The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 01

by Unknown

A glance at the Oncken series will convince any one how very difficult it is to attain even approximately to a true perspective of world history under the symposial plan. Thus one finds in this series, to cite but a single illustration of disproportionate treatment, that various relatively insignificant periods of modern German history are allowed to fill bulky volumes where a true perspective would have relegated them to mere chapters. It is only from a very prejudiced modern standpoint that the history of Frederick II can be thought worth greater space than the entire history of the Greek world. Where such inconsistencies are permitted there is a danger that the alleged world history will become rather the history of a single nation in its relations to other nations, past and present, than an impartial presentation of the history of nations as a whole.

In the present work an attempt has been made to avoid the pitfalls of one-man treatment on the one hand, and of ill-adjusted specialist treatment on the other. We have made sure of presenting special knowledge by drawing upon the specialists of every field, and letting them present their information in their own words; but, at the same time, we have attempted to avoid the prejudiced view from which the specialist is least of all men free, by presenting the counter views of various students wherever there is failure of agreement among those best competent to judge.

The authorities on whom historial compositions are necessarily based, and who in other works are merely cited by name, or at most by volume and page reference, are here quoted in detail in their own words wherever practicable, always with full credit to the author, and with exact reference to the work from which the excerpt is taken. Such authorities are quoted, not merely from histories in English, but from the entire range of historical writings of all ages. It is hoped that few important names are overlooked. The aggregate number of different works thus quoted (not merely cited) will be about one thousand. These quotations vary in length from illuminative paragraphs to excerpts of many pages, averaging perhaps about two thousand words each. Some fifteen hundred of such extensive quotations are made from foreign languages, and by far the greater number of these have been translated from the originals expressly for the present work, thus representing matter never before accessible to the reader of English. The languages represented in this list of important historical works of foreign origin include practically all the tongues of civilised nations, ancient and modern,—Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, and the entire range of European languages from Greek, Latin, and Russian to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, German, and Scandinavian. From all of these the original words of the various authors have been translated into the most literal English consistent with our idiom. It is speaking well within bounds to assert that seldom before has so varied an exposition of cosmopolitan thought been collected in a single work.

But these excerpts are not given as random references crowded into footnotes or appendices; they are woven into the text of the consecutive story of world history so that they themselves constitute the bulk of that story. Thus the history of Germany is mainly told in the words of German writers, that of France in the words of French historians. To avoid the prejudiced national view of history, however, the story of a nation thus told by the native historian is always subject to the corrective views of foreigners. Thus we gain both the sympathetic and the critical points of view. When the authorities are not agreed as to any important fact of history, or where there are important differences of opinion in estimating the influence of a great event or the real status of a famous character, reliance is not placed upon the estimate of a single historian, but counterviews are quoted, even though they may be directly contradictory, each, of course, being ascribed to its proper source.

To give unity to these various views and to weld the entire mass of matter into a consistent and comprehensive history of the world, original editorial passages are everywhere freely introduced as a part of the main narrative, forming indeed the warp of the whole, and serving to elucidate and harmonise the views of the authorities quoted. A feature of the original editorial matter is that it comprises, first and last, critical estimates of the work of important historians of every age, informing the reader as to the status—even to the particular prejudice and bias—of the authority he is asked to consult. Thus the novice is everywhere placed somewhat on a par with the special student in his estimate of the authorities. Where conflicting views are quoted of nominally equal authority, the reader is given data on which to base an intelligent personal opinion as to the probabilities. Moreover, elaborate additional bibliographies of works that may advantageously be consulted are everywhere given, and these in the aggregate constitute such a critical bibliography of the entire range of historical compositions as cannot fail to interest even the general reader.

Our method of introducing critical bibliography, and the critical selection of the excerpts themselves, make it feasible to introduce quotations, not only from the latest authority in any field, but also from the great historians of the past. Thus in the case of ancient history, the classical authorities themselves are drawn upon wherever available,—Herodotus for the Persian wars, Thucydides for the Peloponnesian wars, Xenophon for later Greek history, Sallust, Cæsar, Livy, Dionysius, Dion Cassius, Tacitus, Ammianus, and the rest for Roman history; and so on indefinitely. Herodotus describes the battle of Thermopylæ; Arrian tells of the glories of Alexander; Dionysius relates the story of Virginia; Polybius shows us Hannibal crossing the Alps; Appian pictures the fall of Carthage; Josephus the fall of Jerusalem; Zosimus the fall of Palmyra. In this way a mass of first-hand matter, much of it hitherto absolutely inaccessible to the reader of English, and much more only to be found in rare and costly editions, is put within the reach of the least scholarly. But—what is most essential—such matter as this is not merely given by itself unsupported. It is supplemented by the verdicts of the latest investigators in the various fields covered. Thus, to cite but a single instance, in the history of early Greece, not merely Herodotus, Thucydides, Diodorus, Pausanias, and other ancient authorities are quoted, but the long range of modern students as well, from Mitford, Thirlwall, and Grote to Curtius, Bezold, Busolt, Geddes, Schliemann, Mahaffy, Bury, and in general the latest investigators in the field of classical archæology.

Thanks to this system of checking ancient accounts with editorial criticism and other recent expert evidence, it is even practicable to avail ourselves sometimes of the writings of men who are not primarily historians, but who wrote, as so many other great authors have done, most important incidental essays on historical subjects; thus matter in the highest degree picturesque and interesting is often presented in a manner which the technical historian, however great his scientific authority, is seldom able to imitate.

Another peculiar merit of this system is that it enables us to preserve specimens of the work of a large coterie of historians, whose influence was great and whose writings were formerly standard, but whose books, as a whole, have been superseded by more recent works. Some of the classical authors are cases in point. A few of these are indeed read by students in colleges everywhere, but the great bulk of them are as utterly unknown to the average reader as if they had never existed. Who reads Pausanias, or Diodorus, or Polybius, or Appian, or Dion Cassius, or Dionysius, or Ælianus, or Arrian, or Quintus Curtius, or Zosimus? Yet these men are the only original authorities left us in many fields of ancient history. Their works are the sources which moderns can do little more than paraphrase in writing of those times. Surely, then, it is worth while to go to these authors themselves and hear their story at first hand, applying to it the corrective judgment of later criticism, rather than to depend upon the mere paraphrase of some modern compiler.

Much the same argument applies to parts of the work of once famous historians of more recent times: such historians as Hume, Mitford, Thirlwall, and a host of others. Their work, as a whole, can no longer be commended to the student who is to confine himself to a single authority, for in many parts their writings have been superseded; yet there are other parts of their work that are to-day as valuable as when they were written, and it seems regrettable that a great name should drop from public recognition merely because the sweep of progress has dethroned it from supremacy. It is inevitable that the present should always loom large before mankind, and that egotism should stamp with peculiar force the importance of the Recent. “Each generation abandons the ideas of its predecessors like stranded ships,” says Emerson. Yet it must not be forgotten that posterity often plays strange tricks with reputations. Herodotus was held up to ridicule some centuries after his death by a “False Plutarch,” who is only known now because of his attack upon the master historian, while the work criticised, though for some generations looked on with suspicion, is as fully appreciated, after more than two thousand years, as it can have been in the day when it was written.

Similarly, the judgments of our own age of specialism may be reversed by posterity; and in any event it would be regrettable if a once important historical work should be quite forgotten. Yet such a fate threatens work of every grade. Müller’s collection of the fragments of Greek historians gives mere bits from the writings of more than five hundred authors about whom nothing is known—not even the exact age in which they lived—beyond the fact that they wrote works of which these fragments are the only mementoes. Could any page of manuscript of any one of these authors be recovered, it would to-day be considered worth many times its weight in gold.