for they both composed a defence of Socrates and many other moral and politick Treatises according to the observation of Diogenes in Plato's life without any mentioning one another with reciprocal praise whatsoever occasion presented it self among so many Dialogues by them exposed in the name of Socrates with his Disciples Some will have it that Xenophon represented in very lively colours the defects of one Menon a Thessalian in the end of the Second Book of Cyrus his expedition for no other reason than that he was a friend to Plato But as for that other Book de Aequivocis printed an Age ago under the name of Xenophon it is to be held one of the impostures of Annius Viterbius In like manner some would have a certain suppositious History of the Siege of Troy to pass for current under the name of one Dictys Cretensis a Companion of Idomeneus and of one Dares a Phrygian and that it was translated out of Greek into Latin by Cornelius Nepos when the Stile bewraies that he never thought upon the work for it has nothing of that inimitable purity and eloquence which appears in his lives of the Greek Captains and in that of Atticus writ by the same Author such impostures are offensive and cannot be too much derested by the Lovers of truth And yet some there are so led away by their affection for Fables that they feed themselves with such trifles and so build upon those idle foundations as thereby to encourage others to impose the like chears upon Mankind We have lately seen the Itinerary of Alexander Geraldin Bishop of St. Dominick who pretends to have found over all Aethiopia on this and the other side of the Line Roman Inscriptions and Antiquities of such value that all others which the rest of the Earth affords would be despicable if the worst of his were true But it is observable that none before or after him ever saw them nor is there any Schollar so unexperienced in this sort of reading that cannot easily discover the falsehood of his observations so unlikely they are Is it not a great impertinence to raise pillars to testifie the Conquest and absolute dominion of the Romans in places where apparently none of them ever set foot and in direct opposition to all we have from their own Histories The same judgment is to be made of those Hetruscian or Tuscan Antiquities which we have of a fresher date from one Inghiramius whose impudence is unpardonable for deceiving the world at such a rate And perhaps it were not unfit to have punishments established to signalise the infamy of those that dare expose to the publick spiritual Aliments so corrupted and Mortal as those are for no poison operates with more violence and bad effects upon the body then errors and impostures upon our minds when we are infected with them An Author of the last Age accuses Xenophon of having loved Agesilaus so passionately that not only in his Book which he writ of his praise but likewise in his History he makes rash judgments in his favour and extols his Victories much more than the Laws of History will permit But this Capricio of an Italian will be approved of by very few because it arraigns the judgment of all Antiquity which never spoke so much to the disadvantage of Xenophon And Tully who mentions his praise of that Prince does not accuse him of any indecency in it As for his Stile one may see what Hermogenes writes of it who commends it especially for its sweetness and simplicity which he makes one of the principal Ornaments of Language and in this respect he by much prefers Xenophon to Plato He was by Birth an Athenian and the Son of one Grillus and lived about four hundred years before the Nativity of Christ. REFLECTIONS UPON THE HISTORY OF POLYBIUS AS Xenophon was the first Philosopher that applied himself to write Histories so Polybius has the advantage to have given us the most considerable one extant and made it appear more clearly than any other Historiographer that History is as it were the Metropolitan of Philosophy to use the tearms of the Historian of whom we shall write in the Chapter following But what is said of Polybius might be more reasonably admitted if the whole body of his works were now extant of which only the least part remains since of fourty Books which he composed there are but the five first entire with the Epitomy of the following twelve which is continued to the beginning of the Eighteenth Many are of opinion that this Epitomy was writ by the great assertour of Roman Liberty Marcus Brutus because it is known that he delighted in nothing so much as in reading History being a man so difficult to please that Cicero's works did not affect him and therefore he imployed his leasure in Epitomising the History of Polybius finding therein besides that instruction wherewith it abounded the consolation he needed in the last and most unfortunate daies of his life The Subject of this History were all the most considerable actions in the world from the beginning of the second Punick War to the end of that which terminated the differences of the Romans with the Macedonian Kings by the utter ruine of their Monarchy This includes the space of Three and Fifty years the events of which Polybius shewed in the last Eight and Thirty Books for the Two first are not so much of the body of his History as they serve for a preparative in a summary narration of the taking of Rome by the Gaules under the conduct of Brannus and of that which followed until the first year of the second War against the Carthaginians But though the affairs of the Roman Empire were much more exactly described by him than the rest of those that writ of that Subject because his chief aim was to omit nothing that might give a perfect information of them yet he neglected not also to represent the concerns of all the other powers of the Universe unsolding the interests of the Kings of Syria Egypt Macedon Pontus Cappadocia and Persia with those of all the different Dynasties which were then in Greece And therefore he gave the name of Catholick or Universal to his History as informing us of the destinies of all the Nations of the Earth there being scarce any at that time which had not some difference with or dependance on the Romans He received at his Birth great gifts from Nature which favoured his enterprise and that chance of fortune which made him come to Rome was no small advantage to him since he is indebted to it not only for the best part of his learning but the important friendship he contracted with Scipio and Lelius which contributed much to the celebration of his History to posterity But the pains he took in the acquisition of all that could put him in a capacity of writing it well and labouring for eternity seems worthy to be considered
time than it has been since Ausonius mentions a Treatise of Kings writ by Suetonius in three books whereof Pontius Paulinus contracting them made a Poem Moreover the Surname of Tranquillus which is given to Suetonius is in effect the same in signification as that of his Father whom he himself calls in the Life of Otho Suetonium Lenem reporting that his charge of Tribune of the thirteenth Legion obliged him to be present when that Emperors Troops engaged against those of Vitellius They therefore were deceived who beleived that this Suetonius of whom we write was Son of that Suetonius Paulinus whereof Tacitus Pliny and Dion make mention Sicco Polentonus and Muret committed this error which Lipsius and Some Others judiciously repair there being no reason in what they affirm to confound a Military Tribune with a Consul Gerardus Vossius shews also the mistake of those who read in the tenth Chapter of the first book of the Divine Institutions of Lactantius Tranquillus instead of Tarquitius who was another Author very learned in the Pagan Religion and whom probably in that respect Lactantius speaking of Aesculapius rather intends than our Suetonius But to return to his particular History of the Twelve first Emperors There are some Criticks which affirm that the beginning of the first book is wanting and the ground of their opinion is founded on the improbability that Suetonius should have writ nothing of the birth and first years of Julius Caesar when he took the pains to search into the Original and Education of eleven other Emperors that succeeded whose lives he has described He laboured in it according to the judgement of S t Hierome with the same liberty as Soveraigns so absolute assumed in a condition exempt from all sort of fear Muret indeed in his Oration upon Tacitus converts this to his disadvantage and maintains that S t Hierome rather blamed than praised him in that saying For saies Muret it were to be wished that we had not learned so many Riots and shameful Vices as he declares to have been practised by the Tiberii Nerones and Caligulae They are saies he so filthy that they almost make the Paper blush upon which they are represented And if what one of the Ancients saies be true namely that there is but little difference between him who describes such infamy with care and he who teaches it we shall have much ado to excuse Suetonius for having acted such a part as he did And to augment his charge he is accused of having used the Christians ill calling them a sort of men who imbraced a new and mischievous superstition which made them be persecuted in Nero's time But as we have already answered to the like objections in other Sections is there any of all the Historians of repute who is not guilty if it be a crime in him to have represented the wicked actions of those they write of which makes the greatest and often the most considerable part of the narration Does not the Sacred History it self shew us Parricides Incests Idolatry and many other Profanations amongst the best examples and holiest instructions And ought we not to cast into the fire all the books of those Pagans who have writ since the beginning of Christianity if what they exposed against our Religion should make us absolutely condemn it REFLECTIONS UPON THE HISTORY OF JUSTIN SOME think they are to blame that complain of Abreviators because without contributing to the loss of the writings they epitomised they have not left us destitute of the most remarkable memorials of many Authors of whose works nothing now remains But those which are of this opinion ought to confess themselves obliged to Justin by whose Industry the Great Labour of Trogus Pompeius is so happily reduced into little that we have few Latin compositions more considerable than his Epitome either for the Stile or matter thereof Yet methinks these sort of writers are not sufficiently discharged in asserting that they have left behind them valuable works unless it be made to appear that they have not been accessory to the loss of the Originals which is the crime imputed to them by many Learned Men as we have already observed in the Chapters of Herodotus Dion Cassius and Livy The Extracts or Collections of that Understanding Emperor Porphyrogenetus are instanced on this occasion And Tribonianius meets with the like entertainment for having made a defective compilation in his Pandects of the Texts or rather Oracles of all those Ancient Lawyers whose excellent reasonings and elegant expressions ought to have been preserved from so bold an attempt A very speculative modern Author speaking of Epitomys does not stick to call them Moths and Worms that gnaw History which have made such a spoil therein that there often remain but miserable shreads of the first contexture And indeed there ought to be more than a bare negation to refute so probable an opinion though it may be alledged that the works of most Abreviators and those of Justin amongst the rest ought to be now very acceptable to us because we can have recourse to no other relations of the matter they deliver It is easy to make a near guess at the time when Trogus Pompeius lived by what he said in his forty third book of his Parents that came from Gallia Narbonensis where he declares his Grandfather to be made a Citizen of Rome by the favour of Pompey the Great whose Surname probably he took during the Wars of Sertorius and that his Father after he had borne Arms under Caius Caesar who is here taken for the first Emperor who bore that name rather than for Caligula had the honour to be his Secretary and jointly to keep his Seal It is therefore thought that Trogus Pompeius wrote his History under Augustus and Tiberius having spoken of the former at the end of the whole work It was divided into forty four books whose number Justin has not changed no more than their Title which was the Philippick History because as it appears from the seventh unto the one and fortieth book it was a continued narration of the Macedonian Empire which owed its rise to Philip Father of Alexander the Great Theopompus had written before fifty eight books called Philippicks which are quoted by Athenaeus and Diodorus and by Some held to be the Model which Trogus Pompeius followed as Cicero imitating Demosthenes named his Orations Philippicks with much less reason The seven first books of that History in pursuance of the Title we mention comprised the first beginnings of the world or of the Inhabitants thereof together with descriptions of Places and Countries which Justin has apparently cut of as it may be collected from the Ancient Preambles before each book of Trogus Pompeius published by Bongars But we had been more fully satisfied herein if that Friend of Aldus who bragged he had in his hands all the works of that Historian and would even in a
to fall upon the most loaden as on those where there is more to be gained Having in some manner justified my proceedings it is reasonable that I should acknowledg the great assistance I received from divers persons who favoured my enterprise The Two Du Puys were the first who perswaded me to it and according to their natural goodness which so many Schollars find by daily experience assisted me with Books out of three Great Libraries to wit the Kings that of Monsieur de Thou and their own It is certain that the first could never fall into better hands and though as all men know it is very considerable yet it receives at this day its greatest ornament from their judicious conduct whose presence does even animate the books contained in it Neither were they content to give me all the help that way I could desire but as it is said of Socrates that he performed the Office of Midwife to the spiritual deliveries of the most worthy men of Greece I should be very ungrateful not to confess that I am indebted to their Learned conferences for all that is good in this Treatise This comparison and their backwardness hitherto in setting out any thing under their own names although their works when exposed to the eye of the world will meet with an Universal approbation puts me in mind of a thought of Pliny the Younger on the subject of one of his friends He saies that they who though full of Learning and merit are nevertheless silent demonstrate a greater strength of wit than many others who cannot forbear to prostitute what they know Illi qui tacent hoc amplius praestant quod maximum opus silentio reverâ—ntur In the next place I must acknowledg the great assistance I have received from the Library of the most Eminent Cardinal Mazarin by the means of his Learned Library-keeper Monsieur Naudé who was pleased to add to the effects of his ordinary humanity those of an Ancient and most perfect friendship As for some Authors who have anticipated me in printing of works upon the same subject I hope I shall not be accused of ingratitude towards them I have cited Sigonâ—â—s â—ossiâ—s and Balthasar Bonifacâ—us who wrot and censured before me the Greek and Latin Historians and if I have taken something from them as it could not be avoidâ—d I did it not like a Theif or Plagâ—ary nor without adding something of my own which a candid Reader might well expect from a Treatise succeeding so many others but with this advantage at least as far as I know to be the first of this nature that has been seen in French I am not ignorant that my work is not of the number of those which please many people They that prefer Fabulous Stories before true Narratives and Romances before Roman History will not find content here I consider herein the excellent waies used by the Ancients to instruct us faithfully and satisfactorily in those passages of the world which were worthy to be Recorded to posterity And thoughts are herein displayed in such a manner that without giving a precise judgment as coming absolutely from me I leave without partiality free liberty to all men to contradict my opinions But though many perhaps who are short-sighted will yeild freely to those who have better eyes than themselves yet very few refer themselves to others in what concerns the Operations of the mind wherein every one thinks he is clear sighted and no body will acknowledg a Superior Let not therefore what I expose here but as doubts grounded upon some appearances of truth be taken for resolutions My freinds know why I wrot them And my comfort is whatever happens the Labour was as an honest diversion to me And if it be true as Clemens Alexandrinus asserts that our Souls are of the nature of Wells from whence we must alwaies draw something to make their waters more wholesome and pure I do not repent of a trouble which has been so profitable to me and which at least has kept my better part from corruption for want of exercise To conclude I should willingly use in favour of this writing the same prayer to God which Apollonius made to the Sun when he undertook those long voyages which Philostratus describes upon the credit of Damis Addressing himself to that great Star which he held to be the Visible God of Nature he asked him the favour to find through the world the most honest men If my book were so happy to have no others to deal with it would be no small advantage to it But if its destiny is otherwise ordained I must suffer patiently what cannot be avoided by those who expose any thing to the publick The Greek Historians HErodotus Pag 1. Thucydides p. 15. Xenophon p. 26. Polybius p. 33. Diodorus Siculus p. 46. Dionysius Halicarnasseus p. 58. Josephus p. 69. Arrian p. 83. Appian p. 93. Dio or Dion Cassius p. 104. Herodian p. 116. Zosimus p. 126. Procopius p. 135. Agathias p. 156. The Latin Historians CRispus Salustius p. 165. Julius Caesar p. 180. Titus Livius p. 188. Velleius Paterculus p. 201. Quintus Curtius Rufus p. 206. Cornelius Tâ—citus p. 216. Lucius Annaeus Florus p. 228. Suetonius p. 234. Justin. p. 240. Ammianus Marcellinus p. 248. IMPRIMATUR March 29 1678. JOH NICHOLAS Vic. Can. Oxon. REFLECTIONS UPON THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS ALTHOUGH there have been many Greek Historians who preceeded Herodotus he is allowed to be the most Ancient of those whose Works have been preserved to our time Pherecydes Dionysius Milesius Hecateas Xanthus Lydius Charon of Lampsacum Hellanicus and some others are indeed mentioned to have written Histories before him but their writings have been so long lost that Cicero in his Book de Legibus acknowledged Herodotus to be the Father of History and in another place for his excellency he stiled him the Prince of Historians They reckon no less than one and twenty Ages from his to ours for he lived about four Hundred and Fifty years before the Nativity of Christ Hellanicus and Thucydides were his contemporaries and they differed so little in Age that as Aulus Gellius reports Hellantus was but twelve years elder than Herodotus and Thucydides but Thirteen years younger Suidas Photius and Marcellinus relate a circumstance which-justifies this in respect of the two latter they write that Herodotus reading his History in a great Olympick Assembly of all Greece Thucydides who was then but very young could not forbear weeping to hear him which obliged Herodotus to tell his Father that he esteem'd him very happy in having a Son who shewed so early such a great affection to the Muses I do not affirm by this expression of Herodotus that he then called the nine Books he composed by the names of the Daughters of Parnassus The most probable opinion and which Lucian seems to uphold is that those Books received their names from the learned rather than the Author and we
in the Third Book and Fourteenth Chapter of the Jewish War He shews also his deliverance in the Fifth Book and Twelfth Chapter after that Vespasian had found the truth of his Predictions What the profane Historians such as Tacitus and Suetonius relate conformable to this deserves our observation for they affirm that all the Provinces of the East were then firmly possest with a belief that they to whom the Destinies and Sacred Writs had promised the Empire of the World should at that time come from Judaea The Jews and Josephus amongst the rest interpreted what regarded the true Messias of Vespasian and his Son Titus because of the victories they had newly gained over them and the unmeasurable extent of the Roman Empire And it happened that after his deliverance from his imprisonment he was Spectator of the taking of Hierusalem by the same Titus and composed since as an Eie-witness the Seven Books of the Judaick War of which he made to him and Vespasian who was then living such an agreeable present that Titus caused them to be put into the Publick Library subscribed and approved of by his own hand Josephus adds in his own Life which he himself has given us in writing that King Agrippa had testified unto him by many latters that he held him for the truest Author of all those who enterprised to treat of the affairs of their country Being return'd to Rome with Vespasian he lived there under his protection and that of his Two Sons gratified with their Pensions and with the condition of a free Citizen of Rome and many other benefits which gave him means to finish peaceably under Dâ—mitian his Twenty Books of the Jewish Antiquities from the Creation of the World to the Twelfth year of the Empire of Nero. His Two Books against Apion Plistonices are made in favour of the Jews whom this same Apion Surnamed also Grammaticus had defamed as much as he could in a work he published being sent Deputy to Rome to the disadvantage of Philo and his Country-men But the discourse of the Empire of Reason or the Martydom of the Machabees is the most eloquent of all the pieces writ by Josephus As for the Treatise of his life he composed it in imitation of many great Men who had done the like thing before him and have been imitated by many others For passing by Moses who alone filled with the Spirit of God writ not onely his Life but Death it is known that a little before Josephus the Emperors Augustus Tiberius and Claudius were pleased to leave the platform of their lives to Posterity traced with their own Pens Agrippina Mother of Nero did no less as Tacitus reports And private persons such as Sylla Varro Rutilius Rufus Aemilius Scaurus and Nicolaus Damascenus had already practised that sort of writing If we must mention others who exercised themselves therein since Josephus we shall name in the first place the Emperors Adriaanus Marcus Antoninus and Severus secondly to draw nearer to these Times James King of Arragon Maximilian the first the Abbot Trithemius Cardanus and Augustus de Thou who have all written Books of their own Lives But there is no small difference at this day between learned Men touching the credit Josephus his History ought to have amongst us For if we refer our selves to Maldonat Melchior Canus Pererius Salmeron Baronius Salian and some others we should have no value for all his labour which they defame as full of Anachronisms in the Calculation of times and Fables in the Narration of things Baronius amongst the rest rebukes him very severely in his Preface which he calls Apparatus c. and in many other places of his Annals nay he proceeds so far as to impute to him that he knew not justly his own Age and that he was mistaken in it by six whole years But if on the other side we yeild to the judgment of his Partisans such as Scaliger and Calvisius of whose Party are Justin Martyr Eusebius St. Hierome Suidas and several other Ancients we shall be obliged to place him in the rank of the best Historians which remain And truly when I consider with what recommendation Justin spoke of him I am not easily induced to condemn him so absolutely as many doe He stiles him many times an exceeding wise Historiographer and joyning him with Philo he saies they are Two Persons worthy of great respect As for Eusebius he remarks in his Ecclesiastical History that Josephus was honoured with a Statue at Rome which we have already observed giving him the Title of a most true Author and one that deserves that credit should be given to what he writeâ— The Books Stiled an Evangelical preparation of Eusebius are full of passages of Josephus and in the Third of his Evangelical Demonstration he rehearses that place of the Jewish Antiquities which makes such express mention of Jesus Christ As for S t Hierome after he had placed Jesophus amongst the Ecclesiastical Writers he confirms the favours he received from Vespasian and Titus and the honour that was done him by putring his Books into the Publick Library and raising a Statue to him in Rome He quotes also his forementioned Testimony of Jesus Christ And in one of his Epistles he did not forbear to name him the Graecian Livy which shews the great valew he had for his History Suidas recites almost all the same things which he could see in Justin Eusebius and S t Hierome and he gives him particularly the Quality of a Lover of truth which is much to be considered in his case I wonder not therefore after these Testimonies if many will take Josephus his part against those who endeavoured utterly to discredit him Nevertheless Scaliger was a little too forward when he named him in a Preface to a Book intituled the correction of Times in one place the most diligent and greatest friend to truth of all Writers Diligentissimum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 omnium Scriptorum out-doing in this manner Suidas by a Superlative Encomium and in another place the most true and religious of all Authors Omnium Scriptorum veracissimum religiosissimum He adds further that the integrity and learning of Josephus showing it self in every thing he shall not be backward to assert boldly that not onely in what relates to the Jewish affairs but in all others also it is more fit and sure for one to refer himself unto this Hebrew than to all the rest of the Greek and Latin Authors I would not proceed to so determinate a judgment yet I think one may safely say that abating what may be contrary to the Sacred Texts of the Old and New Testament Josephus is for the rest an Historian of great Authority and one that merits a great deference especially in the things of his own time wherof he writes as an Eie-witness for we ought I think in charity to make that interpretation of what so many Christians have often
Brittain speak a direct Oration to his Troops ready to Engage with the British Forces after he had divided them into Three different Bodies but makes him speak Three separate ones on the same Subject to perswade them to fight couragiously and thereby to obtain the Victory By this it appears that they who believe that all sorts of Orations are indecent in History will not be satisfied with Dio's method of writing for he abstains not from those which are most to be avoided namely the direct and has made use of Dialogues also which is contrary to the rules of the Criticks in History but if we must take notice of his faults there are others which deserve sooner to be complained of than what we mentioned He is accused of having taken Caesars part too much against Pompey to accomodate himself to the course of Fortune Nor seems he more equitable in respect of Antonius his Faction which he alwaies favours to the prejudice of that of Cicero And whoever reads in the Forty Sixth Book the invective of Q. Fusius Calenus against this incomparable Oratour will be hardly able to indure all the injuries with which it seems Dio would have Sullied his reputation Not content to make him be reproached that he was the Son of a Fuller or Dyer very often reduced to dress Vines or cultivate Olive Trees he assaults his person and touches his honour in all the most sensible parts he renders him ridiculous for his fearfulness and to blast him the more affirms that of all the Orations which were seen of his he delivered not one of them after the manner in which they were writ and therefore his want of memory is imputed as a crime to him But he makes Calenus much more severe He would have him contented not to wear the long Robe if he had not wanted it to hide his ill-shapt Leggs and Feet And arraigns his Conjugal Bed to expose the vice of his Wives defaming him to have prostituted the honour of one of them and in the mention of his Children he accuses him of Incest with his Daughter and represents his Son as an infamous Libertin Drunk Night and Day Certainly to treat one of the greatest persons of the Roman Republick thus is rather like a Satyrist than an Historian But Dion does so pursue his disparagement that in the following Book he takes a new occasion to make Fulvia the Wife of Antonius vomit out abundance of reproaches against his memory who pierces his Tongue through and through with her Needle He has not been much more respectful to Seneca if the conjectures of some men are not true who think that Xiphilinus in that part maliciously delivered the thoughts of Suillius or some other as bad for those of Dio. Yet we read in what Constantinus collected out of him besides what is related in the Epitomy of Xiphilinus that Seneca led a life quite contrary to his Writings and the Philosophical profession to which he pretended He is accused of Adultery with Julia and Agrippina and of the death of the last He is taxed with reading Lectures of Pederasty to Nero and charged with as-ending the Theatre with him to make Orations in his applause In fine his Luxury and Avarice are aggravated to that pitch that the cause of the Rebellion of Great Brittain is imputed to him where the People could no more indure his extortion than Nero could suffer his Conspiracies from which he had no means to deliver himself than by putting so bad a Master to death But what we before hinted that the invectives against Seneca are rather the words of Tigellinus the abbreviator than our Author seems to be very manifest because Dion in his Fifty Ninth Book speaks very honourably of Seneca We might perhaps accuse him of Superstition and Credulity and thereby something discredit his History if something were not to be allowed to Humanity and if we did not know that the best Authors in this kind have fallen into the same inconveniences In his Forty Seventh Book he tells us the Sun appeared at Rome sometimes lesser and sometimes greater than ordinary to foretel the bloody Battel fought in the Fields of Philippi which was also signified by many other Prodigies How he credited the report of the strange quality of the Psylli to expel poison may be read in his One and Fiftieth Book on the Subject of the death of Cleopatra whom these men since there was no Female amongst them and they begot themselves endeavoured in vain to bring to life again In his Fifty Eighth Book he reports that a Phaenix was seen in Aegypt in the Seven Hundred and Nineteenth year of the Foundation of Rome In another place he writes that Vespasian cured a Blind Man by spitting in his Eies and worked a like Miracle on a Lame mans Hand which he cured and restored to its vigour by walking upon it they being both forewarned in a Dream that they should receive this benefit from the Emperor In another place he expresses that the famous Apollonius Tyanaeus saw in the City of Ephesus all that passed at the death of Domitian in Rome at the same instant that he received it so that he cried out calling on the name of Stephanus which was that of his Murtherer bidding him strike boldly and soon after that saies he it was done as if Dion would have conformed himself to Philostratus who writ at the same time the Imaginary life of this Philosopher and as if there were no difference to be put betwixt true and Fabulous History Though some men and Baronius amongst others find fault with Dio because he was not favorable to Christianity I think it not worthy to be considered since he is to be esteemed as a Pagan Author who was not like to uphold a Religion contrary to that which he professed It is true that speaking of the victories of Marcus Aurelius he attributes to the Magick Art of one Arnuphis an Aegyptian rather than to the prayers of the Christians the miraculous Rain which fell in favour of the Romans and the strange Tempests which afflicted the Army of the Quadi whom the learned Cluverius takes for the present Moravians But is it a wonder in things subject to various interpretations as are ordinarily such Prodigies that Dio an Idolatrous Historian should not give the same judgment as a believer And that he spake otherwise of them than Tertullian Eusebius Paulus Diaconus and some others have done His Stile is by Phoâ—ius put into the rank of the most elevated being extraordinarly raised by the loftiness of his thoughts His discourse saies he is full of Phrases which resemble the Antient construction or Syntaxis and his expression answers the greatness of the matter he treats of His periods are often interrupted with Parentheses and he uses many Hyperbates or transitions which are very troublesome when they are not used Artificially after his manner But one thing is very remarkable that
though his language is very numerous and adjusted according to Art yet it appears to be so little laboured that the Reader does in no wise perceive the care that has been taken in it because it is so clear and intelligible that every one presupposes as much facility in the composition as there is in the reading He seems to have imitated Thucydides whom he follows especially in his Narratives and Orations But he has the advantage over him not to be reproached with obscurity In all else Thucydides is the pattern by which he Copies with all sort of Circumspection This is the judgment Photius gives of him who is much more creditable in this point than Sigonius that to say something of his own long since thought on accuses Dio of being too Asiatick and so prolix in his Orations that he is troublesome to his Readers The world must be left to their liberty of thinking according to the Law of the Romans Populo libera sunto suffragia Yet I conceive for what relates to language the surest way is to leave that to those to whom it is natural and who have sucked it with their milk rather than to strangers who are much more subject to be mistaken Besides Dio's History and his little Treatises before mentioned it seems that Suidas ascribes to him some other compositions as the life of the Philosopher Arrianus the action of Trajan and certain Itineraries Raphael Volaterranus makes him besides Author of Three Books intituled de Principe and some small Treatises of Morality We must also observe that there have been many Dio's of great repute and one amongst the rest who lived an Age before Dio Cassius in the same Emperor Trajans time This is he who for his Eloquence had the Surname of Chrysostomus who was of Prussia and by consequence of Bithynia as well as the other and for whom Trajan had so particular a Love that he often honoured him with a place by him in his Châ—riot These Two Dions are distinguished by their professions as well as their Surnames The first according to the times they lived in was an Oratour and Phisopher the Second an Historian and Statesman such as we have represented him in this Section REFLECTIONS UPON THE HISTORY OF HERODIAN THE History of Herodian as most of those we have already mentioned receives its commendation from the merit of its Author He declares at the beginning of his first Book that he will only write of the affairs of his own time which he himself hath seen or understood from creditable persons for which he was very competent because of the publick imployments that he exercised for he might justly boast to have passed through the principal charges of the State About the end of his Second Book he acquaints us before he begins to write of the life of Septimius Severus which contains all the Third Book that his History in general shall comprehend the space of Seventy years and treat of the Government of all the Emperors which succeeded one another during that time that is from the Reign of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus the Philosopher to that of the younger Gordianus Grandchild of the former which some with Julius Capitolinus reckon to be the Third of that name His Eighth Book which is the last of his Work ends with the unworthy slaughter of the Two old men Balbinus and Pupienus whom he calls Maximus committed on them by the Praetorian Souldiers to advance the forementioned Gordianus Junior to the Throne Photius writes of his Stile that he has writ in an Air so much the more cleer and agreeable in that he has not too much affected the Attick terms but so tempered his Phrase that his discourse is heightned above the lower form of Oration and as there is nothing superfluous in his writings so it cannot be said that he has omitted things necessary or useful to be known and he adds to compleat his Elogium of him that considering all the virtues of an Historian there are few Authors to whom Herodian ought to subscribe We have observed in the preceding Sections that he hath as well as Dion Cassius informed us of the Pagan Ceremonies used at the Consecration of their Emperors It is in the beginning of his Fourth Book where he so well represents to us all the Funeral honours rendered to the Ashes of Severus which his Children had transported from England in an Alablaster Chest that it is hard to see any where any thing more exact and more instructive He tells us how they were put into an Urne with the general adoration of the Senate and the People and carried by the Consuls to the Temple where the Sacred Monuments of their Emperors were preserved and then proceeding to describe the Funeral Pomp he informs us that his Effigies in Wax all cloathed in Robes of Gold was placed at the Gate of his Palace on an Ivâ—ry Bed elevated from the Ground and magnificently adorned Where Seven daies together the Senators clothed in black and the Roman Ladies all in White without any other Ornaments came to pay their respects taking their places the Women on the right and the men on the left side of the Bed all appearing with very mournful countenances He observes also that the Physitians came duly to visit this representation of the Emperor making formal approaches to the Bed as if he were alive and declaring that his sickness grew daily worse and worse so true it is that this world is a continual Comedy After this time was passed over the most considerable of the Youth and the Knights carried the same Bed on their shoulders first to the great Market places where the Magistrates of Rome used to Surrender their charges and there a Chorus of young men on one side and Virgins on the other Sung Hymns to the praise of the dead Emperor from thence they proceeded to the Campus Martius which was out of the Town where the Bed and Effigies were placed in a large square Tabernacle of Wood resembling and elevated to the height of one of those Towers upon which Lights are placed on the Sea Coasts to direct Mariners to avoid the dangers of Rocky shores whereof he makes such exact descriptions both as to the exterior and interior Ornament and the several stories of it that any one may easily thereby comprehend the manner of the structure In the next place he writes that the Roman Knights made their Horses run round about the Tabernacle in certain orderly motions which were at that time called Motus Pyrrhichii and in orbicular revolutions And at the same time there were a certain number of Chariots filled with persons which represented the most qualified men of the Empire which also went in a kind of Procession round the great Machine till the next successor of the Emperor first took a Torch in his hand and with it kindled some combustible matter made for that purpose at the bottom of it and then
produced so many excellent persons and few are ignorant how all the following ages have honoured his endeavours whereof we shall give some more Testimonies before we finish this Section But in the mean time is it not strange that any should be so barbarous as Alciat and Ferret and contradictory to all the Ancient Romans to maintain that so considerable an Author could not so much as speak his mother-tongue One must certainly have a brazen face and a very empty head to advance such propositions For my part should I see a Thousand things that displeased me I should rather accuse my own weak understanding or the faults of the Copies or some other defect which ought not to be imputed to him than give the lye to all Antiquity by falling into such an imaginary imputation There is a third sort of Tacitus his accusers who tax him of speaking untruths Vopiscus is of that number But because he only arraigns him to excuse himself in this general proposition that the best Historians of the world cannot avoid the mixture of lies in their truest narrations Tacitus his reputation seems not to be much concerned therein We have shown elsewhere that several persons took delight to maintain this thesis And I remember Dion Chrysostome endeavouring to prove in one of his Orations that one never knows the truth of things is not content to say that the taking of Troy by the Graecians is a meer Fable and that the Persians delivered a very different account of the wars of Xerxes and Darius against Greece than the Graecians themselves but he adds as a note of the small certainty there is in History that amongst the most famous of the Greek Historians some held that the Naval victory of Salamin preceded that of Plataea and others asserted the contrary It is sufficient then to answer that there are untruths which our humanity bears with when they are related by report and without lying But when Tertullian reproaches Tacitus with imposture and Budaeus calls him one of the most vile and impious Authors we have it is evident that they mean something more than that sort of misreport which ignorance may excuse and which one may retort upon errors Authorised by common belief For they are offended at what he impiously spoke of Christians in derision of our holy religion whom he assaults even in the foundations of the Old Testament deriding the Miracles of Moses and reproaching the Jews with adoring the Effigies of a Wild Asse I confess that one cannot too much condemn what he writ on that subject as he was a Pagan But nevertheless we must be forced to acknowledg that if he must be totally renounced for what he writ against the true God and our Altars we shall be obliged to burn with his Books almost all those of the Gentils very few of them having abstained from the like calumnies I say the same thing against the judgment which Casaubon in his Preface passed upon Polybius where he pretends that Princes cannot read a more dangerous book than Tacitus because of the bad examples which are seen in it For it is an ill custome that Casaubon has followed never to write upon an Author without blaming all others to give that the greater Authority and we know that he has praised Tacitus elsewhere as much as any one can do It is true his History has represented unto us the actions of the most wicked Princes that ever were and that by misfortune those Books which contained the best Emperors Raigns as of Vespasian Titus Nerva and Trajan are lost Yet it is the way to censure all the Histories we have in the world even without excepting the Holy Writ to make that of Tacitus responsible for the bad examples it contains there being none found that have not some very dangerous in them and where there is no need of distinguishing with judgment the good and the bad of every Narration But perhaps heretofore as even in Tertullians time the Pagans invectives against us might be apprehended because the world was not then purged of their errors as it is at present by the Grace of God I cannot imagine that any person can be found at this day that would let himself be seduced by the Calumnies of the Ethnicks or by all that the infidelity they lived in could make them write against our Evangelical truths The general esteem the works of Tacitus have gained might suffice alone against the Authorities we have examined though we wanted reasons to refute them If it were needful to weaken them by other contrary authorities I can produce Two besides the Universal consent of learned men which are so weighty that they will alwaies turn the Scale on their side The first is that of the Emperor Tacitus who though invested in the supreme dignity of the world did not forbear near two hundred years after the death of our Historian to glory in that name common to them esteeming it as an honour to have had such an Ancestour and to be acknowledged one of his Posterity He caused his Statue to be placed in all Libraries and all his books to be writ over Ten times every year that they might pass from hand to hand and from Age to age as they have done unto ours The Second Authority shall be that of the Great Duke Cosmo di Medicis whose memory will never want veneration as long as the Science of Polity or good government as his Country-men term it shall be cultivated That Prince chose Tacitus amongst all the Historians as one from whom his mind could receive the most instruction and solid satisfaction Add to the Testimony of Princes and Emperors that the translation of this Author into all Tongues gives a certain proof of the valew of him in all Nations Besides his Commentaries History he wrote a Treatise of divers people who inhabited Germany in his time and of their different manners with another Book of the Life of his Father in Law Agricola Some moreover ascribe to him the book Entituled the causes of the corruption of Latin Eloquence which others attribute to Quintilian and which possibly belongs to neither of them according to the probable conjecture of Lipsius As for the collection of the book of the pleasant sayings of Tacitus which Fulgentius Planciades mentions it is a meer counterfeit which never deceived any one but that Grammarian The true compositions of Tacitus are discernable enough either by their form or matter taking as Scaliger does the words of the History for the matter and the things it unfolds for the form He scatters here and there throughout the whole Oblique and Direct Orations as the condition of time place and persons require But as concise as he is in his Stile he flies out into Digressions in many places witness that of the God Sarapis amongst the rest in the Fourth Book of his History and that other wonderful one in the Fifth which we
Photius Lib. 4. Lib. 5. Urbs maxima Lesbi juxta Methymnum Lib. 3â— Lib. 6. Lib. 7. Lib. 8. Lib. 5. Dec. 1. l. 2. Aulus Albinus Maluisti culpam deprecari quam culpâ vacare A. Gell. l. 11. c. 8. in Caâ— Aemil. Prob. in Hann. Urbs Latii una exceleberriâ—is in Finibus Aequoâ—um Hist Eccles lib. 3. cap. 9. Nomine Aliturus Vossius de Histor Graecis l. â— c. 8. Cap. 5. Lib. 5. hist. I Vesp c. 4. Ah â—o acceperit Epistolas septuagintaâ—duas c. Vos loco citato He was an Egyptian born in Oasis a City of Aegypt Alexandrinus vocari gaudebat Vossius de script graecis l. 2. c. 7. Aegyptii op inter Pelusium Memphin Ad. Ann. Chr. 58. Cap. 158. Lib. 3. cap. â—9 Ad 〈◊〉 34. C. 2â—6 Ad ann 96. cap. â— Sect. 47. 76. et 238. Cap. 2. Lib. 1. de bello Jud. cap. 21. Ib. lib. 2. cap. 4. Lib. 18. Antiq. Jud. c. 2. Bataues in the French Original Chief City in Media now called Yerack Moreri dictionar Sect. 131. Vossius de hist graecis c. 11. Lib. 43. dig tit 3. leg 1. par 4. et Lib. 44. digest tit 7. leg 47. in Pseud Iâ— Gordian Vossias de Historicis graecit l. 2. c. 13. Meth. hist cap. 4. In vita Cat. V. Crimen Plagium à Plagis 1 à dolore quo is afficitur qui surreptus est Cat. Lib. 5. et â— Strom. Lib. 9. Cap. 2. 3. Geogr. Lib. 17. Procuratores Caesaris an Office which resembles the charge of Attorny General in England * Oâ—sus ab Aeneâ et Ilio capto percurrit illa tempara usque ad Romulum Inde accuâ—atius persequitur omnia usque ad Augustum Quaedam etiam carptim atque obiter addit usque ad Trajanum Vossius loco citato Caellus Secundus Curio in Epistolâ Dedicatoriâ ad Bonifacium Amberbachium versus finem Homo Consularis Lucullus lived about 71 years before Christ and about 23 before Julius Caesar assumed the government of the Roman Empire Cicero Lib. 60. * These Psylli are mentioned to have been imployed by Augustus Caesar to cure Cleopatra of her poison by sucking the venome out of her wounds that he might carry her in Triumph to Rome-Sueton in Aug. c. 17. Lib. 66. Lib. 67. A City of Cappadocia V. Lib. 8. de Vita Apol. c. 10. Ad Ann. Chr. 176. A Latin Historian Two Roman Emperors killed at Rome Aâ— 237. Universus Mundus exercet Historiam Sea Pharos vulgo dict He was an Historian that writ many Books whereof some are lost by the injury of the times He lived in the time of Dioclesian the Emperor Voss de Hist Latinis Lib. 1. Cap. 7. He was Secretary of State to Theodore King of Italy An. Dom. 584. he writ many Books and died it a Monastery in Calabria to which he retired Legraâ—â— dictionaire de Morere Lib. 3. Eccl. Hist Cap. 41. L. de Rom. hist sâ—r Histor Eccles l. 3. Cap. 41. Lib. 16. Eccl. Hist Cap. 41. seâ— Lib. 2. Lib. 2. Lib. 4. Lib. 5. Ep. 124. 129. Ad. Ann. Chr. 395. art 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lib. 1. Iâ—edita Thomas Rivius and Gabriel Trivorius She was a common Comedian before he married her Lib. 1. de Bello Pers Pag. 37. Pag. 36. Pag. 39. 59. Pag. 91. Pag. 60. Pag. 56. Lib. 58. Lib. 3. Hist cap. 32. Anecd Pag. 28. Pag. 58. Lib. 3. Hist cap. 32. Meaning the French Cap. 160. M. Gueit The French Places where Ancient Records were kept Mart. in Apopâ— A. Gell. l. 1. c. 15. L. 9. inst cap. 3. L. 2. inst c. 5. l. 4. c. 2. L. 3. c. 1. l. 4. c. 15. â—â— l. 10. c. 20. L. 11. ep 1â—4 L 5. Satur. c. 1. L. g. hist Lib. 4. de re Poet. Cap. 24. Lib. 10. inst c. 1. Orat. 22. Vell. Patere in voce Zenobius L. 9. cont decl 1. In Hadr. In Sev. Lib. 4. inst cap. 1. Lib. 17. Noct. Aâ—t cap. 18. Suet. de Ill. Gram. cap. 15. Apud Dionem lib. 42 43. Maenechmi a Comedy so called in Plautus because of Two of that name so called in it Praef. in Tac. not in l. 1. Pol. L. 28. advers c. 22. Justiniâ—s l. 38. Lib. 1. de lâ—g L. 10. in s c. 1. eodem animo dixisse quo bellavit Ascon Pedia In Caes cap. 56. Macr. 1. Satur. cap. 14. 〈◊〉 l. 11. Aea In Beuto A Gell. l. 1. Noct. Att. c. 10. Macr. l. 1. Satur. c. 5. In Caesar 56. Fr. Floridus Sabinus et Lud. Carrio L. 7. Nat. hist c. 25. Ep. 101. Lib. 10. inst cap. 1. In Claud. cap. 41. Suetonius in Claud. loco citato Quint. l. 10. inst c. 1. Ep. ad Jo. Boc l. 7. de hon disc â— 12. L. 9. â— 19. de hist laâ— In Meth. hist c. 2. Anna 1451. Suet. in Calig cap. 34. et in Domit. c. 10. Lib. 1. inst cap. 5. Lib. 9. inst cap. 4. Cap. 6. Tr. 1. c. 4. L. 9. contr decl 1. Lib. 1. de Ira. câ—ult Lib. de tranq c. 9. Vide Vossium de Hist Lati. pag. 95. cap. 19. Dec. 1. l. 5. et dec 3. lib. 1. et 4. Lib. 2. de consec hist Jul. Scal. l. 1. poet c. 2. Lib 4. annal †Priori nomine Patavium appellata * Vicus ad Euganeos colles in Italiâ prope Patavium Vide Vossium de scriptoribus latinis Lib. 2. Civitatem non muro sed vallo fossaque c. quam appellabant Cicera è nomine deae Cisae quam religiosissimè colebant Wolfangus Lazius Lib. 1. de frag Velleii Lib. 3. ad Q. fr. ep â— Lib. 11. Ann. Lib. 7. ep 27. ad Suram Apud Photium sect 131. Tr. 5. dell ' arte hist c. 2. ep 3. Lib. 6. Lib. 10. Lib. 7. Lib. 9. But this fierceness so admired and doubted by Curtius is not strange to us that see the like courage in our Mastifs on all occasions Lib. de reb gest Alph. Supposed to be Vespatian I suppose the Author is mistaken in this computation for Vossisius speaks but of two years Extremum Neronis Biennium deest de Hist Latinis lib. 1. cap. 30. Muret. or de Tac. Epist 1. l. 2. Ib. ep 11. L. 4. ep 13. Lib. 6. ep 16. et 20. Lib. 7. ep 33. Ib. ep 20. In Aurel. Orat. 11. Taciti facetiae Lib. 2. de re poet c. 1. et l. 3. c. 1. Virg. 2. Georg. L. 1. Hist Cap. 22. Lib. 1. instit c. 3. Pag. 134. Lib. 2. Cap. 17. Lib. 5. de trad disc Lib. 1. ep 18. Lib. 5. ep 11. Ep. 19. Cap. 10. In vita Suet. var. lect l. 5. c. 11. Eadem libertate scripâ—lt quâ ipsâ— vixerunt Parum abest à docente qui talia narrat In Ner. cap. 16. Verulam de aug Scient l. 2. c. 6. Cap. 40. In Aurelio Guards of the King of France his body Henr. Valesius Lib. de virtute Paganorum Meaning the French In the Section of Agathias Lib. 2. cap. 8.
find many other writings to have been dignified with the like Title which did not deserve it so well as these Dion the Rhetorician composed nine Books which were called the Nine Muses as we learn from Diogenes Laertius And the same Author assures us that the obscure productions of Heraclitus his brain of which Socrates made no difficulty to confess that he hardly understood any thing were honored nevertheless with the name of the Muses We read moreover in the Library of Photius that one Cephaleon had compiled an Epitome of History from Ninus to Alexander the Great in nine Sections divided also between the Nine learned Sisters though in a different order from that of Herodotus And that Aurelius Opilius quoted some where by Aulus Gellius who from a Philosopher became a Rhetorician and from a Rhetorician a Grammarian so degenerate he was did not forbear to do the like in a Treatise of his consisting of Nine Books And few that converse in â—ooks are ignorant that as the three Orations of Demosâ—henes his Competitor had the names of the Graces his Nine Epistles received those of the Muses being the most illustrious which could be given them But from this inscription of the Muses some have not forborn to accuse Herodotus of being too great a Lover of Fables and of having made a History so Poetical in favour of the Companions of Apollo that there is seldome any truth sound in it This Faction reproaches him of all the strange things he has writ and which have been most doubred of and insinuates that those words of the Latin Satyrist which tax Greek History quicquid Graecia mendax Audet in Historia c. Were meant of him and even Casaubon thought that Herodotus his relations had made his detractors invert the word delirare taking for an Etymologie that which is perhaps but a simple allusion But as he has had accusers so he has not wanted persons to undertake his defence Aldus Manucius Joachim Camerarius and Henricus Stephanus have writ Apologies for him and the long voyages as well to the North as the South and the East-Indies which have been made in our daies have very much justified his writings to shew us that an infinite number of things that he writ by the relation of others and whereof he likewise doubted very much are now found to be true He declares in his Melpomene on the Subject of those Phenicians whom King Necus imbarked in the red Sea and who returned to Aegypt more than two years after by the Pillars of Hercules affirming that they had in some of the Coasts of Africk the Sun on the right hand that he could not in any wise believe them though it is now evident by common experience that they could not return from the Erythrean Sea into the Mediterranean as they did without doubling the Cape now called the Cape of Good Hope and without having in that place the Sun on their right hand and their shadow on their left they being beyond the Tropick of Capricorn In the following book of Terpsichore he makes those Thracians Lyers who said that the Country beyond the River Ister was full of Bees for this weak reason that Bees cannot live in places so cold as those must needs be Yet few are ignorant in our daies that Muscovy is full of them that they often people whole Forrests where these little Animals sometimes by their labour nourish Beares of an excessive magnitude which inhabit therein With the like fear of being mistaken he doubted whether he should believe that the Isle of Chemnis floated upon a Lake of Aegypt because he faw it not move and that it was improbable that an Isle should swim upon water But not to speak of the fabulous Symplegades or Cyaneans we read that both the Plinies Dionysius Halicarnasseus Theophrastus and Seneca have witnessed that such are found in many places and that they have seen some in their agitation There are some near St Omers in one of which the Arch Duke Albertus and the Infanta of Spain his Dutches were entertained at a dinner And it is no strange thing to the Scotch to see one of this nature in their Lake of Loumond affording very good pasture ground In fine their existence is so certain that the Lawyers Paulus and Labeo disputed of the right of their Soil the first being of opinion that none had property in them Who would not have taken for a Fable that which the same Herodotus mentions in another place of certain Thracian Women who contended among themselves after the death of their Husband who should have the Honour to be kill'd upon his Grave and buried with him If the Portuguese and other relations had not discovered that it is a custome practised in all the Coast of the Malabares and almost through all the East for Women to cast themselves of their own accord and in emulation one of the other into the flaming funeral Piles of their deceased husbands But as we may perceive by these examples that Herodotus did hardly ever expose for certain those things which he did not perfectly know though they were found true long after the age in which he lived so we must observe that he has been very careful to condemn that which he judged to be manifestly false when it appear'd to be against the ordinary course of Nature even so in his Thalia he laughed at the pretended Arimaspes who had but one â—ie and stole the Gryphons gold in the North. In Melpomene the following Section he does not more favourably deliver the Tale of the Aigipodes or Goat-footed men not what he had read of the Hyperboreans who sleep six Months of the Year though this may probably have respect to the long Nights of those people who live under the Arctick Circle and who pass almost half the year without seeing the Sun whilst they are very near the Pole When he writes a little after of one Abaris who run over all the Earth without eating and with an Arrow which served him instead of a Pegasus he relates it as a Fable which was very famous in his time but in the same Book he protests against the common belief that there were men Neighbors to the Scythians who made themselves Wolves once a year and resum'd after some daies their human form one cannot then say that he has indifferently mingled truth with Fables without distinguishing them nor that he was a Lyer though he often rehearsed the Fables of others which the most exact Laws of History do not forbid nay those very Laws oblige us to report the rumours which have been current and the different opinions of men as he well observed in his Polyhimnia on the Subject of the Argians by an Advertisement which may ferve for all his whole History Add to this that Herodotus having been a most Religious observer of the Divine Worship of which he made profession if one may
of Poets and that he alone is to use his term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so that it is usual to advise those who will profit in the understanding of Homer first to read Herodotus to the end that the Prose of the latter may prepare an easie access to the Poesie of the former by the affinity of stile between them Samos was the place where Herodotus form'd himself to the Ionick Dialect and compiled his History before he retired with a Colony of Athenians into Thurium a Citty of that part of Italy which was then called Great Greece for Suidas his opinion conformable to this is more followed than that of Pliny who holds that Herodoâ—us chose the time and place of his voluntaty exile to enterprise so great a Work in which he is very erronious for he had compiled his History long before this retirement as is recorded in the Chronicles of Eusebius It is true he was born in Halicarnassus a Citty of that part of Greece called Doris a Region confining on the Meleans and because his illustrious birth had engaged him in the expulsion of the Tyrant of his Citty he retired into Thurium where he died according to the opinion of many there being even some as Plutarch writes that make this place where he was buried to be the place of his Nativity It is not asserted by all that the book of Homer's Life which follows the Ninth Muse was composed by Herodotus but whoever is the Authour of it it is very ancient and makes the labour of those men ridiculous who even at this day take great pains to pretend to somthing more certain and considerable than is there writ touching the Country of Homer But this matter concerns not his History which was happily preserved notwithstanding the Epitomy of one Theopompus whom Suidas mentions for Justin is accused though so great an Authour of having been the cause of the loss of Trogus Pompeius his History and the loss of part of the works of Livy is imputed also to Lucius Florus by the Epitomys which both have made of these great works which probably had been preserved but for their abbreviations REFLECTIONS UPON THE HISTORY OF THUCYDIDES AS those that search for Springs or conveyers of Water whom the Latins call Aquileges take it for a good Augury if they see smoak arise out of certain grounds in the Morning because it is one of the signes which makes them hope to find therein some good and abounding Springs so they who understand best the nature of our Souls rejoice when they observe in our tenderest years earnest desires of learning and certain transports of ardour in the pursuit of Science from whence they draw almost assured conjectures of the merit of our minds and of their future excellence upon such a conception was founded the predictions of Herodotus mentioned in the foregoing Chapter when he observ'd Thucydides moved even to tears by hearing him recite his rare Treatise of the Muses in one of the most celebrated Assemblies of Greece He took that for a sign of the growing greatness of his Genius and as a Thorn pricks as it grows he judged that so extraordinary an emotion in his tender Age proceeding from so rare a Subject would produce one day something memorable and be follow'd by those agâ—reable watchings and disquiets which give Immortality to the learned of Mankind Thucydides lived about Four hundred and Thirty years before the Incarnation of Christ Anno Mundi 3520. and as he was a person of illustrious Birth and a great Fortune added to the excellency of his Indowments he had no temptation to betray truth in what he was to deliver to posterity and though some have censured the manner of his writeing few ever questioned the truth of it He was rich and of Royal extraction but his opulency was augmented by his Marriage to a very rich Wife a Daughter of a King of Thrace and being very curious to have perfect intelligence of affairs in order to the compiling of his History he emploied great summs of money to procure memorials comperent to his design not only from the Athenians but the Lacedemonians also that out of his collections from both the great Transactions of that might be the better and more impartially discovered as a Monument to instruct the Ages to come for he intituleth his History 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which signifies a possession for Everlasting It comprehends the Peloponnesian War which lasted one and Twenty years for though some Writers make it to continue six years longer yet others and perhaps the more judicious observers do make what follows in the succeeding six years after our Historiographer had ended his work to be rather the consequences of that War than truly a part of it but what was deficient in the affairs of those years was since supplied by Theopompus and treated on by Xenophon who begins his History where Thucydides ended There are some Criticks that do not believe his Eighth Book according to the ordinary division to have been written by him some ascribe it to his Daughter others to Xenophon or Theopompus but the more discerning part beleeve the contrary When the Peloponnesian War began to break out Thucydides conjectured truly that it would prove an argument worthy of his labour and it no sooner began than he began his History pursuing the same not in that perfect manner in which we now see it but by way of Commentary or plain Register of the actions and passages thereof as from time to time they fell out and came to his knowledg but such a Commentary it was as might perhaps deserve to be preferred before a History written by another hence it is very probable that the Eighth Book is left the same it was when he first writ it neither beautified with Orations nor so well cemented at the transitions as the former seaven Books are And though he began to write as soon as ever the War was on foot yet he began not to perfect and polish the History till after he was banished and why he did not refine his last Book equal to the rest is not known for he our-lived the whole War as appears by what he relates in his fifth Book where he saies he lived in banishment Twenty years after his charge at Amphipolis which was in the Eighth year of that Wat which in the whole by the largest computation lasted but seven and twenty years It is hard to judge whether the method and disposition of the History or the Stile of it be most to be praised since he hath in both shewed himself so great a Master that none that have writ since have exceeded him in either As to the disposition we shall in this place only observe that in his first Book he hath first by way of proposition derived the State of Greece from its Infancy to the vigorous stature it then was at when he began to write and next declareth the causes both
of having first thought upon the animation of History that was before a body languishing which appears in his exact Orations composed in all the three sorts of Oratory the demonstrative the deliberative and the Judicial Herodotus had attempted the same thing but he was content to use some oblique speeches and those almost ever imperfect never proceeding so far as Thucydides who in this way of writing left nothing to be objected against by the severest Orators And it is said that Demosthenes was so well pleased with his History that he took the pains to transcribe it Eight times By the consent of all he has the glory of not mingling Fables with his true Narrations If he is constrained to say a word of Tereus King of Thrace and Progne in his Second Book or if in describing Sicily in the beginning of the Sixth he finds himself obliged to speak of the Cyclops and Laestrigones as Ancient Inhabitants of a part thereof it is so lightly that the Dogs of Egypt touch not so hastily the water of Nilus whose Crocodiles they fear as he passes nimbly over a fabulous circumstance to avoid the least entrance of a lye into his writings And yet he has not been so happy to be without the reproach of not having alwaies spoken truth for Josephus affirms that he was taxed of having falsified his History in many places but at the same time he accuses all the Grecians of imposture and if one observes the commendation he gives him afterwards of having been the most exact and cautious of all his Country-men in compiling a History it will appear rather to proceed from the capricious humour of his Sect than the demerit of an Historiographer for as he was a Jew who made it his business to discredit all Pagan History he thought he ought to say something to the prejudice of Thucydides when he had spared none of the rest I shall add here that Thucydides did not onely lay down in his History all sorts of Orations as we before observed but took the liberty to insert Dialogues as that betwixt the Athenian Generals and the Inhabitants of the Isle of Melos which comprehends a great part of the fifth Book to the end But those that have an aversion to digressions have no reason to hare them in this Authour who touches them with great Art as amongst others the conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogiton in the sixth Book which may justifie many other excursions or like Sallies that are often censured with two little reason and notwithstanding all his defects the most judicious of the learned yeild him the prize of Eloquence and not one of the Ancients deny him the glory of having seconded Pindar in the Grandeur and Majesty of expression REFLECTIONS UPON THE HISTORY OF XENOPHON XENOPHON does not owe the fame he has had so many Ages to History alone for Philosophy and Arms have contributed to it and I believe that for these three Qualifications he may be as well termed Trismegistus as Hermes the Aegyptian since he is universally acknowledged to be a very great Captain Philosopher and Historiographer He has common with Caesar the first and last Qualities and they are not deceived who find a third resemblance in their stile Purity Eloquence and sweetness being equally natural to them both They have each an agreeable manner of expression without art or affectation though no art or affectation can come near it The Surname of Apes Attica and Athenian Muse with which all the Ancients have dignified Xenophon is not only a witness of the beauty of his language and of that hony-like sweetness which the Graces seem to have poured on it with their own hands to speak like Quintilian but it is a particular mark of his Attick Dialect wherein he excelled so much that Diogenos Laertius writing his life gives no other reason for the bad intelligence that was between him and Plato than the jealousie they conceived one against the other upon that account Yet Marcellinus who attributes to Thucydides in his Elogy the height of Eloquence gives the lowest rank to Xenophon placing Herodotus between both and Dionysius Halicarnasseus when he observes that Xenophon has often imitated Herodotus adds that the former was alwaies much inferiour to the latter But notwithstanding this it is very considerable that Xenophon was the first Philosopher who applied himself to the compiling of a History which in what relates to the Graecian affairs treats of the Transactions of eight and forty years and begins where Thucydides ended shewing Aleibiades his return to his Country whom Thucydides in his last Book left meditating upon that retreat Nor is it a small glory to Xenophon but a proof of extraordinary Honesty to have freely exposed to the publick the writings of Thucydides which he might have supprest or delivered as his own if he would have been a Plagiary and have ascribed to himself the works of another which many others have done and do daily practise Besides the continuation of the History begun by Thucydides Xenophon has left us that of the enterprise of young Cyrus against his brother Artaxerxes and the memorable retreat of ten thousand Graecians from the extremities of Persia to their own Country in which he had almost the whole honour as well for his councel and discipline as the excellency of his conduct What he writ of the institution of the Elder Cyrus is not an historical Treatise but purely Moral where he drew the figure of a great Prince without confining himself to the truth except of two or three events viz. the taking of Babylon and the captivity of Craesus All the rest is feigned and has nothing in it commendable but the agreeableness of the Fable as Hermogenes has well observed on the subject of Panthea's death who slew her self with three Eunuchs upon the body of her Husband Abradatus in the seventh Book of that institution These compositions of Xenophon of which we have spoken are such that as they may serve for a rule to the first Ministers of State in all the extent of Politicks according to the excellent judgment which Dion Chrysostomus makes of them so likewise they are capable to form great Captains and give the world Generals and we have two notable examples of this among the Romans for they acknowledg that their Scipio surnamed Africanus had almost alwaies Xenophons works in his hands and that nothing made Lucullus capable to oppose such a formidable enemy as King Mithridatos but the reading the writings of Xenophon Whereof Lueullus made so good use by Sea he who before had a very small insight into the affairs of War that he knew enough afterwards to gain those famous Victories which few of the learned are ignorant of and whereby the most considerable Provinces of Asia became tributary to the Romans Xenophon has writ upon divers Subjects and it seems that in many of them there has been Emulation between him and Plato
friend of the Muses and restorer of letters for the first publication of the Works of Polybius at that time when the Turks invaded Constantinople though they are much augmented since in the latter Editions REFLECTIONS UPON THE HISTORY OF DIODORUS SICULUS CLUVERIUS one of the most exact of our modern Geographers teaches us that Agyrium of which Diodorus Siculus speaks as of the place of his birth is now called San Filippo d' Agyrone It is a great honor to this little place to have given to its Isle such a person without whom no body would know its Antiquity nor many things which render it very considerable He saies in the beginning of his History which stands instead of a preface to it that he was no less than Thirty years in writing it in the Capital City of the World where he gathered Notions which he could not have elsewhere confessing that the vastness of the Roman Empire had extreamly favoured his design But nevertheless he did not omit to go himself through the greatest part of the Provinces of Europe and Asia where he was in many dangers and endured extream labour that he might not commit the faults which he had remarked as he saies in those who had medled to speak of places where they had never been It does not appear in that place that he saw Affrick and yet we read in the second Section of his first Book that he travelled to Aegypt in the raign of that Ptolomy who is distinguished from the rest by the Surname of new Bacchus or Dionysius and who was the first Husband of his Sister Cleopatra whereby one may note that the best part of Aegypt was formerly of Asia when the Geographers divided it from Affrica rather by the Nile than the Red Sea It is not without reason that Diodorus gave his work the name of an Historical Library since when it was intire it had united in one according to the order of times all that which other Historians have writ separately for he had comprised in Forty Books whereof we have but Fifteen remaining the most remarkable passages in the World during the space of Eleven Hundred and Eight and Thirty years without reckoning what was comprehended in his six first books of the more fabulous times that is to say of all which had preceded the War of Troy His History is then truly Oecumenical or Universal and we ought so much the more to bewail what is wanting since after the loss of Berosus Theopompus Ephorus Philistius Callisthenes Timaeus and such other great Authors the reading of Diodorus alone repaired in some manner our dammage having compiled and digested all their works in his Library Of the Six first Books before mentioned the last is no where to be found although Raphael Volaterranus and some others quote it sometimes as if we had it yet But if one observes exactly it will be found that they misreckon in their account and that what they report to be in the Sixth is in the precedent Book which Diodorus names the Insular and which is only the Fifth The error proceeds from the first impression which was all Latin and wherein Poggius Florentinus Author of the translation which Pope Nicolaus Quintus desired of him made Two Books of the first because Diodorus divided it into Two different Sections By this means the second became the Third and consequently that which was but the fifth was taken for the sixth as if we had lost no more of the fabulous Antiquities of Greece contained in the Fourth Fifth and Sixth book than of those of the Barbarians which we have intire in the first second and third The remainder of Diodorus his Library consists in Two parts which are squared by Two Epochies of note The first reaches from the destruction of Troy to the death of Alexander the Great for the understanding whereof and all which happend in the world during that time he emploied Eleven whole Books which are from the Sixth to the beginning of the Eighteenth of this number the four first are lost but we have the other Seaven remaining The Second Epoche stretches from the time in which the first ended to that of the Conquests of Julius Caesar in Gallia when he made England and the Brittish Ocean the limits of the Roman Empire on the North side The marvellous successes of all this interval were described in Three and Twenty Books but there remains no more than the Eighteenth the Nineteenth and the Twentieth to our time the others unto the Fortieth being all lost except some small fragments taken from Eusebius Photius and some others who used Diodorus his Text in their works Henricus Stephanus affirms out of a Letter communicated to him by Mr Lazaro Baif that all the works of Diodorus are found entire in some corner of Sicily I confess I would willingly go almost to the end of the World if I thought to find there so great a Treasure And I shall envy those that will come after us this important discovery if it shall be made when we shall be no more and that instead of Fifteen Books only which we now enjoy they shall possess the whole Forty Since Diodorus speaks of Julius Caesar which he does in more than one place and alwaies with an attribute of some Divinity as it is the custome of the Pagans he cannot be more Ancient than he which is about Forty Eight years before the Nativity of Christ But when Eusebius writes in his Chronicles that Diodorus Sieulus lived under this Emperour it seems that he limits the life of the former with the reign of the latter Yet Suidas prolongs his daies even to Augustus And Scaliger very well observes in his animadversions upon Eusebius that Diodorus must needs have lived to a very great Age and that he was alive at least half the Reign of Augustus since he mentions on the subject of the Olympiads the Romans Bissextil year which name was not used before the Fasts and Calendar were corrected which was done by Octavius Augustus to māke the work of his Predecessor more perfect We have at this time in the last impression of Diodorus a Fragment of his Seven and Thirtieth Book which would remove all this difficulty if it were true for in it is seen the death of Caesar revenged by the Triumvirat on Brutus and Cassius with the fall of Anthony and the establishing of Augustus in the Empire for all his life This would infer that Diodorus lived longer than Augustus But that collection which is somewhat larger in Photius shews by those whom he calls Illustrious by a Title unknown in the Age of Diodorus that another was the Author of it or that his Text has received additions from some one who lived long after his time whence consequently we cannot make any certain conclusion The time of these Two Emperors Caesar and Augustus is indeed the Age of the best Latin as all who understand it agree but not so of
Greek because even in their time the Athenian Eloquence was already transferred to Rome and that faculty which delights in command had quitted the vanquished to follow the fortune of the victorious taking their habit and Language It is no wonder then that Diodorus is not equal in this respect to Herodotus Thucydides or Xenophon bing a Sicilian onely and having added to that the disadvantage to write in such a season Photins nevertheless does not forbear to praise his Stile as being very clear unaffected and very proper for his Subject which is History It is saies he neither too Attick nor too full of Ancient words His manner of writing has a just mediocrity between the most high Stile and the other which the School calls humble and creeping for its lowness which is alwaies avoided by Diodorus There is certainly more reason to credit that learned Patriarch of Constantinople who was a most exact critick in his Tongue than John Bodin who though he understood Greek much less ventures to give a quite contrary judgment and reprehend the words as well as the Stile of Diodorus as if a stranger at this day could say any thing worthy consideration in that matter after what has been said by the Ancients and contrary to the opinion of those to whom Greek was a maternal language Nor is there more heed to be taken to the invective of Lodovicus Vives the Spaniard against Diodorus than to that of Bodin the French man The last blames even the expressions and words the first arraigns the body of his History and the things whereof his narration is composed If we believe Vives there is nothing more vain than the Historical Library of our Sicilian and Pliny was much to blame in his opinion to say in his Preface that Diodorus was the first of the Greeks who spoke seriously and abstained from writing trifles I know the Authority of this accuser is not small he being very learned in respect of his Age and one of the ornaments of his Country neither am I ignorant that others besides him as Pighius and Sigonius complained of the faults which Diodorus committed in Chronologie for having followed bad computations And I consider that Vives having commented on the Books of St Augustin de Civitate Dei remarked in them how that great Doctor of the Church laughed at the Egyptians who said that they had Records in their Books a hundred thousand years old to which Diodorus his Text is not repugnant nay he goes farther than this when he makes mention of the great knowledg of Heavenly things which the Chaldeans had acquired who bragged that they had made observations upon them for the space of four hundred seventy and two thousand years before the conquests of Alexander the Great in Asia He had already said that the Egyptians reckoned some Ten and others of them Three and twenty thousand years from Isis and Osiris to the same Alexander and that their first Kings who were Gods did each of them Reign no less than Twelve Hundred years This is doubtless that account which Vives could not suffer and which provoked him to declare so highly against Diodorus who will not allow him to have been praised by Pliny for any other thing than the Title of his History which is indeed neither improper nor ridiculous as many of those were which the other Grecians ordinarily gave to their Books But if that may be said to be the onely occasion which moved Pliny to pronounce this fair Elogy of our Historian viz. Primus apud Graecos desciit nugari Diodorus yet it was alwaies favourably interpreted to extend to his whole composition and it is a kind of injustice to affirm as Vives did that there is nothing more vain not less solid than his History As for the Egyptian Ephemerides and the Astronomical calculations of the Chaldeans they are inferted onely to shew what was the common belief of those people not arguing that he gave any credit to them He is so far from it that he saies expressly in his Second Book that he cannot possibly acquiese to what the Colledge of Chaldeans had determined of the long space of time which preceded the Victories of Alexander I am so far from condemning the Fables and excellent Mythology in the Five first Books of Diodorus that in my opinion we have nothing more precious in all that remains of Antiquity for besides that Fables may be told seriously and that Plato's Timaeus with several other works of very great consideration should be rejected if they were absolutely unnecessary it is to be said of these that they teach us the whole Theology of the Idolaters And if it were lawful to give a Holy name to a profane thing I might call the Five forementioned Books the Bible of Paganism since they teach us at the first sight what the Gentiles believed of Eternity and the Creation of the World and the birth of the first men is therein afterwards described according to the pure Light of Nature So that they represent to us so well all the Theogony of the Egyptians whence that of the Greeks drew its Original that without Diodorus we should be ignorant of what is most curious in that sort of knowledge Nevertheless he is not the first Infidel that began his History with the Original of all things as well as Moses with the Creation of the World For he himself teaches us in the fifth Book of his Bibliotheca that Anaximenes of Lampsacum had not writ the first of any as some have ill translated it but the first History of Greece because he took it from the birth of the Gods and the infamy of Mankind to speak like him continuing it to the famous battel of Mantinea and the glorious death of Epaminondas however since our evil destiny would not permit the others labours to come to us I believe we cannot at this day have too great an esteem for those of Diodorus which it hath not envied us nor too much retort the injurious censure of Vives and such like But in this we do no more than follow the opinion of most men of letters not onely Ethnicks but even Christians also Jnstin Martyr calls Diodorus in several places the most renowned and esteemed of all the Greek Historians and proves by his writings the excellence and Antiqnity of the Great Law giver of the Hebrews and when he would insinuate that Homer had learned in Egypt the most refined things he put into his Poesy he uses for it the Authority of Diodorus whom he does not name without praise And Eusebius goes beyond Justin Martyr both in Titles of Honour and in citations of passages drawn from our Historian with which he fills all the books of his Evangelical preparation And when he treats of the beginning of the world and of what the Ancients believed of the Sun and Moon and of the custome which the Carthaginians had to Sacrifice men
and of infinite other Subjects which fall into his principal design he alwaies alledges Diodorus but he does it chiefly when he examins the Theology of the Aegyptians in his Second Book where he very much extols the fame of him he calls him a most illustrious Writer most exact in his Narrations and one esteem'd by all learned men for his profound doctrine and he adds that there is no Grecian who is not desirous to read him by a common approbation and preference to the rest of their Authors But when he insists in his Tenth Book of the same work that Greece had received from the hands of those it esteemed barbarous and particularly from the Jews all the Sciences and learning for which it had so great a value it is in that he attributes the greatest Honour to him For after having used the Testimonies of St Clement Porphyrius Plato Democritus Heraclitus Josephus and such like Authors of the first Classe he finishes his proof with a Quotation out of the first Book of that incomparable History to the end saies he that the Authority of Diodorus may be as a Seal to all my demonstration To say the truth he has a marvellous advantage given him by Eusebius to be cited and put expressly after the rest to shew how much he is esteemed by him in the same manner as Archirects place that Stone last which is called the Key of the Arch and which conduces no less to the solidity than the ornament of the whole Edifice This is that which I purposed to add to the suffrages of Pliny and Photius in favour of our Historian for fear that the ill terms which Bodin and Vives used against him should be prejudicial to his fame If I had reason to blame him it should be much rather for the great superstition in which he abounds in all his writings as well as Titus Livius amongst the Latins than for his bad Greek or for having handled his subject ill whereof those indecent Criticks accuse him there being no reason to diminish his reputation in that regard REFLECTIONS UPON THE HISTORY OF DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSEUS IF Dionysius Halicarnasseus had not said himself in the beginning of his History that he lived in the Emperor Augustus his time in whose Regin our Saviour was born Strabo would teach it us in the Fourteenth Book of his Georgraphy where speaking of the City of Halicarnassus he observes that it bestowed on the world Two great persons Herodotus and in our time saies he Dionysius the Historiographer So that since Strabo witnesses in that same work that he had it in hand under Augustus and Tiberius we are certain that Dionysius Halicarnasseus was also of the same Age which is as all know one of those which most favored learning and learned men Suidas names among many Writers who bore the name of Dionysius another besides him we speak of who was of Halicarnassus also and of his Posterity and appeared under the Emperor Adrian with the Surname of Musicus because though he was an Orator his principal Talent lay in Musick of which he composed many Books and among others one wherein he interpreted all the places of Plato's Republick which could not be well understood without a particular understanding of that Art That which makes me say that this other Dionysius was descended from the first is that the same Suidas saies that from Dionysius the Historian came one Dionysius whom he calls Atticista who lived under Adrian and had writ a Lexicon of the Attick words as may be seen in the Hundred and Two and Fiftieth Section of Photius For my part I am easily perswaded that this Atticist and Musitian are but one since they are both mentioned to be under one Emperor As for our Historian he came to Rome a little after Augustus had happily finished the Civil Wars and sojourned there Two and Twenty whole years learning the Latine Tongue and making his provision of necessaries to the design he had of writing his History He read to this end all Books which are called Commentaries and Annals made by those Romans who had writ with some reputation about the concerns of their State as old Cato Pabius Maximus Valerius Antias Licinius Macer and some others But acknowledges that the conversation he had with the worthy men of that Capital City of the world and his conferences with an infinite number of learned men there were not less servicable to him than all the other diligence he could use His History was of the Roman Antiquities which he comprised in Twenty Books whereof there remains no more than the first Eleven to this Age which conclude with the time when the Consuls resumed the chief Authority in the Republick after the government of the Decemviri which happened Three Hundred and Twelve years after the foundation of Rome The whole work comprehended much more for it passed from the taking of Troy over the fabulous and Historical time to the beginning of the first Punick War ending where Polybius beings his History near Two Hundred years later than what we even now mentioned Whereupon it behoves us to observe the error of Sigismond Gelenius who imagined that Dionysius Halicarnasseus whom he has translated very well never ended his work and that death hindered him from composing above Eleven Books of the Twenty he promised to give to the Publick When Stephanus a Greek Author who writ of Cities quotes the Sixteenth and Twentieth Book of the Roman Antiquities of our Dionysius and Photius saies in his Bibliotheca that he read all the Twenty Books giving the last the same ending which we assigned unto it This learned Patriarch assures us also that he saw the compendium or synopsis which Dionysius made of his own History which he reduced into Five Books with much Eloquence but it was not agreeable to a Reader because of the strict Retrenchment of all he thought not absolutely necessary The loss of that Epitomy would be less sensible if we had the first composition entire which has received so much approbation especially in respect of the calculation of times and what relates to Chronology that all Criticks prefer in this point Dionysius Halicarnasseus before Titus Livius And Scaliger confesses in his Animadversions upon Eusebius that we have no Author remaining who has so well kept the order of years As for his Stile Photius considers it as extraordinary and new but accompanied with a simplicity which renders it delightful and he adds that the Elegancy of his discourse or phrase corrects and softens all the roughness which is sometimes found in his speech He commends him also very much for having understood how to use many digressions which retain and recreate the mind of the Reader when the evenness of an Historical narration begins to be redious and wearisom to him And certainly it is not to be imagined that a man of that reputation which Dionysius Halicarnasseus had acquired in learning could produce any thing which was
History he lived in the Hundred and Thirtieth year of Christ he was a Disciple of Epictetus It is not easie to know whether his History was writ before his Enchiridion and those other discourses of his Master which Simplicius in his Commentaries assures us to be composed by him for though it might not be thought according to the ordinary and natural course of mens dispositions he should apply himself to Philosophical contemplations in the Youthful part of his life yet it appears in the Preface of those discourses that he writ them as they were spoken by Epictetus collected from his mouth whilst he was yet the Schollar of that great Philosopher and he complains that they were published without his privitie which is a certain evidence of their being writ in his younger Age. Photius saith they were formerly in Twelve Books besides certain Philosophical dissertations by him mentioned which are lost to this Age. As for his Historical Compositions though we have not them all intire by what remains of them we may discern enough to oblige us to value his merit And his Seven Books of the Conquest of Alexander the Great and Eight which treat particularly of India may suffice to give him a Rank amongst the chiefest Historians I shall not insist on the description which he hath made of the Euxin Sea and the Countries which border on it nor on that of the Erythrean Sea which comprehends part of the Indian Coasts the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea because they are rather peices of Geography than History Rhamusius observes that many would distinguish this Arrian who in his Eighth Book describes the Voyage of Nearchus Admiral to Alexander from the River Indus to the Persian Gulf from him who is the Author of Periplus or the description of the Erythrean Ocean The difference of Stile whereon those that debaâ—e this matter establish their opinion is but a slender foundation for all agree if it must be that there were Two Arrians that they both lived in the time of the Antonines and that Prince of Geographers Claudins Ptolemaeus Alexandrinus But that which the same Rhamusius notes on this occasion is very considerable That though Arrian hath often followed the opinion of Marinus Tyrius whom Ptolemy does alwaies reject yet it appears that his is a better and more just situation of many parts of the East-Indies than that which Ptolemy has left us as is manifest by many Modern Relations exhibited thereof by the Portuguese It is certain that Arrian's merit recommended him so much to the Emperors of his time that they advanced him to the Consular dignity He was a Native of Nicomedia a City of Bithynia where he made his Studies and became a Priest of Ceres and Proserpine as he himself reports in those Eight Books of his Bithynicks mentioned by Photius which began the History of his Country at the fabulous times and continued it to the death of the last Monarch of Nicomedia who left the Romans to be the Heirs of his Crown He pretends to have writ this History of Alexander the Great by Divine inspiration and that he did it under the Title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and with the like number of Seven Books as Xenophon chose to describe the Conquests of Cyrus and some observe that he so affected to follow that Author that he hath perfectly imitated him in his Stile and many other respects and is therefore called the Young or the Second Xenophon He declares in his Preface that his Relations are by him delivered on the faith of Aristobulus the Son of Aristobulus and Ptolemaeus Lagus who accompanied Alexander in all his Enterprises which were the more credible for that besides the Royal Quality of the latter they did neither of them publish their writings till after the death of Alexander without any other obligation than a real desire of discovering the truth of his Actions And yet our Author professes in his description of the death of Callisthenes the Philosopher that it was diversly reported by them though they were both near the person of Alexander when the process was made against that unfortunate person Aristobulus saies he was led in Chains after the Army till he died of a Sickness and the other affirms that after having been exposed to Torture he was Stangled for having been unhappily involved in the conspiracy of Hermolaus so difficult it is to know the truth of actions performed and there is nothing more certain than that one and the same action is many times variously related by those that saw it because of the divers respects and interests wherewith most men are preoccupied But notwithstanding these particular defects which Arrian could not redress his History is the more esteemable because those of Aristobulus and Ptolomy are not to be found moreover there are many places in the History of Quintus Curtius which have need to be reformed by the Text of Arrian for when he writes in his Sixth Book that Alexander parted from the Batavians doubtless it ought to be from the City of Ecbatana as it is expressed in Arrian And the voiages to the East-Indies made these last Hundred and Fifty years shew that he has better represented the Houses or Cabbins of certain Ichthyophages built of the bones of Whales and other Fishes than Quintus Curtius who saies they are made of Shells and the excrements of the Sea conchas purgamenta Maris But there are some places also in Arrians History which the other doth very well explain and I shall not determine which of them has been most lucky in expressing the name of Alexanders Phisitian whom Arrian calls Critodemus and Quintus Curtius Critobulus for Plutarch makes no mention of either and Pliny when he commends the excellency of that Phisitian who drew the Arrow out of Alexanders Fathers eie without disfiguring his Face nameing him Critobulus makes it to be reasonably supposed that his Son made use of the same Phisitian and consequently that Curtius did not mistake in the name Photius commends Arrian as equal to the best Historians his narration is alwaies agreeable because it is both short and intelligible and he never discomposes his Readers with tedious digressions and such Parentheses as may obscure the sense of his sentences And one cannot easily find in all his History any one such Miraculous event as might render it suspected if you will except some predictions of Aristander and the story of Two new Springs which appeared near the River of Oxus as soon as Alexander was there Encamped The pattern which Arrian proposed to imimitate permits him not to elevate his Stile to a Sublime degree of Oratory because the Eloquence of Xenophon is not of that order but his Phrase is mingled with such excellent figures that by retaining all the clearness of him that he imitates his Stile has nothing in it either too flatly low or too highly Towering He occasionally uses someties oblique Orations and sometimes direct ones
that no way of writing is more instructive and apter in that respect to contenâ— the mind of the Readers We learn from Suidas that his History by an excellency of Title was sometimes termed Basilick or Royal. And his Roman History which he writ in Twenty Four Books from Aeneas and the Taking of Troy to the Foundation of Rome contains in the first thereof the Goverment of its Seven Kings as may be conjectured by the Text of Photius Florus his Epitome is indeed composed of Wars and actions seperated one from the other but Appian has represented them more intirely how long soever any of them endured whereas the Other confounds his relations in the mixtures of them as in the First Second and Third Punick Wars he shuffles together all the affairs of the Romans with the Gaules Ligurians Macedonians and many other People with whom they had contest in the interval of those Two cessations of Arms which happened betwixt the Carthaginians and them But this favourable judgment of Photius in Appians behalf does not restrain Bodin from accusing both his memory and judgment in the matter of his History for this bold Censurer asserts that the Romans did never lend their Wives one to the other according to the custome of the Parthians and Lacedemonians and imputes therein too much credulity to Appian Though Plutarch hath written the same thing affirming that Cato freely sent his Wife to Hortensius the Oratour to raise of her an issue to him nor is the Law of Romulus or that against Adulterers mentioned by Aulus Gellius repugnant to this practise as Bodin unadvisedly imagins He taxes him likewise to have made Caesar say in his Second Book of the Civil Wars of Rome certain expressions which were not uttered by him but Pompey in a threatning speech which he used to the Senate when he put his hand on his Sword and told them if they would not grant him the things he desired that Sword should purchase them but this may be ascribed to a failure of memory to which all mankind is subject as also another error which he notes of him in mistaking Calphurnia for Pompeia that Wife of Caesar which was vitiated in the Temple called by the Romans the Temple of the good Goddess But Sigonius is more indecent who arraigns him of levity and many omissions without alledging any proof or instance thereof And Scaliger is not less bold in the censure that he makes of him in his Animadversions on the History of Eusebins where he saies he would appear to be a Child in the business of History were it not that an infinity of matters are added to his Treatise of the Wars of Syria Yet though I approve not of these reflections I presume one may truly impure it to him as a fault in all his works that he too much flatters the Romans alwaies making the right as well as the advantage to be on their side to the prejudice of all other Nations in the world with whom they were concerned as well as of his own Native Country And we may add to this that he often attributes to himself the labours of others transcribing many Paragraphs and intire Sentences of Polybius Plutarch and other Authors more Antient and inserting them in his Book without citing their Texts to render them that acknowledgment which is due to their merit on such occasions And some affirm that he in like manner transcribed the greatest part of the Commentaries of Augustus which contained as Suetonins relates the principal actions of his life This is indeed a sort of theft not to be allowed Deprehendi in furto malle quam mutuum reddere As Pliny saies to Vespatian on the same subject and Scaliger on this occasion calls him alienorum laborum fucum in resemblance to a certain sort of Flies which nourish themselves with the honey of others I have read in some Author that the Rhodians when they had a purpose to honour the memory of any well deserving person by having his Statue erected in some publick place were used only to take the head from some of the old Statues in their City and put a new one in the place of it of the Figure of him they designed to represent Those that steal from the writings of others do the same thing as those Rhodians did but in a more ridiculous fashion for by putting their names to other mens Works hoping thereby to acquire honour to themselves they ordinarily instead thereof reap only shame and contempt for so sordid a practise This matter calls to my remembrance an abuse which was put upon Diomedes by his friend Alcibiades to whom he committed the charge of conveying his Horses to the Olympick games for by changing the inscription which belonged to them and making them to run in the name of Alcibiades he took to himself the honour of the victory they acquired which was not of small consequence at that time and to complaet his deceit was so unjust to retain them to himself without ever making restitution to Diomedes who trusted him therewith What greater treachery can there be in respect to letters than to ascribe to our selves the productions of others when instead of yeilding the glory to those by whose thoughts we have profited we would have those very conceptions pass for the pure inventions of our own wit The figurative expression of Plagiary which the Latins give to those that are guilty of a Crime so abject and odious sufficiently denotes the Abomination they had for it as if by the word Plagium it were to be understood that such offences could not be expiated but by a Whip Vitruvius in the Preface to his Seventh Book of Architecture after having asserted that such of whom we now treat are to be punished as impious and infamous he informs us with what severity and Ignominy Ptolomy punished some Poets that had been so impudent to recite in a publick Assembly in Alexandria certain Verses stoln by them out of different Authors and to expose them as their own whereby they had carried the prize which the King proposed to be given them that best performed by the suffrage of Six of the Judges and all the People if the Seventh who was called Aristophanes that had been more conversant in Books than the other had not discovered the abuse preferring a Poet before them that was the least applauded of all the rest but one that had pronounced nothing in the Assembly that was not of his own composition Theocritus boasted in one of his Epigrams with a kind of assurance that he never was of the number of those that ascribed to themselves the Verses of other men but I am not ignorant of the excuses that many are forced to make in his behalf for that very assertion They tell us that Clemens Alexandrinus and Eusebius in his Evangelical preparation report that the Greeks did not only take from the Hebrews that which is best in their
that as he was displeased with the Government of Alexander Severus he for that reason arraigned the Qualities of his Mother or rather that in a mixture of virtues and vices wherewith Mammea was taxed he would suppress neither of them to acquit himself the better of the duty of an Historian which last I take to be the most equitable opinion Though we consider Herodian in this place but as an Historian Suidas informs us that he writ many other Books which are not preserved to our time He was Originally a Grammarian of Alexandria and lived in the Three Hundredth year of Christ the Son of one Apollonius surnamed Difficilis of the same profession and perhaps it is for this reason that Ammianus Marcellinus calls him Artium minutissimum sciscitatorem However he passed the best part of his life at Rome in the Courts of the Emperors where he had the means to inform himself with that curiosity which appears in his writings of many excellent particulars which are no where else to be found REFLECTIONS UPON THE HISTORY OF ZOSIMUS THEY who with Sigonius make no distinction between the Historian Zosimus and Two or Three others of the same name commit in my opinion an inexcusable fault For Suidas names Two the First an Alexandrian that had amongst other his Works writ the life of Plato and the Second of Gaza or Ascalon who commented upon the writings of Demosthenes and Lysias in the time of the Emperor Anastasius We ought not therefore to confound this last Zosimus with the Historian who as Evagrius expressly affirms in his invective against him lived under Theodosius the younger Neither do I know why we should take the Alexandrian for the same Historian their writings being quite different and the Quality of Count and Advocate of the Treasury wherewith the last was dignified was not attributed to the other by Suidas who gives him only the Title of Philosopher Balthasar Bonifacius would have it that the Historian Zosimus wrot a Chymical Book of the Transmutation of Metals which he heard was kept in that excellent Library Royal of Paris But he is mistaken in his conjecture for the Manuscript he mentions which I have examined is of one Zosimus who stiles himself Panopolitanus and is indeed a counterfeit name a practise usual among Chymists who delight so to deceive one another by writings which they ascribe falsly sometimes to Democritus sometimes to Zosimus and sometimes to others to give them the better Authority But the History of Zosimus has no resemblance to those compositions If we may believe Photius it may have some affinity with Eunapius his History of the Caesars which Zosimus is said to have meerly abridged so great a likeness there was between one and the other except in those places where Stilico was concerned whose reputation Zosimus did not defame as Eunapius did whereof we might more particularly relate if the Venetians had made publick the Manuscript which we are assured they have of Eunâ—pius his History Zosimus as Evagrius reports left in his History in six Books whereof the first comprehends all the Caesars from Augustus to Probus and was by the Author continued to Diocletian but the matter is so contracted and succinct that nothing thing can be more the Five other Books are larger especially when he comes to the time of Theodosius the Gâ—eat and of his Children Arcadius and Honorius because he then writ of what he had seen He goes but a little beyond the Siege which Alaricus laid to Rome and the occasions of division which some Sowed between Honorius and him And indeed we have but the beginning of the Sixth Book the end being lost But I know not upon what Authority Sigonius builds to assert that there was a Seventh Book of Zosimus his History which was also lost since Photius mentions but Six and no other person saies any thing of a Seventh We hinted before that there was an Invective of Evagrius against Zosimus which may be seen more at large in Nicephorus Callistus Photius saies indeed that he barks like a Dog at those of our Christian belief And few Christian Authors till Leunclavius who translated his History into Latin made any Apology for him To say the truth although this learned German defends him very pertinently in many things showing that they were to blame to require of a Pagan Historian as Zosimus was other thoughts than those he exposed or that he should refrain from discovering the vices of the first Christian Emperors since he also had not concealed their virtues Nevertheless it may be said that in many places he expressed more Animosity in that behalf than the Laws of History do permit Yet I think he had reason to reproach Constantin of that imposition of Chrysargyr or glisteting Gold which Anastasius afterwards removed and that his duty obliged him to arraign his luxury and prodigality nor was it a fault to have accused him of having made his wife Fausta to be smothered in too hot a Stove after he had commanded through Jealousie his own Son Crispus to be put to death Perhaps Eusebius writing in this Constantine's time or at the latest in that of his Son Constantius durst not publish such bold truths as it happens to those who expose any relations wherein the Governing powers are interessed Nor is it unknown that Constantine committed several other actions worthy of blame He repealed from Exile the Arch Haeretick Arrius to gratify his Sister Constantia and banisht S t Athanasius to Tryers to the great prejudice of Christianity But nevertheless Zosimus cannot be excused who as much as in him lay made an ill interpretation of all the actions of this Prince who made himself a Christian if you believe him only because he was told that Paganism had no faculty to wash away so many crimes as he had committed and therefore he resolved by the advice of a certain Aegyptian to imbrace the Christian Religion which promised an absolution of all sorts of offences But this assumption is as if Zosimus had penetrated into the inward thoughts of Constantine and all those graces with which his Soul might be filled by the liberality of Heaven Moreover when he speaks of the differences he had with his Brother in Law Licinius he laies all the blame on him as one that never kept his word And he is not content to say that Constantin caused him to be strangled in Thessalonica violating thereby his faith given to the Wise of this unhappy person but it was his usual Stile to take hold of all occasions to blast his reputation to the world And yet it is not on the Subject of Constantin alone that his passion is seen against Christianity He attributes the fall of the Roman Empire to the contempt of the Ancient Pagan Religion and principally to their neglecting in Diocletian's time the celebration of the secular Plays And to the misfortunes which happened to Gratian he
he speaks like the Christians of his time But there are other passages in his writings so contrary to that doctrine and the opinion of those that believe he is an Ethnick is founded upon such strong considerations that I cannot but yeild to it For not insisting upon his seeming in many places to esteem Fortune a great Goddess and not minding the strange Antimosity which he shewed against Justinian grounded partly upon the interest of Religion that place alone in his First Book of the Wars of the Goths where he speaks of the Ambassadors which the Emperor sent to the Bishop of Rome to reconcile the different opinions of Christians is sufficient to undeceive those who considered him as a Christian Historian I will not trouble my self saies he to relate the Subject of such controversies although it is not unknown to me because I hold it a meer folly to covet to comprehend the Divine Nature and understand what God is Human wit knows not the things here below how then can it be satisfied in the search after Divinity I led alone therefore such vain matter and which the credulity of man only causes to be respected contenting my self with acknowledging that there is one God full of bounty who governs us and whose power stretches over this whole Universe Let every one therefore believe what he thinks fit whether he be a Priest and tyed to Divine Worship or a man of a private and secular condition How could he more plainly deride all our Theology and the zeal of the Fathers of the Church who were then busied in suppressing the Heresie of the Arrians in what relates to the Second person of the Trinity His discourse expresses him to be a perfect Deist who thought as many other Philosophers have done and amongst the rest that Melissus in Hesychius that one could determin nothing of God but rashly and that it was impossible to have any knowledg of him How can it be imagined that such a man was a Christian who founded his whole belief of Heavenly matters upon such erronious maxims If we add to this the marks of Pagan Superstition which appear in all his books we shall be hardly able to distinguish him from the most profane of the Gentils The Tale he tells in the first book of the Persian War of the Artifice used by some of the Magi to make One Arsaces confess the truth is of this strain They covered one half of a borded Floor with Persian Earth and the other with Armenian and both of them conjured in such a sort that when Arsaces was upon the last half which was that covered with his country Earth he confessed all that he had denied upon the other In the following Book he relates that some military Ensigns turned of themselves from the West to the East presaging thereby the calamity wherein the Inhabitants of Antioch fell He makes King Genzerich in the first Book of the War of the Vandals to understand by the flight of an Eagle upon the head of Martianus that he should be one day Emperor And he reports that Attila ready to quit the Siege of Aquileia staied his enterprise upon seeing a Stork carry its young ones out of the City And in the same Book he relates one of his dreams which was the most vain that sleep could form and yet to testify how much he relyed on it he confesses that nothing but that made him resolve on his Sea Voyage with Belisarius Nor are his Writings concerning the War with the Goths less exempt from such like superstition wherein he makes a Jew foretel by Thirty Hogs the ruin of the Goths in Italy and Constantin bury in the chief Market-place of the City which bears his name that renowned Palladium of Aeneas purposely transported thither from Rome Which wild relations have no conformity with the purity of Christian Religion But since we have mentioned something of that ill will Procopius bore to Justinian which he made so visible in his Anecdota it is expedient to examin that work a little because it is the place from whence those who pretend to defame this Emperor have alwaies collected their detractions If we make it apparent that Procopius was much to blame in writing so defamatory a Satyr against his Soveraign to gratify his passion we shall at the same time render those aspersions inconsiderable which others have cast upon his reputation The word Anecdota imports that it was a secret work and that the Author thereof had no mind to be known He is judged to have composed it in the Two and Thirtieth year of the Empire of Justinian and left it imperfect as well because he repented that he was so far transported as for the satisfaction he received in his Stipend which was then paid him and many other favours which he obtained He had complained in several places before that one that the Salaries of such serviceable men as he were detained and it was an insupportable grief unto him to see himself excluded from those honorable places and imployments above Thirty years to which others were admitted whose desert he thought no way equal to his Lastly having been Belisarius his Secretary during all the Wars of Persia Affrick and Italy as it was before mentioned he was received into the number of the Senators attained unto the Quality of Illustrious which was given to few men and to compleat his dignity the Emperor made him Prefect of new Rome where all offices were inferiour to his In the mean time his book of Anecdota remained Suidas makes mention of it and they who for divers considerations have been animated aganst the memory of Justinian made use of it and alledged the matters in it to his prejudice it was not long since printed with Expositions and Comments as bad as the Text they explain others besides my self have already indeavoured to confute the absurdities of it but it shall suffice to shoâ— summarily that all which Procopius has writ of History will prove ridiculous if never so little credit be given to the Calumnies of this piece He protests in the beginning of the First Book of the Persian War that he cannot be reasonably reproached of writing any thing for favour or to oblige the undeserving nor of refraining to speak the truth to spare a friend and acknowledges in the same place that as Eloquence is the object of Rhetorick and Fable that of Poetry the knowledg of truth is the only end of History After this declaration what can be said in his excuse for having represented Justinian in his History as a mighty and most virtuous Prince and in this Libel rendred him the most infamous and vicious of men The fear of offending the Soveraign Powers which is thereupon alledged cannot qualify such a shameful diversity nor reconcile so manifest a contradiction And Procopius is at the same time convinced of having trespassed against the two most important Laws of History whereof one
is said from whence many draw a strong proof of his infidelity The most common opinion also founded as well on this passage as on some others lists him in the number of the Gentils although he never railed any more than Procopius against Christianity as most Pagan Historians did in imitation of Zosimus The time wherein these Two lived not favouring Paganism is perhaps the only cause He himself declares in his Preface that Murina a City of Asia was the place of his Nativity which he distinguishes from another of Thrace bearing the same name His Father was called Memnonius and he professed the Law pleading at the Judicatories of Smyrna in Quality of an Advocate as Suidas reports whence he had the Surname of Scholastiâ—us because the places where the Roman Laws were taught then went under the name of Schools as they are even at this time in some places called He confesses that Poetry was the Mistris of his first affections which led him to write many small Poems in Heroick Verse that he published under the Title of Daphnicks And there are certain of his Epigrams collected by divers hands whereof I believe many are seen in the Greek Anthology under his name And this renders his Stile so agreeable and Florid having undertook History by the advice of Eutychianus the First Secretary of State as approaching in this respect to and bordering as he tearms it upon Poetry Sigonius and Verderius were of another mind concerning his writing and that very different from this opinion listing him amongst the lowest and impurest writers But they were not only mistaken in Agathias his Stile but have been accused for several other rash judgments so that I have been constrained many times hitherto to follow some more equitable censures than theirs He began not to write till after the death of Justinian in the Reign of Justin the Second as he himself declares in his Preface beginning his History where Procopius left And I doubt not but that great Statesman Eutychianus who put him upon so high an Enterprise and who was his intimate friend furnished him with many rare pieces and Memorials of consequence to make him so successful as he has been There are Letters and Direct Orations in all his Books as that of Narses in the Two First of Aetes in the Third of the Deputies of Colchos in the Fourth of Belisarius in the Fifth And not content to penetrate into the Councels and to discover the principal causes of events he frequently gives his judgment thereupon and contrary to the custom of Xenophon and Caesar who never declare what they think of things he delivers his opinion of matters and therein imitates some great Authors who were not of the mind of these we mention Although Agathias highly commends Procopius he does not refrain from following opinions very contrary to his and even reproves him sometimes for having given unreasonable conjectures of which there are many examples the most considerable whereof is that which he said to the advantage of the French in his First Book against the infamous reproach which Procopius had cast upon them of being the most unfaithful of men Agathias on the contrary after he had shown that they were very polite and civil as they who already made use of the Roman Laws almost in all things adds that they were to be esteemed for nothing so much as the exact justice they observed without exception their Kings themselves being not exempted from it whereby they lived in an admirable Union Certainly besides that justice is a transcendent virtue and which comprehending all others cannot subsist without fidelity nothing is more contrary to it than breach of word of Faith and consequently Agathias could not more reasonably contradict Procopius nor make better amends for the wrong he had done the French Nation It is observable that notwithstanding these Two Historians had such opposite thoughts in what concerned us they agreed in what related to the greatness and independence of our Kings Procopius acknowledges in the Third Book of the Gothish War that They and the Roman Emperors were the only Monarchs in the World who had the priviledge to stamp their Images on golden Coin so that even the King of Persia who had such glorious Titles durst not attempt to do the like Agathias also speaking of King Theodebert saies that he was so much offended to see that the Emperor Justinian assumed among other Titles that of Francious as if he had conquered the French and held some right of superiority over them that for this consideration alone he resolved to go and subdue Thrace lay Siege to Constantinople and overthrow the Roman Empire whereof that City was then the Capital I know that the same Agathias calls that design rash presupposing that Theodebert would have perished in so bold or to use his tearm in so furious an Enterprise Nevertheless he confesses that this King had brought it to such a pass that if he had not been killed as he was hunting a wild Bull nothing had retarded him in it and God knows whither the event would have answered the conjectures of Our Historian But we may say that these are unreproachable testimonies of the absolute power of the French Monarchy which never acknowledged any Superiour but God and according to the words of a good Gaule to Alexander any thing but Heaven to be above it To return to the reflections of Agathias very different from those of Procopius which seem to have the force of argument wholly on their side we will examine a very remarkable place of his Fourth Book Where he cannot endure that Procopius not content to say that Arcadius left his Son Theodosius and Empire to the protection of Isdigerdes King of Persia which no Author worthy of credit ever writ before him should moreover praise the action as if it were full of prudence and add that although Arcadius was not very discreet in other things yet in this he shewed wisdom and demeaned himself very prudently This saies Agathias is judging of things by their success as the vulgar alwaies do but weighing them with reason it will be found that a Soveraign never did any thing more blame-worthy than this Declaration of Arcadius for he seemed in it to make a Wolfe Gardian of a Sheep trusting his Son and State in the hands of their greatest Enemy through a confidence which though it is sometimes tolerable in private men was not sufferable when the safety of a young Monarch lay at stake and the preservation of a Crown by so much the more envied as it pretended to give Laws to all others Methinks every one ought to yeild to this opinion of Agathias and conclude with him that in the event of this Tuition happy as it appeared there is more reason to admire the goodness and integrity of the King of Persia than the wisdom of the Emperor Arcadius Amongst many very remarkable things found in the Five Books of the History
Livy please themselves with a belief that this was that which Pollio found fault with in his History when he was offended that it had too much Patavinity I rather build upon that sense which Quintilian gives the word who in all probability knew in his time the true signification of it He quotes it in the Chapter of the virtues and vices of Oration where he remarks that Vectius was reproached of having imployed too many Sabine Tuscan and Praenestine words in his writings so that saies he Lucilius thereupon laughed at his language as Pollio did at the Patavinity of Livy Wherefore after an interpretation so express of such a considerable Author in this respect as Quintilian I should be loath to wrest the signification of that word which the Courtiers of Rome reproved in the History we speak of to any other sense than that of Stile and Phrase Justin informs us that Trogus Pompeius censured Livy's Orations for being Direct and too long which many attribute to some jealousy that might arise between Two Authors of the same time and profession Quintilian observed that Livy begins his History with an Hexameter Verse and Mascardi in the Fifth Treatise of his Art of History rehearses many others which he found there but there is no prose where some do not occur if looked after with too much curiosity The same Mascardi taxes him in another place of having been defective in many important circumstances which we read in Appian and which he ought not to have omitted I have already shown in a precedent Section how Seneca the Rhetorician accuses Livy of having suffered himself to be swayed by envy when he gave Thucydides the preference to Salust I here add in opposition to Vossius his opinion that although Seneca the Philosopher conferred the Title of most Eloquent upon Livy he does likewise reprove him in the same place for having attributed to any man greatness of wit without goodness believing them to be inseparable Qualities And in another place on the subject of the Great Library of Alexandria he blames him for commeding the care of those Kings who founded it and yet pretending that they did it rather in a vain ostentation of glory than a true affection for books But such Stoical Austerities do not much wound the reputation of an Historian who speaks according to the common sense of things and is not obliged to follow all the opinions of Philosophers But if Antoninus his Itinerary such as Annius of Viterbum exposed was true it would be a hard matter to excuse Livy of a great fault which he accuses him of in speaking of Fanus Volturna which was his suppressing of the most gallant actions of the Tuscans whereof he envyed them the glory But it is of importance to know that the impudent supposition of Annius in this respect appears manifestly in the good editions of that Itinerary which we have from Simler and Surita wherein nothing like that is read because it is a slanderous addition of the Impostour who soisted in this corrupt relation with that Comment whereof we have so often complained already But I find it a harder task to answer the zeal of Gregory the Great who would not suffer Livy's Works in any Christian Library because of his Pagan Superstition which I remember I read in the Preface of Casaubon upon Polybius And indeed it cannot be denyed that his History is filled with many Prodigies which denote a great adherence to Idolatry Sometimes an Ox spoke one while a Mule ingendered another time Men Women and Cocks and Hens changed their Sex There are often showers of Flint-stones Flesh Chalk Blood and Milk and the Statues of the Gods be mentioned to speak shed tears and swet pure blood How many Ghosts are made to appear Armies ready to ingage in Heaven with Lakes and Rivers of Blood and the like So that no Historian ever reported so much of the vulgar's vain belief of that time as he But we should condemn almost all the books of the Gentils if our Religion received any prejudice from such trifles One might moreover represent to Pope Gregory that Livy exposes all those and some others of the same nature no otherwise than as fond opinions of the vulgar and uncertain rumours which he derides often protesting that although he is obliged to report them because they made such an important impression upon the minds of most men of that time and had a mighty influence on the greatest affairs yet there was nothing therein but vanity and imposture Some modern Authors have been found such as Bodin Benius and others like them who presumed to censure Livy's Stile for being too Poetical in some places too prolix in others and often unlike it self But these are rash judgments and worthier of pitty than consideration chiefly in respect to those that give them Yet the like cannot be said of Budaeus and Henricus Glareanus that accuse him of injustice to the Gaules in all his narrations where he treats of them and their Wars I know they who have indeavoured to defend him from this imputation reply in his behalf that if the powerful consideration of Augustus his Protector could not hinder him from speaking honourably not only of Pompey but even of Cassius and Brutus as Cremutius Cordus testifies in Tacitus it is improbable that he should refrain from saying the truth in what concerned the Gaules out of a particular Animosity to render himself more acceptable to the Romans But it is certain he was borne away herein with the common tide of opinion and that there was no Latin Historian of that time who did not as well as he use all Nations ill to oblige the Italian either through flattery or ignorance taking their relations from the reports of the victorious who suppressed all the memorials of others So general a fault nevertheless ought not to hinder us from esteeming Livy in particular as one of the first men of his Country He was of Padua and not of Aponus as Sigonius imagined because of a verse in Martial which puts one place for another by a figure ordinary enough to Poets His residence at Rome and the favour of Augustus afforded him the means to have all the instructions necessary for the compiling of his History He composed one part of it in that Capital of the Empire and the other at Naples whither he retired from time to time to digest his matter with less disturbance After that Emperors death he returned to the place of his Birth where he was received with unparalell'd honours and applauses by the Paduans and there he dyed in the Fourth year of the Reign of Tiberius and the very day of the Calends of January which was also Ovids last day according to the observation of Eusebius in his Chronicles His life was lately delivered unto us by Jacobus Philippus Thomasinus the Paduan Bishop who omitted nothing that a Paduan
CORNELIUS TACITUS IN all the impressions of Cornelius Tacitus his Annals are printed before his History which is understood to be because they have a farther beginning treating of the last daies of Augustus and proceeding unto the end of Nero's Reign whose last Twelve years are nevertheless wanting whereas the books of his History seem to follow one another from the Epoche of the death of that Tyrant to the happy Government of Nerva and Trajan And yet there is no doubt but Tacitus first composed his History as being nearer to his own time for he quotes a place in the Eleventh of his Annals to which he refers his Reader concerning what he had already writ of the actions of Domitian which were not by him mentioned any where but in the Books of his History Of this History there remains to us but Five Books and Lipsius guesses that there are Ten lost For if they reached from Galba to Nerva and Trajan which includes at least a space of Twenty one years it is probable the greatest part of them are wanting seeing the Five we have comprehend little more than the occurrences of one year Their Stile is more large and florid than that of the Annals which are composed in a close contracted Phrase but Tacitus his Eloquence appears every where in his grave way of writing which has something of that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or sublimity in it from which the Rhetâ—â—icians have observed that Demosthenes never straved Amongst so many Censurers who find every one something thing to say against the works of this Historian none are more excusable than those who only complain of his obscurity For as he often leaves his Narrations imperfect he is sometimes found less intelligible And the faults of the Copies and depravation thereby of his sense in many places contributes much to render his matter difficult to be understood but where the Paragraphs are intire and uncorrupted his meaning is easily discovered Howsoever it be it is no wonder if Tacitus having imitated Thucydides and both followed Demosthenes retained something of that roughness and austerity which is observed in the writings of those Two Graecians and which all the Ancients accounted as a virtue so far is it from deserving to be imputed as a fault to him that should propose them to himself for imitation And as some Wines are recommended to our palates by a little bitterness that is in them and many persons find that a dusky and obscure light in Churches in most sutable to their exercise of devotion so others conceive the obscurity of an Author mixed with a little roughness of Stile is rather to be esteemed than otherwise because it disposes the mind to attention and elevates and transports it to notions which it would not arrive at in a more easy composition As for those who were so confident to pretend that Tacitus writ ill Latin I judge them more worthy of compassion for that extravagance than any solid answer Yet Two great Civilians were of that opinion Alciat who maintained that the Phrase of Paulus Jovius was preferable to that of this Ancient Historian which he said was full of Thornes and Ferret who condemn'd his Stile as being in his judgment not Roman enough If ever men were absurd in censures doubtless these were and I do affirm against such unreasonable opinions that apparently Tacitus makes the least Groome or Cook in narratives speak better Latin than either Ferret or Alciat they are indeed learned in the Law but very bad judges of the Roman Eloquence For though Tacitus has not writ like Caesar or Cicero that is no argument of his bad performance Eloquence is not uniform there are divers kinds of it and it is not unknown to the Learned that Latin flourished in all of them differently till the Reign of the Emperor Adrian who was not so Ancient as Tacitus to whom the greatest Orators of his time Freely yielded the Palm of History And Pliny the younger who was one of the most considerable amongst them declared in many of his Epistles that he esteemed Tacitus one of the most Eloquent of his Age. In the Twentieth Epistle of the first Book he makes him Judge of a dispute he had about the Eloquence to be used in pleading at the Bar against a learned man that maintained the most concise to be alwaies the best And in another place he describes to one of his friends the Pomp of Virginius Rufus his Funerals observing his last and principal happiness to consist in the praises of the Consul Cornelius Tacitus who made his funeral Oration and who was the most eloquent of that time laudatus est à Correlio Tacito Nam hic supremus felicitati ejus cumulus accessit laudator eloquentissimus When he imparts to another called Arrian the success of a great cause against a Proconsul of Africa accused of robbing the publique Treasury he saies that Cornelius Tacitus made a replication to the person that defended him wherein his Eloquence and gravity inseparable from his discourse were admired respondit Cornelius Tacitus eloquentissimè quod eximium orationi ejus inest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And when the same Pliny designed to provide a publick Preceptor for the City of Coma in his Native Country he intreated Tacitus as one to whom all the great Wits of the Age applyed themselves to recommend one to him to exercise that charge I mention not the descriptions he makes him in two different Letters of the death of the Elder Pliny his Uncle and of the burning of Vesuvins which he was so desirous that the History of Tacitus should describe that he conjures him elsewhere not to forget his name in it declaring his passion for it in terms which I think not unfit to rehearse in this place Auguror nec me fallit augurium Historias tuas immortales futuras quo magis illis ingenue fatebor inseri cupio Nam si esse nobis curae solet ut facies nostra ab optimo quoque artifice exprimatur nonne debemus optare ut operibus nostris similis tui scriptor praedicatorque contingat But the place wherein Pliny shews most the esteem which he and all Italy had of Tacitus is that of another Letter where he declares that from his youth upwards he had chosen him for a pattern of Eloquence from amongst the great number of excellent Orators which were then in Rome And because we learn precisely from that place the age of those two men I will again very willingly insert it in its native language Equidem adolescentulus cùm tu jam fama gloriaque floreres te sequi tibi longo sed proximus intervallo essse haberi concupiscebam Et erant multa clarissima ingenia sed tu mihi it a similitudo naturae ferebat maxime imitabilis maxime imitandus videbaris There is no need to seek other proofs of Tacitus his reputation in his own time which
short time shew them the light had said a truth As to what relates particularly to Justin he made his Epitome according to the most common opinion under Antoninus surnamed Pius to whom it is thought he dedicated it in his Preface I know the passage wherein that Emperor is mentioned is diversly interpreted and some have been perswaded that he wrote after the Establishment of the Roman Empire in Constantinople because of a place in the eighth book where he speaks of the Soveraign power of Greece But that may admit other interpretations without a necessity of making him live two hundred years later than he did and in an Age which produced nothing so polite or elegant as all we have of this Author is Yet it is a greater error to confound him with Justin the Martyr as one Martin ' a Polander did in his Chronicle For though these Two Justins were Contemporary the manner how the Historian treats the Israelites in his six and thirtieth book where he will have Moses to be the Son of Joseph and the Latter a very Great Magician shews that he was of the Pagan belief And Justin the Martyr never wrote but in Greek nor did Eusebius S t Hierome or Photius rank the Epitomy of Trogus Pompeius amongst his Works Though S t Hierome indeed quotes something of it in his Preamble upon Daniel And no Author more Ancient than that Father of the Church spoke of Justin the Historian He was not like to use Direct Orations when he whom he epitomised had condemned them in Salust and Livy as we have already elsewhere mentioned Which appears in the eight and thirtieth book where he rehearses in an Oblique form that long Oration of Mithridates to his Souldiers to animate them against the Romans And that of Agathocles in the twenty second book pronounced as soon as he arrived at Africa to incourage his Troops then terrified by the obscurity of an Eclipse of the Sun is no less considerable than that of Mithridates though it be shorter But he is censured by Some for introducing a few Digressions in a work so close and short as the History he writes The first is found in the beginning of his second book where the Scythians and the Egyptians have a debate on the point of honour in what relates to their Antiquity both of them pretending to have sufficient reasons to call themselves the most Ancient People of the Earth The second is in the twentieth book on the subject of Pythagoras whose birth voyages learning virtues and death he describes without forgetting the misfortune which happened to his Disciples whereof threescore were burnt in Croton and the rest exiled Whence one may conclude that all sort of Digressions are not to be condemned when so eminent an Author as Justin who contracted into so little a space the History of the Transactions of two thousand years which are reckoned from Ninus the Founder of the Assyrian Monarchy to the Emperor Augustus made no difficulty sometimes to divert himself this way upon an agreeable subject But though Justin's manner of writing is so excellent that it was thought worthy of Augustus his Age rather than of that of the Antonines his elegancy of Stile cannot atone for his mistakes in relation Pererius has convinced him of many errors in reference to the Jews in his Commentaries upon Daniel And Vopiscus places him in the rank of Historians who could not avoid lying but one may say that his associating him with Livy Salust and Tacitus renders that accusation very light That which he cannot be excused in is Chronology where he was so much mistaken that one ought not to follow him alwaies And that which makes his fault the greater is that the reputation of Trogus Pompeius and the esteem which all the Ancients had for him obliges men to think that those misreckonings in the sequel of times are rather of the Copy than the Original or of the Abreviator rather than the Primitive Author Which is the ordinary judgment of those who have laboured most in the best Editions of Justin I Should have ended here according to my first intention not finding after Justin and the time of the Antonines any Latin Historian amongst the Ancients whence one might draw any profitable instruction to compose a History or whose works might merit a serious reflection unless it should be absolutely to condemn the exposition and ill conduct of them They who are usually called the Writers of the August History Spartianus Wlcatius Gallicanus Trebellius Pollio Julius Capitolinus Lampridius and Vopiscus have nothing in them contrary to this proposition or otherwise considerable except it be that they teach us things of many Emperors whereof we hardly learn any thing elsewhere though indeed Vopiscus is the least faulty of them Trebellius Pollio may be put in the second order Spartianus Lampridius and Wlcatius are incomparably more faulty and more negligent than the others and Julius Capitolinus is the worst of all by the advice of those who have taken the pains to examin them But it is very strange that a whole Age and more should pass away from that of the Antonines to Diocletian under whom all those before mentioned did write without the appearance of one good Historian in the Roman Empire who might deserve to have his works descend to us Neither will Sextus Aurelius Victor who came a little after merit a better esteem whose abridged History contains but a word of each Emperor's Life from Augustus to Julian nor would it be any advantage to him if we should confound in one the three who bore the same name of Sextus Victor to Theodosius the Great And as for Eutropius who dedicates almost at the same time his Historical Breviary to the Emperor Valens and whom Suidas calls an Italian Sophister I shall say little of him as having nothing comparable in his writings to those of the celebrated Authors whose works we have examined There remains only Ammianus Marcellinus whom I cannot with a good conscience decline he having compiled a just body of History and by whom I will finish this Treatise for we cannot extend it to the Age of Justinian as we have done that of the Greek Historians unless we should introduce Jornandes and Cassiodorus indiscreetly mingling the barbarity of the Goths with the purity and adress of the best Authors of the Latin Language REFLECTIONS UPON THE HISTORY OF AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS IT must be confessed that Ammianus Marcellinus is not considerable in respect of the beauty of his language For he was a Greek by Nation as he himself declares at the end of his last book And from an Epistle of Libanius to him it is inferred that he was a Citizen of Antioch he speaks of him with Elogies as often as occasion does occur excusing him in his two and twentieth Book on the subject of the Invectives of the Misopogon of Julian which he affirms to have been excessive and contrary to what might
himself he begins his narration again with Julian's residence at Paris being then only a designed Caesar or Emperor In the beginning of the twentieth book he takes notice of a great Eclipse of the Sun in the year when the Scotch the Picts wasted England which was that of the tenth Consulat of Constantius and the third of Julian As this was a good observation to be made and very worthy of his History so there is no reason on that circumstance to fall upon the most secret misteries of Astronomy not only in what concerns those Periodical defects of the light of the Sun but also in what touches the travels of the Moon as the Poets say when the Earth darkens it with its shadow He exposes on that subject the opinion of Ptolemaeus in the same words he used and not content to treat of Eclipses he inquires into the cause of the Parelia when we think we see more than one Sun in the Heavens so that one would think in this place he quite abandons the prosecution of his History to deliver to his readers a Lecture of Astronomy Nevertheless at last he resumes his discourse recounting the preparations of Constantius against the Persians and his jealousy of the brave actions of Julian after a tiresome and intolerable excursion The third and last example of the vicious digressions of Ammianus is in his thirtieth Book where he observes with curiosity and profit how the Emperor Valens was diverted by his Courtiers from hearing causes pleaded and assisting at judgments that they might thereby pursue their unjust Monapolies and because they feared considering his rigid and severe nature he would cause justice to be exercised as legally and justly as it was a little before under the government of Julian Thence he takes occasion to inveigh against the profession of Advocates which he says Epicurus named the Art of Knavery 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And the better to represent the infamous proceedings of those of his time he exaggerates the merit of one Demosthenes that made all Greece come to Athens when he was to speak in publick and of one Callistratus who made even Demosthenes leave Plato in his Academy to go and hear him And then he mentions Hyperides Aeschines Androcides Dinarchus and one Antiphon who was the first of all Antiquity that was recompensed for pleading in a weighty cause From the Greeks he passses to the Romans and naming those great Orators Rutilius Galba Scaurus Crassus Antonius Philippus and Scaevola he descends to Cicero to prove that formerly they that had exercised the chief imployments of State after having been Censors Consuls Generals and had Triumphed did not disdain to take a place at the Bar and add to the glory of their precedent actions as a Corollary that of having had the applause of a whole Audience in pleading And after having shown so fine a Scene he draws the Curtain to expose to all eies the shameful and criminal prostitution of the Advocates of his Age dividing them into four sorts whose impostures impertinencies and perplexing tricks he does so particularly display that one has much ado to get out of the Laborinth to recover the narration and return to Valentinian in Tryers where he had left him Though his Declamation is very moral and elegant being separately considered it must needs be troublesome and tedious as he introduces it because it too visibly interrupts the course of the History And those that would be instructed in Physicks Astronomy or Moral Philosophy do not seek such lessons in an Historian and to those that design to be informed in History nothing can be more uneasy than to find in the midst of a relation foreign discourses which divide or mislead the mind and do but shew his learning that exposes them Besides this vicious ostentation which one may easily perceive in those three passages I instanced Ammianus Marcellinus is blamed for having made certain descriptions so Poetical that they are hardly sufferable And though as we have elsewhere observed History and Poetry are good friends enough and agree in many things Caussinus the Jesuite in his Treatise of Eloquence gives divers examples of this defect which appear so frequently in the writings of Ammianus that it is hard not to find some in every opening of the book But all these censures cannot deprive him of the praises we have given him There are generally speaking certain things in books that are displeasing which nevertheless are not to be rejected because they serve for a Basis to others which are better and are like the Lees which preserve the Wine in its spirits But after all that has been said the imperfections of this Historian seem to me so much the less considerable as the virtues of his Age were rare And it is that which induces me to put an end here to my labour hardly finding after him any thing but gross errors in the writings of those Authors of the next succeeding age which busied themselves in writing Latin History To write of the Modern Historians is not my design and the Interval of time which divides them from the first of that order is a just occasion for me to make a stop here FINIS Ep. 25. l. 7. Lib. 1. Strom. L. 1. de leg 2. de Orat. L. 15. c. 25. Noct. Act. L. de scr hist. In Bion. Herac. A Book so called Noct. Act. l. 1. c. 25. Suet. de ill Gram. c. 6. Photius Sect. 61. de Aesch Juven Sat. 10. In Euterp L. pen. parag 2 dig de acq rer dom Iaitio Terpsic Plutarch was Trajan's Preceptor Nat. Hist l. 12. c. 4. Hobbs in the life of Thueydides * Ter Maximus For Hermes was so called because he was a King a Priest and a Philosopher Xenophon t is sermo est quidem meâ—le dulcior Tullius lib. de Clar. oratoribus ad Brutum Et eodem libro pâ—â—lò inferius scribit Xenophontis vote musas quasi locutas ferâ—â—t * Cyrus ille à Xenophonte non ad Historiae fidem scriptus est sed ad effigiemâ— Justi Imperii Tullius ad Quintum Fratrem Cicer. 2. Tusc quae * Libellus de Aequivocis Voss de hist graet lib. 1. cap. 5. Speron Speroni dial di Xenoph. Unus Xenophontis libellus in eo rege laudando facilè omneis imagines omnium flatuasque superavit Tullii Epistol lib. 5. ad Q. filium Diod. Sic. initio lib. 1. A. Gellius Noct. Att. l. 5. c. 18. A custome in use amongst the greatest of the Roman Nobility Cicer. l. 1. Tusc quae Constantinus Porphyrogennetus ut supra In Arcad. Lib. 5. Ep. In Macr. Vossius de hist graetis c. 19. L. 6. Noct. Act. c. 8. Lib. 1. hist Tr. of Hist upon Sand. Rome The Greeks called all Nations but themselves by that name Ad annum Num. 1567. Photius Meth. hist c. 5. 5. disc de trad Lib. 18. Cap. 40. Lib. 2. Lib. 1. The name or inscription of his History Paraen ad Gr.