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[13]
However, I may justly blame the learned men among the Greeks, who,
when such great actions have been done in their own times, which, upon
the comparison, quite eclipse the old wars, do yet sit as judges of those
affairs, and pass bitter censures upon the labors of the best writers of
antiquity; which moderns, although they may be superior to the old writers
in eloquence, yet are they inferior to them in the execution of what they
intended to do. While these also write new histories about the Assyrians
and Medes, as if the ancient writers had not described their affairs as
they ought to have done; although these be as far inferior to them in abilities
as they are different in their notions from them. For of old every one
took upon them to write what happened in his own time; where their immediate
concern in the actions made their promises of value; and where it must
be reproachful to write lies, when they must be known by the readers to
be such. But then, an undertaking to preserve the memory Of what hath not
been before recorded, and to represent the affairs of one's own time to
those that come afterwards, is really worthy of praise and commendation.
Now he is to be esteemed to have taken good pains in earnest, not who does
no more than change the disposition and order of other men's works, but
he who not only relates what had not been related before, but composes
an entire body of history of his own: accordingly, I have been at great
charges, and have taken very great pains [about this history], though I
be a foreigner; and do dedicate this work, as a memorial of great actions,
both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians. But for some of our own principal
men, their mouths are wide open, and their tongues loosed presently, for
gain and law-suits, but quite muzzled up when they are to write history,
where they must speak truth and gather facts together with a great deal
of pains; and so they leave the writing such histories to weaker people,
and to such as are not acquainted with the actions of princes. Yet shall
the real truth of historical facts be preferred by us, how much soever
it be neglected among the Greek historians.
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