Histories of the first kind may be termed—popular; those of the second—learned. It is evident that learned histories, although on different grounds, may deserve a high degree of confidence as to their authenticity and their accuracy; and, indeed, on the score of impartiality and comprehensive information, and exactness in details, they may greatly surpass any of the original narratives from which they may have been compiled. For it is manifest that a later historian, if he be industrious, judicious, and unprejudiced, has the opportunity so to collect and collate the various mass of subsidiary testimonies bearing upon particular facts, as shall impart much more of consistency to his narrative than can belong to any earlier work on the same subject.
But the direct proof of authenticity must belong exclusively to popular histories. A work of this class is, essentially, a condensation of the common knowledge of a nation or community; it is the universal testimony, arranged and compacted by one whose aim it is to found his personal reputation as a writer upon the consent and approval of his contemporaries. Let it be supposed that in passing through the crowded ways of a metropolis, we hear, in substance, the same account of some recent and public transaction, from a thousand lips, and from opposing parties; or we read a narrative of this event drawn up by a contemporary writer, whose veracity has been tacitly or explicitly assented to by the same parties. The validity of the evidence rests upon the same grounds in both cases; only that for accuracy and consistency, the accepted written narrative will be found to surpass the oral testimony.
We may take as an example the latter books of Herodotus, which, viewed with reference to the distinction above mentioned, may be reckoned as belonging to the class of popular histories, and may therefore deserve the confidence that is due to a narrative that has generally been accepted as true by those who were well acquainted with the facts it describes, and many of whom were personally concerned in the transactions it narrates. The history of the Peloponnesian war, by Thucydides, has a still higher claim to unimpeachable authenticity, inasmuch as the facts were more recent at the time of the publication of the work; and because, also, the strongest motives of national rivalry and civil discord were then in activity, and were in readiness to crush, on the instant, any attempted misrepresentation. The author’s hope that his work should descend to posterity, rested directly upon such an adherence to truth, on his part, as should exclude the opportunity of giving any plausibility to a charge of extensive or wilful falsification.
Xenophon’s history of Greece possesses, in part, a claim to credibility on the same ground. But the Cyropædia, on the contrary, is altogether destitute of authentication from this source; for the Greeks, at the time when the work was published, were far from being generally competent to judge of the truth of the story. The same author’s account of the expedition of Cyrus, may, in this respect, take a middle place between the two above-named works. It was not composed, as there is reason to believe, till many years after the writer’s return from Asia; and though the general facts were still matters of notoriety, the particulars could not then be universally recollected; especially as the scene of these transactions was so remote from Greece.
The works of Sallust, the Commentaries of Cæsar, the works of Tacitus, of Suetonius, of Polybius, claim, in whole or in part, the authority of popular histories, having been generally accredited as authentic by those who were well acquainted with the facts they contain.
But, excepting some small portions, or particular facts, the works of Diodorus, of Dionysius the Halicarnassian, of Nepos, of Ælian, of Paterculus, of Curtius, of Plutarch, of Arrian, of Appian, of Pausanias, and many others, are to be regarded only as learned compilations, the claim to authenticity of which is of an indirect kind.
CHAPTER XI.
EXCEPTIONS TO WHICH THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORIANS, ON PARTICULAR POINTS, MAY BE LIABLE.
From the very nature of the case the authenticity of an historical work can be affirmed only in a restricted sense, and must be understood to be open to exceptions in particular instances. Such exceptions may be taken without impeaching the character of the writer for veracity, or even for general accuracy. It is easy to suppose that he may have been imposed upon in certain cases, by his informants; or he may have reported things that were currently believed in his time, without thinking himself personally pledged for their truth: he may not have thought himself called upon, as an historian, to discuss questions which might more properly be taken up by philosophers; or he may merely have been negligent—here and there, in the course of a voluminous work. Yet allowances of this sort must, as it is evident, be confined to cases of an accidental kind, and should only then be brought forward in the way of apology for a writer’s mistakes, when he is giving an account of facts that were not immediately known to himself. For in a narrative of events, of which the writer professes himself to have had a personal knowledge, we must either admit his veracity, and with it the truth of the facts; or we must deny both.
The first point to be considered, when the affirmation of an historian in a particular instance is doubted, is—The nature of the fact in question.
1. If, for example, it be a question of numbers, measures, or dates, it is always to be remembered—as already remarked—that a peculiar uncertainty attaches to these matters, in ancient authors, owing to the method of notation by letters, which were easily mistaken, one for another. The numbers of which armies were composed—the numbers of the slain in battle—the population of cities—the revenues of states—the distances of places—the weight or measure of bodies, and computations of time, must, therefore, always be held open to question, as to what was actually intended and written by the author: this doubt may be entertained without in the least derogating from the credit of the work in which they occur. Besides the probable corruption of copies in such instances, it is to be remembered as to many of the particulars above named, that they are far more liable to uncertainty, or mistake, than other facts, so that scarcely any degree of diligence and care on the part of an historian, will entirely secure him from errors on such points.