The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 18. John Dryden
all the ancients I never found any who had the air of it so much; and amongst the moderns, none but Philip de Commines.23 They had this common to them, that they both changed their masters. But Polybius changed not his side, as Philip did: he was not bought off to another party, but pursued the true interest of his country, even when he served the Romans. Yet since truth, as one of the philosophers has told me, lies in the bottom of a well, so it is hard to draw it up: much pains, much diligence, much judgment is necessary to hand it us; even cost is oftentimes required; and Polybius was wanting in none of these.
We find but few historians of all ages, who have been diligent enough in their search for truth: it is their common method to take on trust what they distribute to the public; by which means a falsehood once received from a famed writer becomes traditional to posterity. But Polybius weighed the authors from whom he was forced to borrow the history of the times immediately preceding his, and oftentimes corrected them, either by comparing them each with other, or by the lights which he had received from ancient men of known integrity amongst the Romans, who had been conversant in those affairs which were then managed, and were yet living to instruct him. He also learned the Roman tongue; and attained to that knowledge of their laws, their rights, their customs, and antiquities, that few of their own citizens understood them better: having gained permission from the senate to search the Capitol, he made himself familiar with their records, and afterwards translated them into his mother-tongue. So that he taught the noblemen of Rome their own municipal laws, and was accounted more skilful in them than Fabius Pictor, a man of the senatorian order, who wrote the transactions of the Punic wars. He who neglected none of the laws of history, was so careful of truth, (which is the principal,) that he made it his whole business to deliver nothing to posterity which might deceive them; and by that diligence and exactness, may easily be known to be studious of truth, and a lover of it. What therefore Brutus thought worthy to transcribe with his own hand out of him, I need not be ashamed to copy after him: “I believe,” says Polybius, “that nature herself has constituted truth as the supreme deity, which is to be adored by mankind, and that she has given it greater force than any of the rest; for being opposed, as she is on all sides, and appearances of truth so often passing for the thing itself, in behalf of plausible falsehoods, yet by her wonderful operation she insinuates herself into the minds of men; sometimes exerting her strength immediately, and sometimes lying hid in darkness for length of time; but at last she struggles through it, and appears triumphant over falsehood.” This sincerity Polybius preferred to all his friends, and even to his father: “in all other offices of life,” says he, “praise a lover of his friends, and of his native country; but in writing history, I am obliged to divest myself of all other obligations, and sacrifice them all to truth.”
Aratus, the Sicyonian, in the childhood of our author, was the chief of the Achaian commonwealth; a man in principal esteem, both in his own country and all the provinces of Greece; admired universally for his probity, his wisdom, his just administration, and his conduct: in remembrance of all which, his grateful countrymen, after his decease, ordained him those honours which are only due to heroes. Him our Polybius had in veneration, and formed himself by imitation of his virtues; and is never wanting in his commendations through the course of his history. Yet even this man, when the cause of truth required it, is many times reproved by him for his slowness in counsel, his tardiness in the beginning of his enterprises, his tedious and more than Spanish deliberations; and his heavy and cowardly proceedings are as freely blamed by our Polybius, as they were afterwards by Plutarch, who questionless drew his character from this history. In plain terms, that wise general scarce ever performed any great action but by night: the glittering of a sword before his face was offensive to his eyes: our author therefore boldly accuses him of his faint-heartedness; attributes the defeat at Caphiæ wholly to him; and is not sparing to affirm, that all Peloponnesus was filled with trophies, which were set up as the monuments of his losses. He sometimes praises, and at other times condemns the proceedings of Philip, king of Macedon, the son of Demetrius, according to the occasions which he gave him by the variety and inequality of his conduct; and this most exquisite on either side. He more than once arraigns him for the inconstancy of his judgment, and chapters even his own Aratus on the same head; shewing, by many examples, produced from their actions, how many miseries they had both occasioned to the Grecians; and attributing it to the weakness of human nature, which can make nothing perfect. But some men are brave in battle, who are weak in counsel, which daily experience sets before our eyes; others deliberate wisely, but are weak in the performing part; and even no man is the same to-day, which he was yesterday, or may be to-morrow. On this account, says our author, “a good man is sometimes liable to blame, and a bad man, though not often, may possibly deserve to be commended.” And for this very reason he severely taxes Timæus, a malicious historian, who will allow no kind of virtue to Agathocles, the tyrant of Sicily, but detracts from all his actions, even the most glorious, because in general he was a vicious man. “Is it to be thought,” says Casaubon, “that Polybius loved the memory of Agathocles, the tyrant, or hated that of the virtuous Aratus?” But it is one thing to commend a tyrant, and another thing to overpass in silence those laudable actions which are performed by him; because it argues an author of the same falsehood, to pretermit what has actually been done, as to feign those actions which have never been.
It will not be unprofitable, in this place, to give another famous instance of the candour and integrity of our historian. There had been an ancient league betwixt the republic of Achaia and the kings of Egypt, which was entertained by both parties sometimes on the same conditions, and sometimes also the confederacy was renewed on other terms. It happened, in the 148th Olympiad,24 that Ptolomy Epiphanes, on this occasion, sent one Demetrius, his ambassador, to the commonwealth of Achaia. That republic was then ruinously divided into two factions; whereof the heads on one side were Philopœmen, and Lycortas, the father of our author; of the adverse party, the chief was Aristænus, with some other principal Achaians. The faction of Philopœmen was prevalent in the council, for renewing the confederacy with the king of Egypt; in order to which, Lycortas received a commission to go to that court and treat the articles of alliance. Accordingly, he goes, and afterwards returns, and gives account to his superiors, that the treaty was concluded. Aristænus, hearing nothing but a bare relation of a league that was made, without any thing belonging to the conditions of it, and well knowing that several forms of those alliances had been used in the former negociations, asked Lycortas, in the council, according to which of them this present confederacy was made? To this question of his enemy, Lycortas had not a word to answer; for it had so happened by the wonderful neglect of Philopœmen and his own, and also that of Ptolomy’s counsellors, (or, as I rather believe, by their craft contrived,) that the whole transaction had been loosely and confusedly managed, which, in a matter of so great importance, redounded to the scandal and ignominy of Philopœmen and Lycortas, in the face of that grave assembly. Now these proceedings our author so relates, as if he had been speaking of persons to whom he had no manner of relation, though one of them was his own father, and the other always esteemed by him in the place of a better father. But being mindful of the law which himself had instituted, concerning the indispensable duty of an historian, (which is truth,) he chose rather to be thought a lover of it, than of either of his parents. It is true, Lycortas, in all probability, was dead when Polybius wrote this history; but, had he been then living, we may safely think, that his son would have assumed the same liberty, and not feared to have offended him in behalf of truth.
Another part of this veracity is also deserving the notice of the reader, though, at the same time we must conclude, that it was also an effect of a sound judgment, that he perpetually explodes the legends of prodigies and miracles, and instead of them, most accurately searches into the natural causes of those actions which he describes; for, from the first of these, the latter follows of direct consequence. And for this reason, he professes an immortal enmity to those tricks and jugglings, which the common people believe as real miracles; because they are ignorant of the causes which produced them. But he had made a diligent search into them, and found out, that they proceeded either from the fond credulity of the people, or were imposed on them by the craft of those whose interest it was that they should be believed. You hear not in Polybius, that it rained blood or stones; that a bull had spoken; or a thousand such impossibilities, with which Livy perpetually crowds the calends of almost every consulship.
Philip de Commines, author of the excellent Memoirs of his own time. He was born in Flanders, and was for several years a distinguished ornament of the court of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, his native sovereign; but was tempted to divert his service for that of Louis XI. by whom he was employed in several negociations. After the death of that monarch, Commines fell into disgrace with his successor, and was long detained in prison: he died in 1509. It was of this historian Catherine de Medicis was wont to say, “that he made as many heretics in the state, as Luther in the Church.”
In the year of Rome 568.