Tiresias: The Ancient Mediterranean Religions Source Database

7543

Lucian, How To Write History, 12-13
nan The consequence is, they miss even their immediate end; the objects of their praise are more inclined (and quite right too) to dislike and discard them for toadies — if they are men of spirit, at any rate. Aristobulus inserted in his history an account of a single combat between Alexander and Porus, and selected this passage to read aloud to the former; he reckoned that his best chance of pleasing was to invent heroic deeds for the king, and heighten his achievements. Well, they were on board ship in the Hydaspes; Alexander took hold of the book, and tossed it overboard; 'the author should have been treated the same way, by rights,' he added, 'for presuming to fight duels for me like that, and shoot down elephants single-handed.' A very natural indignation in Alexander, of a piece with his treatment of the intrusive architect; this person offered to convert the whole of Mount Athos into a colossal statue of the king — who however decided that he was a toady, and actually gave him less employment in ordinary than before.
nan The fact is, there is nothing agreeable in these things, except to any one who is fool enough to enjoy commendations which the slightest inquiry will prove to be unfounded; of course there are ugly persons — women more especially — who ask artists to paint them as beautiful as they can; they think they will be really better-looking if the painter heightens the rose a little and distributes a good deal of the lily. There you have the origin of the present crowd of historians, intent only upon the passing day, the selfish interest, the profit which they reckon to make out of their work; execration is their desert — in the present for their undisguised clumsy flattery, in the future for the stigma which their exaggerations bring upon history in general. If any one takes some admixture of the agreeable to be an absolute necessity, let him be content with the independent beauties of style; these are agreeable without being false; but they are usually neglected now, for the better foisting upon us of irrelevant substitutes. Passing from that point, I wish to put on record some fresh

Intertexts (texts cited often on the same page as the searched text):

15 results
1. Herodotus, Histories, 7.22-7.24 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE) 7.22. Since those who had earlier attempted to sail around Athos had suffered shipwreck, for about three years preparations had been underway there. Triremes were anchored off Elaeus in the Chersonese; with these for their headquarters, all sorts of men in the army were compelled by whippings to dig a canal, coming by turns to the work; the inhabitants about Athos also dug. ,Bubares son of Megabazus and Artachaees son of Artaeus, both Persians, were the overseers of the workmen. Athos is a great and famous mountain, running out into the sea and inhabited by men. At the mountain's landward end it is in the form of a peninsula, and there is an isthmus about twelve stadia wide; here is a place of level ground or little hills, from the sea by Acanthus to the sea opposite Torone. ,On this isthmus which is at the end of Athos, there stands a Greek town, Sane; there are others situated seaward of Sane and landward of Athos, and the Persian now intended to make them into island and not mainland towns; they are Dion, Olophyxus, Acrothoum, Thyssus, and Cleonae. 7.23. These are the towns situated on Athos. The foreigners dug as follows, dividing up the ground by nation: they made a straight line near the town of Sane; when the channel had been dug to some depth, some men stood at the bottom of it and dug, others took the dirt as it was dug out and delivered it to yet others that stood higher on stages, and they again to others as they received it, until they came to those that were highest; these carried it out and threw it away. ,For all except the Phoenicians, the steep sides of the canal caved in, doubling their labor; since they made the span the same breadth at its mouth and at the bottom, this was bound to happen. ,But the Phoenicians showed the same skill in this as in all else they do; taking in hand the portion that fell to them, they dug by making the topmost span of the canal as wide again as the canal was to be, and narrowed it as they worked lower, until at the bottom their work was of the same span as that of the others. ,There is a meadow there, where they made a place for buying and marketing; much ground grain frequently came to them from Asia. 7.24. As far as I can judge by conjecture, Xerxes gave the command for this digging out of pride, wishing to display his power and leave a memorial; with no trouble they could have drawn their ships across the isthmus, yet he ordered them to dig a canal from sea to sea, wide enough to float two triremes rowed abreast. The same men who were assigned the digging were also assigned to join the banks of the river Strymon by a bridge.
2. Thucydides, The History of The Peloponnesian War, 1.21-1.22 (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
3. Cicero, Letters To His Friends, 5.12 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
4. Polybius, Histories, 2.61, 12.15.9, 12.22 (2nd cent. BCE - 2nd cent. BCE) 2.61. 1.  To take another instance, Phylarchus, while narrating with exaggeration and elaboration the calamities of the Mantineans, evidently deeming it a historian's duty to lay stress on criminal acts,,2.  does not even make mention of the noble conduct of the Megalopolitans at nearly the same date, as if it were rather the proper function of history to chronicle the commission of sins than to call attention to right and honourable actions,,3.  or as if readers of his memoirs would be improved less by account of good conduct which we should emulate than by criminal conduct which we should shun.,4.  He tells us how Cleomenes took the city, and before doing any damage to it, sent at once a post to the Megalopolitans at Messene offering to hand back their own native country to them uninjured on condition of their throwing in their lot with him. So much he lets us know, wishing to show the magimity of Cleomenes and his moderation to his enemies,,5.  and he goes on to tell how when the letter was being read out they would not allow the reader to continue until the end, and how they came very near stoning the letter-bearers.,6.  So far he makes everything quite clear to us, but he deprives us of what should follow and what is the special virtue of history, I mean praise and honourable mention of conduct noteworthy for its excellence.,7.  And yet he had an opportunity ready to his hand here. For if we consider those men to be good who by speeches and resolutions only expose themselves to war for the sake of their friends and allies, and if we bestow not only praise but lavish thanks and gifts on those who have suffered their country to be laid waste and their city besieged,,8.  what should we feel for the Megalopolitans? Surely the deepest reverence and the highest regard.,9.  In the first place they left their lands at the mercy of Cleomenes, next they utterly lost their city owing to their support of the Achaeans,,10.  and finally, when quite unexpectedly it was put in their power to get it back undamaged, they preferred to lose their land, their tombs, their temples, their homes, and their possessions, all in fact that is dearest to men, rather than break faith with their allies.,11.  What more noble conduct has there ever been or could there be? To what could an author with more advantage call the attention of his readers, and how could he better stimulate them to loyalty to their engagements and to true and faithful comradeship?,12.  But Phylarchus, blind, as it seems to me, to the most noble actions and those most worthy of an author's attention, has not said a single word on the subject. 12.15.9.  But Timaeus, blinded by his own malice, has chronicled with hostility and exaggeration the defects of Agathocles and has entirely omitted to mention his shining qualities, being unaware that it is just as mendacious for a writer to conceal what did occur as to report what did not occur. I myself, while refraining in order to spare him from giving full expression to my hostility to Timaeus, have omitted nothing less to the object I had in view. . . . . 12.22. 1.  It would be too long a story to mention all the other absurdities of his narrative, and it will suffice to point out a few.,2.  He tells us that Alexander in drawing up his army was most anxious to be opposed to Darius in person, and that Darius also at first entertained the same wish, but afterwards changed his mind.,3.  But he tells us absolutely nothing as to how they intimated to each other at what point in their own line they were stationed, or where Darius finally went on changing his position.,4.  And how, we ask, did a phalanx of heavy-armed men manage to mount the bank of the river which was steep and overgrown with brambles?,5.  This, too, is inexplicable. Such an absurdity cannot be attributed to Alexander, as it is universally acknowledged that from his childhood he was well versed and trained in the art of war.,6.  We should rather attribute it to the writer, who is so ignorant as to be unable to distinguish the possible from the impossible in such matters.,7.  Let this suffice for Ephorus and Callisthenes. VI. The Faults of Timaeu
5. Dionysius of Halycarnassus, On Thucydides, 41 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
6. Dionysius of Halycarnassus, Letter To Pompeius Geminus, 4-6, 3 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
7. Horace, Letters, 2.1.232-2.1.250 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
8. Plutarch, On The Malice of Herodotus, None (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
9. Plutarch, Dion, 36.4 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
10. Plutarch, Pericles, 13.16 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
11. Tacitus, Annals, 4.33.3 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
12. Herodian, History of The Empire After Marcus, 2.15.6-2.15.7 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
13. Lucian, Essays In Portraiture Defended, 9 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE) 9. She would like to be allowed as much sense as Alexander; he, when his architect proposed to transform Mount Athos into avast image of the King with a pair of cities in his hands, shrank from the grandiose proposal; such presumption was beyond him; such patent megalomania must be suppressed; leave Athos alone, he said, and do not degrade a mighty mountain to the similitude of a poor human body. This only showed the greatness of Alexander, and itself constituted in the eyes of all future generations a monument higher than any Athos; to be able to scorn so extraordinary an honour was itself magimity.
14. Lucian, How To Write History, 11, 13, 38-41, 61, 63, 7-10 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
15. Papyri, P.Oxy., 71.4808

Subjects of this text:

subject	book bibliographic info
achilles	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196
aelius antipater	Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
alexander the great, appetite for innovation	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186
alexander the great	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196; Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186, 188
alternatives	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
ambitio	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 188
ancestors	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
architect-autocrat relationship	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186, 188
aristobulus	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196
arrian	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196
arrogance	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186, 188
asinius quadratus	Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
athos, mount, transformation rejected as hubristic	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186
athos, mount	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186
body, and character	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186
body, reductive	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 188
body	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186
callisthenes of olynthus	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196
cassius dio	Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
character (plutarchs and readers concern with)	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
ciceromarcus tullius cicero, de re publica	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186, 188
criticism	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
darius iii	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196
de architectura, and imperialism	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 188
digressions	Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
dinocrates macedonian architect	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186
emperor and architect, relational paradigm	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186
encomium	Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4; Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186, 188
envy	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
ethics, of architect	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186
explanations	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
flattery, flatterers	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
flattery	Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
forma	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186
fortune, contrasted with virtue	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
fortune, mis-	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
fortune, success/failure as result of	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
gaugamela	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196
gratia	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 188
historiography	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159; Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
homer	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196
india	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196
libertas	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 188
lucian	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 123, 196; Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 188
macedonians	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196
memory	Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
moderation	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
monumentum	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186, 188
narrator	Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
omissions	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
pleasure (in historiography)	Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
plutarch	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186
polybius	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196
proportion and proportionality	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186
readers, foreknowledge	Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
representation, of ruler	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186, 188
seneca the younger	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 123
septimius severus	Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
size	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 188
style/stylistic (interest in)'	Chrysanthou, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives': Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement (2018) 159
tacitus	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 123
thersites	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 196
thucydides	Baumann and Liotsakis, Reading History in the Roman Empire (2022) 123; Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire (2022) 4
virtue	Oksanish, Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction (2019) 186