history, and that we could
not possibly have understood what was going forward without it.

From inability, and ignorance of everything useful, these men are
driven to descriptions of countries and caverns, and when they come
into a multiplicity of great and momentous affairs, are utterly at a
loss. Like a servant enriched on a sudden by coming into his
master's estate, who does not know how to put on his clothes, or to
eat as he should do; but when fine birds, fat sows, and hares are
placed before him, falls to and eats till he bursts, of salt meat
and pottage. The writer I just now mentioned describes the
strangest wounds, and the most extraordinary deaths you ever heard
of; tells us of a man's being wounded in the great toe, and expiring
immediately; and how on Priscus, the general, bawling out loud,
seven-and-twenty of the enemy fell down dead upon the spot. He has
told lies, moreover, about the number of the slain, in contradiction
to the account given in by the leaders. He will have it that
seventy thousand two hundred and thirty-six of the enemy died at
Europus, and of the Romans only two, and nine wounded. Surely
nobody in their senses can bear this.

Another thing should be mentioned here also, which is no little
fault. From the affectation of Atticism, and a more than ordinary
attention to purity of diction, he has taken the liberty to turn the
Roman names into Greek, to call Saturninus, [Greek], Chronius;
Fronto, [Greek], Frontis; Titianus, [Greek], Titanius, and others
still more ridiculous. With regard to the death of Severian, he
informs us that everybody else was mistaken when they imagined that
he perished by the sword, for that the man starved himself to death,
as he thought that the easiest way of dying; not knowing (which was
the case) that he could only have fasted three days, whereas many
have lived without food for seven; unless we are to suppose that
Osroes stood waiting till Severian had starved himself completely,
and for that reason he would not live out the whole week.

But in what class, my dear Philo, shall we rank those historians who
are perpetually making use of poetical expressions, such as "the
engine crushed, the wall thundered," and in another place, "Edessa
resounded with the shock of arms, and all was noise and tumult
around;" and again, "often the leader in his mind revolved how best
he might approach the wall." At the same time amongst these were
interspersed some of t