; even if what I say should be approved by them, it would be
madness to expect that they should retract anything or alter that
which had been once established and, as it were, laid up in royal
repositories. It may not be amiss, however, to give them these
instructions, that in case of another war, the Getae against the
Gauls, or the Indians, perhaps, against the barbarians (for with
regard to ourselves there is no danger, our enemies being all
subdued), by applying these rules if they like them, they may know
better how to write for the future. If they do not choose this,
they may even go on by their old measure; the physician will not
break his heart if all the people of Abdera follow their own
inclination and continue to act the Andromeda. {23}

Criticism is twofold: that which teaches us what we are to choose,
and that which teaches us what to avoid. We will begin with the
last, and consider what those faults are which a writer of history
should be free from; next, what it is that will lead him into the
right path, how he should begin, what order and method he should
observe, what he should pass over in silence, and what he should
dwell upon, how things may be best illustrated and connected. Of
these, and such as these, we will speak hereafter; in the meantime
let us point out the faults which bad writers are most generally
guilty of, the blunders which they commit in language, composition,
and sentiment, with many other marks of ignorance, which it would be
tedious to enumerate, and belong not to our present argument. The
principal faults, as I observed to you, are in the language and
composition.

You will find on examination, that history in general has a great
many of this kind, which, if you listen to them all, you will be
sufficiently convinced of; and for this purpose it may not be
unseasonable to recollect some of them by way of example. And the
first that I shall mention is that intolerable custom which most of
them have of omitting facts, and dwelling for ever on the praises of
their generals and commanders, extolling to the skies their own
leaders, and degrading beyond measure those of their enemies, not
knowing how much history differs from panegyric, that there is a
great wall between them, or that, to use a musical phrase, they are
a double octave {24a} distant from each other; the sole business of
the panegyrist is, at all events and by every means, to extol and
delight the object of his prai