<head>Digression on Method of Writing History</head>Other writers again have . . . about the war in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Syria&groupId=995&placeId=502">Syria</a>. The reason of this I have frequently explained.
For when dealing with a subject which is simple and uniform they wish to be thought historians not because of what they accomplish, but because of the multitude of their books, and to make such an impression as I have described, they are compelled to magnify small matters, to touch up and elaborate brief statements of fact and to convert quite incidental occurrences of no moment into momentous events and actions, describing engagements and pitched battles in which the infantry losses were at times ten men or it may be a few more and the cavalry losses still fewer.
As for sieges, descriptions of places, and such matters, it would be hard to describe adequately how they work them up for lack of real matter.
But writers of universal history act in just the opposite manner.
I should not therefore be condemned for slurring over events, when I sometimes omit and sometimes briefly report things to which others have devoted much space and elaborate descriptions; but I should rather be credited with treating each event on a proper scale.
For those authors, when in the course of their work they describe, for instance, the sieges of Phanotea, <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Coronea&groupId=496&placeId=932">Coronea</a>, and Haliartus, find it necessary to place before their readers all the devices, all the daring strokes, and in addition to this describe at length the capture of Tarentum, the sieges of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Corinth&groupId=493&placeId=928">Corinth</a>, <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sardis&groupId=948&placeId=1686">Sardis</a>, <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Gaza&groupId=599&placeId=390">Gaza</a>, Bactra, and above all <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Carthage&groupId=441&placeId=820">Carthage</a>, adding inventions of their own; and they by no means approve of me, when I simply give a true and unvarnished account of such matters.
The same remarks apply to descriptions of battles, the reports speeches, and the other parts of history.
In all these — I include also subsequent portions of my work — I may be justly pardoned if I am found to be using the same style, or the same disposition and treatment, or even actually the same words as on a previous occasion;
or again should I happen to be mistaken in the names of mountains and rivers or in my statements about the characteristics of places. For in all such matters the large scale of my work is a sufficient excuse.
It is only if I am found guilty of deliberate mendacity or if it be for the sake of some profit, that I do not ask to be excused, as I have already stated several times in the course of this work when speaking on this subject.
Walbank Commentary