Who does not know history's first law to be that an author must not dare to tell anything but the truth? And its second that he must make bold to tell the whole truth? That there must be no suggestion of partiality anywhere in his writings? Nor of malice?
nam quis nescit primam esse historiae legem ne quid falsi dicere audeat; deinde ne quid veri non audeat; ne quae suspicio gratiae sit in scribendo; ne quae simultatis?
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Rules for Writing History
Cicero, De Oratore 2.15.62 (tr. E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham):