Latin
Lines 1.90-1.105
Greek and Roman Historians, Ancient Historians on History 1.90-105
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Herodian (3rd cent. A.D.)
Most writers engaged in compiling history, whose concern has been to present a fresh record of the past, have aimed at winning themselves a permanent reputation for scholarship, since they were afraid that if they did not express themselves they would be indistinguishable from the masses. But in their narratives they have shown a contempt for the truth and a preoccupation with vocabulary and style, because they were confident that, even if they romanced a bit, they would reap the advantages of the pleasure they gave to their public, without the accuracy of their research being investigated. Some authors, through the excellent quality of their style, have made trivial event acquire a spurious importance with posterity, greater than was deserved by the truth. They have done this either because they were bitterly opposed to tyranny or because they waned to give flattering praise to an emperor or a city or a private individual.
My policy has been not to accept any second-hand information which has not been checked and corroborated. I have collected the evidence for my work with every attention to accuracy, limiting it to what falls within the recent memory of my readers.
But I believe that future generations too will derive some pleasure from the knowledge of events which are important and compressed within a brief span of time. (History 1. 1)
Eutropius (4th cent. A.D.)
TO THE EMPEROR VALENS, MAXIMUS, PERPETUUS, AUGUSTUS. According to the pleasure of your Clemency, I have arranged in a brief narrative, in the order of time, such particulars in the history of Rome as seemed most worthy of notice, in transactions either of war or peace, from the foundation of the city to our own days; adding concisely, also, such matters as were remarkable in the lives of the emperors; that your Serenity's divine mind may rejoice to learn that it has followed the actions of illustrious men in governing the empire, before it became acquainted with them by reading. (Epitome ,Preface)
Procopius (c. 490 -c. 562 A.D.)
For I conceived the opinion that for men of future generations such a record as this would be inexpedient, since it will be most advantageous that the blackest deeds shall if possible be unknown to later times, rather than that, coming to the ears of sovereigns, they should be imitated by them. For in the case of the majority of men in power their very inexperience always causes the imitation of the base actions of their predecessors to be easy, and they ever turn with greater ease and facility to the faults committed by the rulers of an earlier time. But after I was brought to write my history of these events by the thought that it will assuredly be clear to those who hereafter shall hold sovereign power that, in the first place, punishment will in all probability overtake them likewise for their misdeeds, just as befell these persons; and, in the second place, that their own actions and characters will likewise be on record for all future time, so that consequently they will perhaps be more reluctant to transgress. For what man of later times would have learned of the licentious life of Semiramis or of the madness of Sardanapalus and Nero, if the records of these things had not been left behind by the writers of their times? And apart from these considerations, in case any should chance to suffer like treatment at the hands of their rulers, this record will not be wholly useless to them. For those who have suffered misfortunes are wont to receive consolation from the thought that not upon themselves alone have cruel disasters fallen. For these reasons, then, I shall proceed to relate, first, all the base deeds committed by Belisarius; and afterwards I shall disclose all the base deeds committed by Justinian and Theodora. (Anecdota 1. 6-9)