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This purpose at least he amply and nobly carried out; nor can it be said to be a low ideal of the function of history. So far, however, as the office of the historian is to investigate facts, to get at the exact truth of what physically happened, or to appreciate the varying degrees of probability with which that truth can be attained, Livy falls far short of any respectable ideal.
How far the bloody cruelty, of which we have the account in Cicero's words, was in truth executed, it is now impossible to say. The Greek historian Appian gives us none of these horrors, but simply intimates that Trebonius, having been taken in the snare, had his head cut off. That Cicero believed the story is probable. It is told against his son-in-law, of whom he had hitherto spoken favorably.
The Persian monarchy lay in hopeless imbecility, inviting Greek invasion; nor did the known world contain the power that seemed capable of checking the growing might of Athens, if Syracuse once could be hers. The national historian of Rome has left us, as an episode of his great work, a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed, if Alexander the Great had invaded Italy.
But alas! now came the time when the improvident waste of Edward began to be felt. Provisions and pay for the armaments failed . On the defective resources at Harold's disposal, no modern historian hath sufficiently dwelt.
It does not indeed rise to such heroic proportions as you find in the story of the Dutch invasion of the river, or in old Hackluyt's solemn narrative of the sailing of the expedition organised by Bristol's noble worthy, Sebastian Cabot; but it is altogether too good and stirring to merit erasure from the Thames's history books by the neglect or ignorance of the historian.
The Mitylenians upon this took courage, and laid aside the idea of treating with the Athenians; and now this winter ended, and with it ended the fourth year of the war of which Thucydides was the historian.
The men responsible had their tongues cut out. The details of the Maimunist controversy belong to the general historian. Our purpose here is to indicate in brief outline the general effect which the teaching of Maimonides had upon his and subsequent ages. The thirteenth century produced no great men in philosophy at all comparable to Moses Ben Maimon or his famous predecessors.
The historian has properly said that the names of Benjamin Waite and his companion in their perilous journey through the wilderness to Canada should "be memorable in all the sad or happy homes of this Connecticut valley forever."
Tennyson has tried to put the dilemmas of theological controversy into lyric poetry, and Psychology is now to be studied, not in metaphysical ethics, but in popular novels. The aim of the modern historian is to compile a Times newspaper of events which happened three or four, eight or ten centuries ago.
Another interesting personality was Mommsen, the German historian and savant. He was a picturesque-looking old man with keen blue eyes and a quantity of white hair. I don't think anything modern interested him very much. He was an old man when I first saw him, and looked even older than his age. He and W. used to plunge into very long, learned discussions over antiquities and medals.
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