HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES
AND
CONTESTED EVENTS.
L’histoire n’est le plus souvent,
et surtout à distance, qu’une fable
convenue, un qui pro quo arrangé
après coup, et accepté.
(Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux Lundis.
Tome 6ᵐᵉ, p. 8.)
Les vérités se succèdent du pour
au contre à mesure qu’on a plus de
lumières.
(Pascal).
HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES
AND
CONTESTED EVENTS.
By OCTAVE DELEPIERRE, LL.D., F.S.A.
SECRETARY OF LEGATION TO THE KING OF THE BELGIANS.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1868.
[The right of translation is reserved.]
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
| PAGE | ||
| 1. | THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES (B. C. 306) | [13] |
| 2. | BELISARIUS (565) | [23] |
| 3. | THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY (640) | [31] |
| 4. | POPE JOAN (855) | [40] |
| 5. | ABELARD AND ELOISA (1140) | [49] |
| 6. | WILLIAM TELL (1307) | [67] |
| 7. | PETRARCH AND LAURA (1320) | [93] |
| 8. | JEANNE D’ARC (1430) | [105] |
| 9. | FRANCIS I. AND COUNTESS OF CHATEAUBRIAND (1525) | [116] |
| 10. | CHARLES V. OF SPAIN (1557) | [128] |
| 11. | THE INVENTOR OF THE STEAM-ENGINE (1625) | [139] |
| 12. | GALILEO GALILEI (1620) | [148] |
| APPENDIX TO THE NOTICE ON WILLIAM TELL | [161] | |
| BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX | [167] |
INTRODUCTION.
The age in which we live seems remarkable for its appreciation of men of renown, and for the homage rendered to them. Societies that are still in their youth are liable to be dazzled by the superficial wonders of historical tradition, and to allow their admiration to be easily taken captive; but an epoch ripened by experience, and by a long habit of literary criticism, should rather reserve its enthusiasm for ascertained facts, and for such deeds of renown as are beyond the pale of doubt and discussion. Thus we find in the present day a marked predilection, not only as a matter of general utility but also from a sense of justice, for a keen research into every doubtful point of history. Nations as well as individuals need the maturity of time to appreciate at their real value the actions and the traditions of past ages.
The art of writing history has two very distinct branches, the combination of which is essential to the production of a complete historian. A research into, and a criticism of, events with no other aim than to elicit truth, is one branch of the historical art; the other is the resolution to interpret, to describe, to give to each event its full signification and colouring; to put that life into it in fact which belongs to every human spectacle. It is only the first part of the task that we propose to undertake in these essays.
Seneca has said that we must not give too ready credence to hearsay, for some disguise the truth in order to deceive, and some because they are themselves the victims of deception. Other Greek and Latin writers have also warned us against a too ready faith in popular traditions. How many errors bequeathed to us by the historians of antiquity owe their enlarged growth, ere they reached us, to their passage through the middle ages.
De Quincy tells us that if a saying has a proverbial fame, the probability is that it was never said. The same opinion may be held of a great many so-called historical facts which are perfectly familiar even to the ignorant, and yet which never happened.
The French critic Lenglet du Fresnoy, in his work “L’Histoire justifiée contre les Romans,” has devoted about 100 pages to historical doubts; but he only touches the surface of the subject. Many years before Niebuhr, the Abbé Lancellotti published at Venice in 1637, under the title of “Farfalloni degli antichi Storici,” a curious volume, now rare, in which he exposes the many absurd stories taught in schools as history. The book contains more than a hundred of these fictions, and was translated into French by T. Oliva 1770.
Du Pan, in his Recherches sur les Américains, says that Montezuma sacrificed annually twenty thousand children to the idols in the temples of Mexico. In such assertions the improbability and exaggeration are so self-evident that it is needless to dwell upon them.
“Books,” says the Prince de Ligne, “tell us that the Duke of Alba put to death by the hands of the executioner in the Low Countries eighteen thousand gentlemen, while the fact is that scarcely two thousand could have been altogether collected there.
Who is there who now believes in the story of Dionysius the Tyrant becoming a schoolmaster at Corinth?[1]
Even in the time of Titus Livius there was so much doubt as to the truth of the legend of the Horatii and the Curiatii, that he writes, one cannot tell to which of the two contending people the Horatii or the Curiatii[2] belonged. Yet this cautious historian relates in another place how Hannibal fed his soldiers on human flesh to give them energy and courage. Mr. Rey[3] has carefully studied the origin of the heroic fable of the death of Regulus, and has exposed its fallacy.
In comparatively modern times also, how many delusions do we find worthy of ancient history. The story of the Sicilian Vespers,[4] for instance, and the episode concerning Doctor Procida, who far from being a principal in the massacre, was not even present at it. We may also mention some of the anecdotes of Christopher Columbus:[5] the fable of the egg that he is said to have broken, in order to make it stand upright: the account of his anxiety, amounting to agony, among his mutinous crew, to whom he had faithfully promised a sight of land—all of which has been disproved by M. de Humboldt in his Examen critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie.
The history of England also furnishes many examples of similar credulity. Without entering upon the murder of King Edward’s children, which story has been discussed by Walpole, may we not cite the death of the Duke of Clarence, who for four centuries was believed to have been drowned in a butt of Malmsey?—an error exposed by John Bayley in “The historic Antiquities of the Tower of London.”
We may cite again the often-mooted question of the exhumation of the body of Cromwell, and of the outrages committed on his remains by order of Charles II:[6] the interesting but imaginative picture of Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters, while, if we may believe Doctor Johnson, he never even allowed them to learn to write. Modern historians, however, are often equally incorrect. Among them we may quote the poet laureate Southey, who was guilty of a remarkable perversion of facts regarding one of the wisest men of the 19th century.
In an article in the Quarterly Review (Vol. XXXIX. p. 477. April 1829) entitled, State and Prospects of the Country, we are told that Conrad, a monk of Heresbach, had pronounced in presence of an assembly, an anathema against Greek, saying that: “a new language had been discovered called Greek, against which it was necessary to guard, as this language engendered every species of heresy; just as all they who learned Hebrew, infallibly became Jews.”
This curious anecdote was repeated in La Revue Britannique, No. 46. p. 254, whence it found its way into a note of the Poème de la Typographie of M. Pelletier (1 vol. 8ᵛᵒ. Genève, 1832) and the mistake was republished in many other books. Now the real fact is, that Conrad of Heresbach had never been a monk, but was a confidential counsellor of the Duke of Cleves, and that, far from prohibiting the study of the ancient languages, he was one of the savans of the 16th century who shewed the greatest zeal in encouraging a taste for their culture. It is he himself who, in order to expose the ignorance of the clergy of that period, relates, that he heard a monk from the pulpit pronounce the anathema on the Greek language which we have mentioned above. So easy is it, by distorting facts, to make or mar a reputation!
When we reflect on the innumerable errors daily propagated by books, we have cause to be alarmed at the strange confusion in which all literature may find itself a few centuries hence. It is very possible that historical events will be even more difficult of proof than before the invention of printing, which may consequently have served to augment disorder and perplexity rather than to have assisted in the promotion of truth and accuracy. In a recent number of the Constitutionnel, in a feuilleton supposed to be from the pen of M. de Lamartine, it is stated that: “The tombs of great poets inspire great passions. It was at Tasso’s tomb,” he says, “that Petrarch, during his first absence, nourished his regretful remembrance of Laura!” Now Petrarch died in 1374, and it was more than two hundred years afterwards (in 1581) that Tasso published his first edition of the Gerusalemme Liberata!
We should not know where to stop if we attempted to bring forward examples of all the improbable and the untrue in history. We shall confine ourselves therefore to the examination of a few of the most universally accredited facts, the truth of which, to say the least, is extremely doubtful.
We at one time entertained the project of reconstructing the critical work of the Abbé Lancelotti already mentioned, by enlarging its scope. This rare and scarcely known book (Farfalloni degli antichi Storici) would have served us as a basis, upon which we should have proceeded to review history in general. It would have been an instructive and a pleasant task to demolish falsehood in order to arrive at truth; to set aside, in good faith, worn out platitudes, deeds of heroism resting on no proof whatsoever, and crimes wanting the confirmation of authenticity; but when we set ourselves to estimate its extent, we shrank from so laborious an undertaking.
In working out the subject, we should have related, with Henry Schnitzler (De la colonisation de l’ancienne Grèce), and with Schœll (la littérature grecque), that Cecrops the Egyptian had imposed upon us when he pretended to come out of Egypt, as did Cadmus when he professed to arrive from Phœnicia.
The Abbé Barthélemy (Voyage du jeune Anarcharsis) would have enlightened us on the memorable battle of Thermopylæ, where Leonidas, instead of resisting the Persians with three hundred men, commanded, according to Diodorus, at least seven thousand—or even twelve thousand, if we may believe Pausanias. We should have exposed the fabulous part of the history of Sappho, by following Mr. C. F. Neue (Sapphonis Mytilinææ fragmenta) and M. J. Mongin, in his remarkable article on this poetess in l’Encyclopédie nouvelle; and the learned Spon (Miscellanies) would have explained to us the pretended tub of Diogenes. Other innumerable errors would have been brought before the reader, for we have only cited a very small portion of the programme.
Alfred Maury (Revue de Philosophie) would have convinced us that Cæsar never said, and never would have said, to the pilot “Why do you fear? You have Cæsar and his fortunes on board,” &c.
On all these subjects an analytical work would be of great use, and for the benefit of those who might be induced to undertake such a task, we proceed to point out the principal chapters in the work of Lancelotti.
1) Zaleucus submitted to have one of his eyes put out, in order to save his son from the loss of both his eyes.
2) The people living near the cataracts of the Nile are all deaf.
3) The army of Xerxes drained the rivers on its passage, to satisfy its thirst.
4) In Egypt the women occupy themselves in commerce while the men remain at home to manufacture cloth.
5) The account given by Titus Livius of the resolution of the Roman senators at the taking of Rome by the Gauls.
6) Agriculturists, or tillers of the ground, are declared consuls and dictators by the Romans.
7) The Lake of Thrasymene takes fire.
8) The philosopher Anaxarchus bit off his tongue and spat it in the face of the tyrant.
9) In a combat between Aëtius and Attila, the blood of the soldiers killed and wounded flowed in such torrents that the dead bodies were swept away by it.
10) Ten Roman virgins, at the head of whom was Clelia, after having been sent as hostages to the king Porsenna, returned to Rome by swimming across the Tiber.
11) Æschylus killed by a tortoise dropped upon his head by an eagle.
12) In the school of Pythagoras the disciples kept silence during the space of five years.
13) A grapestone caused the death of Anacreon; and the senator Fabius was choked by a hair in his milk.
14) Mutius-Scævola burned his hand to shew his fortitude.
15) Among the Spartans all men lived in common and ate in public on the same spot.
16) That the young girls in Sparta occupied themselves in public duties, perfectly naked.
17) Lycurgus permitted the young men in his republic to practise the art of stealing.
18) Lycurgus forbade the use of gold and silver money in his republic. He allowed iron coins to be made, of a very large size.
19) Lycurgus was the originator of the concise, sententious language generally termed laconic.
20) Romulus and Remus suckled by a she-wolf, and Cyrus by a bitch.
21) The exploits of Horatius-Cocles.
22) The dumb son of Crœsus, perceiving a soldier about to kill his father, suddenly recovered his speech.
23) The history of Lucretia, such as historians have related it.
24) Democritus and Heraclitus.
25) The poverty of the grandees of Rome.
26) Curtius leaping on horseback into the gulf.
27) Draco, the Athenian legislator punished idleness with death.