alexlitandem
Joined: 27 Mar 2007
Posts: 129
|
 Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:44 pm Post subject: References |
 |
|
I re-encountered this earlier today:
| Quote: |
So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.
I do not think that one will be far wrong in accepting the conclusions I have reached from the evidence which I have put forward.
It is better evidence than that of the poets, who exaggerate the importance of their themes, or of the prose chroniclers, who are less interested in telling the truth than in catching the attention of their public, whose authorities cannot be checked, and whose subject-matter, owing to the passage of time, is mostly lost in the unreliable streams of mythology.
Turning from these, we can rest satisfied with having proceeded upon the plainest evidence, and having arrived at conclusions as exact as can be expected in matters of such antiquity…
|
[Reference: The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides
Translated by Richard Crawley; Book One, Introduction].
What a wonderful anticipation of the prose-style of some, so-called, contemporary `historians'. |
|
