were so obviously fabulous as to ask for no credence, and to demand no scrutiny; or they were mere exaggerations, distortions, or misapplications of natural objects or phenomena. But the Jewish historians and poets do not describe, _as actually existing_, any such allegorical prodigies; and their descriptions of real animals, are either simply exact, or they are evidently _poetical_ (like those in the book of Job), but they are not _fabulous_. They do not throw a supernatural colouring over ordinary phenomena, or convert plain facts into prodigies. The supernatural events they record--as matters of history, are such deviations from the standing order of natural causes, as leave us no alternative between a peremptory denial of the veracity of the writers, or a submission to their affirmation of divine agency.
The freedom of the Jewish historians, poets, and prophets, from those admixtures of the marvellous and the natural, with which other ancient writers abound, is one of the most remarkable of their characteristics. Their descriptions of human nature are neither heroical, nor fantastic; their narratives of human affairs are of the simplest complexion, and they are strictly consistent with the known modes of the time and country. Nor is our assent taxed, on any occasion, except when an event is recorded which, unless it had actually taken place, could not have been affirmed by any but reckless impostors.
Besides those prodigies which are met with in profane historians, and that only require to be freed from exaggerations appended to natural events by ignorance, poetry, or superstition, there are other accounts which are not to be satisfactorily explained so readily, and which call for the exercise of some discrimination. They are of a kind that must be accounted either altogether false, or else must imply, in some sense, a supernatural agency. Of the former kind may well be reckoned all, or nearly all, those alleged supernatural occurrences which no doubt were contrived to give credit to an established superstition, or to subserve the designs of statesmen or commanders, and which, in most cases, rested exclusively upon the testimony of priests. On the other hand, there are recorded, in the pages of profane historians, some few facts, apparently beyond the range of natural causes, which cannot be rejected as untrue, unless we do violence to the soundest principles of evidence, and which will not be treated with uninquisitive contempt, except by a purblind scepticism, that is more nearly allied to credulity than to true philosophy. These peculiar cases demand a far more full and particular consideration than it is compatible with the design of this volume to bestow upon them.
5. The political habits and tastes of the Greeks and Romans, induced their historians to supply the personages of their story with formal speeches, on all remarkable occasions; for oratory was the spring and life of every political movement; and as the machine of government could not in fact be made to go without the impelling force of harangues, history must not seem to omit them. Yet there is little reason to believe that authentic reports of public speeches were often, if ever, in the possession of historians. Indeed, these brilliant portions of the history are often so much in the manner of the author, as to leave the reader in no doubt to whom to attribute them. Nevertheless it may be imagined that, on some memorable occasions, the very words of a short speech, or the general purport of an oration, was remembered and recorded, and so was worked into the speech, as framed by the historian.
A compliance with the taste of the times seems also to have led some writers to use means for diverting the attention of their readers, and for relieving the burden of the narrative, by introducing digressions, often of a trivial kind, which, though not announced as mere embellishments, and which perhaps were not purely fictitious, are evidently not entitled to an equal degree of confidence with the main circumstances of the story.
6. The secret motives of public men, or the hidden causes of great events, are not the proper subjects of history, which is concerned only with such facts as may be truly and fairly known. The disquisitions of an historian on such topics are therefore to be excepted against; for when he so forsakes his function, he must expect to be forsaken by his reader; his errors, on such points, do not impeach his veracity; although they lower our opinion of his judgment.
7. Very few facts of importance, such as form the proper subjects of history, rest entirely upon the testimony of a single historian, or are incapable of being directly, or remotely confirmed, by some kind of coincident evidence. Whenever therefore a question arises relative to the truth of a particular statement, recourse must be had, either to the testimony of contemporary writers, or to the evidence of existing monuments. But even if all such means of corroboration should fail, and if we meet with a perplexing silence where we might expect to find confirmation, we are by no means justified in rejecting the unsupported testimony, merely on the ground of this want of correlative support. Many instances may be adduced of the most extraordinary silence of historians relative to facts with which they must have been acquainted, and which seemed to lie directly in the course of their narrative. Important facts are mentioned by no ancient writer, though they are unquestionably established by the evidence of existing inscriptions, coins, statues, or buildings. There are also facts mentioned only by some one historian, which happen to be attested by an incidental coincidence with some relic of antiquity lately brought to light; if this relic had remained in its long obscurity, such facts might (we see with how little reason) have been disputed.
Nothing can be more fallacious than an inference drawn from the silence of historians relative to particular facts. For a full, comprehensive, and, if the phrase may be used, a _business-like_ method of writing history, in which nothing important--nothing which a well-informed reader will look for, must be omitted, is the produce of modern improvements in thinking and writing. The general diffusion of knowledge, and the activity of criticism, occasion a much higher demand in matters of information to be made upon writers than was thought of in ancient times. A full and exact communication of facts has come to be valued more highly than any mere beauties of style; at least, no beauties of style are allowed to atone for palpable deficiencies in matters of fact. The moderns must be taught--and pleased; but the ancients would be pleased, and taught. Ancient writers, and historians not less than others, seem to have formed their notions of prose composition very much upon the model of poetry, which, in most languages, was the earliest kind of literature. As their epics were histories, so, in some sense, their histories were epics. Such
## particulars, therefore, were taken up in the course of the narrative,
as seemed best to accord with the abstract idea of the work--not always those which a rigid adherence to a comprehensive plan would have made it necessary to bring forward.
8. The influence of personal or party prejudices is indefinite; and as it may distort the representations of an historian almost unconsciously to himself, and without impugning his general integrity, so will it, in most instances, be difficult, especially after the lapse of ages, to discover the extent to which the operation of such prejudices should be allowed for. But if it cannot be ascertained how much of the colouring of the picture is to be attributed to the medium through which an historian exhibits his characters, yet the general hues of that medium will hardly escape the observation of an intelligent reader; and when once observed, the illusion is destroyed.
But in relation to the influence of prejudices of this sort, ancient historians unquestionably appear to advantage when compared with those of modern times. Instances of equanimity might be cited from the Greek historians to which few parallels could be adduced, drawn from the pages of modern writers. Like the sculptures of the same people, the works of the Greek historians, though not wanting in the distinctive characters, or the moving energy of life, present an aspect from which the sublimity of repose is never lost. These writers seem to have been conscious that they were holding up the picture of their times to the eyes of mankind in all ages: they forgot, therefore, the passions and interests of the moment.
With ourselves, the instantaneous diffusion of books through all ranks of the community, places a modern author too nearly in the presence of his contemporaries to allow him to think much of posterity. The clamour of public opinion rings around his seclusion: his situation, in its essential circumstances, is almost the same as that of the public speaker--the din of the crowd fills his thoughts, and he almost forgets the distant fame which his genius might command. This nearness of his audience offers therefore to a modern writer every excitement and every inducement to the indulgence of party misrepresentations. If it were not for the correcting influences of a free press, nothing worthy of the name of history would be produced in modern times.
9. That the Greeks were not in fact much inferior to the representations given of them by their historians, the existing monuments of their philosophy, of their poetry, and of their arts, sufficiently attest. Indeed if we pass from an examination of these monuments and remains to the perusal of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, we shall be far from thinking that a tone of exaggerated encomium is to be charged upon those writers. From the pages of the historians alone, we should fail to form an adequate idea of the perfection that was attained in all departments of literature and art by the people whose political affairs they narrate. Scarcely half of the history of Greece, in a full and philosophical sense of the term, is to be gathered from its historians:--we must seek for it rather in the remains of its literature at large,--in museums, and cabinets, and among the ruins that still bespread its soil.
It is not therefore this sort of general misrepresentation that is to be suspected in the Greek historians; for more is made certain by other means than is explicitly affirmed by them. Yet it has been supposed that, in their accounts of military affairs, the Greek historians, in order to enhance the glory of their countrymen in repelling the Persian invasions, have exaggerated the power and extent of the Asiatic monarchy, and the numbers of the armies with which those of Greece had to contend. Some amount of misrepresentation, of this kind, may have been admitted. But yet the pictures given by the Greek writers of the wealth and resources of the Persian power--of the puerile ambition of its monarchs--of the countless hosts which they drove before them, by the lash, into Scythia, Egypt, and Europe--conquering nations rather by devastation than by military conduct--by the mouths, more than by the swords of their armies, are so strikingly similar to unquestionable facts in the later history of the Asiatic empires, that, as the one cannot be doubted, the other need not be deemed incredible.
10. The arrogance with which, under the term _barbarians_, the Greek writers speak of all nations that were not of Greek extraction, naturally suggests the belief that we must not expect to derive from them a just idea of the civilization of the surrounding nations. In truth, not a few indications may be gathered from other sources, which authorize the belief that, in communities not very distant from Greece itself, or its colonies, a degree of intelligence and of refinement existed of which it was their shame to be ignorant, or their greater shame to have taken so little notice.
11. With the Romans it was perhaps less from mere national vanity, than from a dictate of that deep-plotted policy by which they supported their unbounded pretensions, that they were induced to misrepresent the resources and the conduct of the nations on whose necks they trampled. This policy would often produce misrepresentations of a contrary kind to those suggested by national vanity. That universal empire was the right of the Roman arms was the principle of the state: a reverse of fortune therefore was not simply a calamity--it was a seeming impeachment of the high claims of the republic. The nations must not think that their masters could anywhere find equals or rivals in courage or military skill. A defeat hurt the political faith of the Roman citizen more than it alarmed his fears; and he would rather waive the glory of having broken an arm of equal strength with his own, than confess that there was anywhere an arm of equal strength, to resist his will. He would choose to sustain the aggravated shame of having been beaten by an inferior, rather than redeem a part of his dishonour by acknowledging that he had encountered a superior. A writer therefore could not do full justice to the courage, conduct and successes of the enemies of Rome, without offering such an outrage to the common feeling as would have amounted almost to treason against the state. Modern historical criticism--exercised by such a writer as Niebuhr, has sufficed to remove from early Roman history a very large amount of the misstatements and the exaggerations which Livy and his predecessors had accumulated around it.
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