CHAPTER IV

WORLD HISTORIES

No historian worthy of the name can narrate the events even of a limited period without at least an inferential reference to the world-historic import of these events. Just in proportion as one fails to take a sweeping general view, the force of his facts is weakened; any narrow period of history, on which the attention is fixed, assumes, for the time being, a disproportionate interest, and is necessarily seen quite out of perspective. It is only when the limited period is considered in reference to other periods that it can be made to assume anything like its proper status. Something of this has been understood by all writers from the earliest times, and accordingly we find that very few of the ancient authors failed to take at least a sweeping view of contemporaneous events, even when detailing specifically the incidents of a restricted period; and often, as in the case of Herodotus, the space devoted to the history of events not strictly cognate to the main story is quite out of proportion to that reserved for the main story itself. Thus in a certain sense the history of Herodotus is a world history, inasmuch as it deals more or less comprehensively with practically all nations known to the Greeks of that time. Thucydides, as we have seen, confines himself much more closely to a precise text; yet even he devotes an introductory book to a summary of the past history of the Greeks as a preparation for the full understanding of the Peloponnesian War.

But, after all, a somewhat sharp distinction should be drawn between histories such as these, which ostensibly describe the incidents of a particular period, and more comprehensive treatises, which set the explicit task of dealing with the history of all nations in all times.

Of the works of this latter class,--World Histories proper,--the oldest one that has come down to us is at the same time probably the most comprehensive in scope, and the most extensive in point of matter, of any that was written in ancient times. This is the so-called Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian. Diodorus was a Greek, a native of Sicily, who lived during the time of Julius Cæsar and of Augustus. He set himself the explicit task of writing a comprehensive history of the world, and he devoted thirty years to the accomplishment of this task. This history, as originally written, comprised forty books, which treated of the entire history of mankind from the earliest times to the age of Augustus. Diodorus recognised the vagueness of early chronology, and he made no attempt to estimate the exact age of the world, but he computes the time covered by what he considers the historic period proper, in the following terms:

“According to Apollodorus, we have accounted fourscore years from the Trojan War to the return of Heraclides: from thence to the first olympiad, three hundred and twenty-eight years, computing the times from the Lacedæmonian kings: from the first olympiad to the beginning of the Gallic War (where our history ends) are seven hundred and thirty years: so that our whole work (comprehended in forty books) is an history which takes in the affairs of eleven hundred and thirty-eight years, besides those times that preceded the Trojan War.”

In his preface Diodorus further explains the exact scope of his work and the precise division in the books in the following words:

“Our first six books comprehend the affairs and mythologies of the ages before the Trojan War, of which the three first contain the barbarian, and the next following almost all the Grecian antiquities. In the eleven next after these, we have given an account of what has been done in every place from the time of the Trojan War till the death of Alexander. In the three and twenty books following, we have set forth all other things and affairs, till the beginning of the war the Romans made upon the Gauls; at which time Julius Cæsar, the emperor (who upon the account of his great achievements was surnamed Divus), having subdued the warlike nations of the Gauls, enlarged the Roman Empire, as far as to the British Isles; whose first acts fall in with the first year of the hundred and eightieth olympiad, when Herodes was chief magistrate at Athens. But as to the limitations of times contained in the work, we have not bound those things that happened before the Trojan War within any certain limits, because we could not find any foundation whereon to rely with any certainty.”

Of these forty books only fifteen have come down to us intact, namely, the first five, which carry down the history only to the Trojan wars, and books eleven to twenty, which cover the period from the invasion of Greece by Xerxes to the subjugation of Greece by the Romans. The remaining books are represented by considerable fragments, which, however, even in the aggregate, are insignificant in bulk as compared with the fifteen books that are preserved entire.

Considering the time when it was written, this work of Diodorus was really an extraordinary production, though there has been a tendency on the part of the modern critic to dwell rather upon its defects than its merits. It has indeed become quite the fashion to speak of Diodorus as a weak-minded, prejudiced person, who gathered together materials for history from all sources indiscriminately, and gave them to the world, true and false together, quite unsifted by criticism. Such an estimate, however, does Diodorus a very great injustice, as the briefest perusal of his work must suffice to demonstrate. Indeed, it is perhaps not saying too much to assert that one would be nearer the truth were he to accept an estimate by Pliny, who affirms that Diodorus was the first of the Greeks who wrote seriously and avoided trifles. That Diodorus did write seriously, his work clearly testifies; that he largely avoided trifles, is shown by the mass of matter which he crowded into a comparatively small space; and that he was far from using his materials without exercising selective judgment, should be evident to any one who scans these materials themselves. It is quite true that he made many mistakes. He sometimes accepted as fact what was only fable, his chronologies are not always secure, his narratives of events not always photographically accurate. But consider the task he had set himself. He was endeavouring to write a history of the entire world so far as known in his day and generation, including within the scope of his narrative all the leading events of all the nations of the globe as known in that day. No man can perform such a task, even in this day of multiplied records and edited authorities, without making mistakes.

Whoever attempts to write history philosophically is brought, sooner or later, face to face with the fact that all historical records are woven through and through with fiction. To separate the threads of truth from the threads of fable is the task of critical judgment. It will be perfectly clear to any one who considers the case, that in making such selection the historian of any generation must be biased and influenced by the prejudices and preconceptions of his time. From such prejudices and preconceptions Diodorus was, of course, not free. He looked out upon the world with eyes of the first century B.C., not with eyes of the twentieth century A.D. That century, no less than this,--perhaps not more than this,--was an age of faith and superstition; but the faith of that time was not the faith of this time; the superstitions of the Greek and Roman were not our superstitions. They were a credulous people; we are a credulous people: but the exact type of their credulity differed in many ways from the type of our credulity.

In judging Diodorus, then, one must judge him as a Roman of the first century B.C., not as a European of the twentieth century A.D. And if we bear this in mind, we shall find, after scanning his pages, that Diodorus was by no means marked among his fellows by simple credulity of the unquestioning type which accepts whatever is told it without subjecting it to criticism. Diodorus, to be sure, tells us fabulous tales as to the origin of the world and the creation of its various peoples; but he explicitly forewarns us that he tells these tales, not as matters of his own belief, but in order to make an historical record of the opinions current among the different nations themselves as to their own origin.

These tales seem to us fabulous, grotesque, absurd; but we have no reason to doubt that many of them seemed equally mythical to Diodorus himself; and modern criticism should not forget that there is one other myth tale of the creation of the world and the origin of a particular race, which, had Diodorus known it, he would doubtless have narrated with the rest, and viewed with the same scepticism which he shows towards the others, as being fabulous, grotesque, and absurd, but which would have been accepted by the critics of all Christendom, in every age prior to our own, as the authentic historical record of the actual creation of the earth, and as the true account of its chosen people.

In a word, modern criticism should bear in mind, when reproaching Diodorus and others like him for their credulity, that the accepted faith of nineteenth-century Europe would have seemed to Diodorus as absurd and fabulous and mythical as any tale which he has to tell us can seem to the twentieth-century critic.

And as to the mistakes of Diodorus in the more strictly historical portions of his narrative, these also must be viewed with a certain toleration by every candid critic when he reflects upon the vast preponderance of those cases in which the records of Diodorus are worthy of the fullest credence. In considering these matters, it is very easy, indeed, to generate myths that befog our view of the true status of an ancient author. Thus, for example, it was once traditional to regard Thucydides as the most candid, just, and impartial historian who has ever lived; but it can hardly be in doubt that the real reason why this estimate has grown up about the name of Thucydides is the fact that, as Professor Mahaffy points out, Thucydides is the sole authority for the history of most of the period of which he treats. It has even been admitted by Müller that in the early portion of the first chapter of Thucydides, where he treats on Grecian history in general, and up to the Peloponnesian War, he does not manifest the same impartiality which distinguishes him in the later portions of his narrative. But it is precisely in this earlier chapter that Thucydides deals with events that are recorded by other historians. It is here, and for the most part here alone, that his story can be checked by data from other authors. Could we similarly check the story of the Peloponnesian War in general, it can hardly be in doubt that we should come across at least some discrepancies which would have tended materially to modify the almost idolatrous estimate of Thucydides that came to be, and long continued to be, unquestionably associated with his name.

Making the application of this thought to Diodorus, it is evident at once that the historian of a limited period of antiquity lays himself open to no such range of comparison as he who undertakes to write the history of the entire world. In the very nature of the case, such a writer pits himself against the whole company of specialists; and, after all, it is hardly surprising, should it be susceptible of proof, that in several, or all, fields there are specialists whose accuracy excels the accuracy of Diodorus in each particular field. Surely the comprehensiveness of his task must count for something in the estimate, and, when all this is taken into consideration, it may fairly be repeated that the general estimate of modern criticism has done but scant justice to the author of the first attempt ever made to write a complete and comprehensive history of the world.

Moreover, it must not be forgotten that in his use of authorities Diodorus sometimes showed a selective judgment that is entitled to the fullest praise. A notable instance is found in his treatment of that period of Grecian history following the Peloponnesian War, when the Spartans and the Thebans were contending for supremacy. It was treated by Xenophon in his _Hellenica_, and as Xenophon was actual witness of many of the events which he describes, the presumption would be that his authority for the period might be considered incontestable. But in point of fact, Xenophon, philosopher though he was and pupil of Socrates, was not above the influence of personal prejudice. He was a friend of Agesilaus, and his admiration for that hero, as well as his fondness for the Spartans in general, prejudiced his narrative to such an extent that he did very scant justice to the merits of the great Epaminondas. Indeed, were we to trust to Xenophon alone, the world never would have had in later times anything like a just appreciation of the merits of the great Theban, and since Xenophon’s account of this period is the only contemporary one that has been preserved, it was a rare chance, indeed, that preserved to posterity a just appreciation of the greatest of the Thebans, whom some critics are wont to consider the greatest of all the Greeks; and it is Diodorus whom we must thank for doing this historic justice to a great man whose merits might otherwise have been obscured by the personal prejudice of a contemporary historian.

Diodorus, in treating this period, chose as his authority, not Xenophon, but Aphorus. Just how he came to this decision is not known; it suffices that the decision was a good one. None but a prejudiced critic can doubt that in many other cases his judgment was equally perspicuous in selecting among divergent accounts the one of greatest verisimilitude.

A part of the relative neglect which has fallen to the lot of Diodorus may be ascribed to the manner of his handling. He threw his work into the form of annals, in which a chronological idea was predominant. He gives the history of a nation in a given year, and then turns aside to other nations, to follow the fortunes of each in turn over the same period. Necessarily, under such a treatment, the whole plan lacks continuity. One must break from one subject to another, must turn from Assyria to Egypt, from Greece to Rome, in order to follow the story through constantly broken chapters. Naturally, under such treatment, the reader’s interest flags. From a popular standpoint, such a treatment is clearly a mistake.

The plan of Herodotus, which took up the story of each nation, and carried it through a long period uninterruptedly, has many advantages; is infinitely more artistic. It is chiefly due to this treatment, rather than the actual phrasing of his story, that Herodotus has gained so much more universal fame than Diodorus; for in those parts of his history in which he does attempt a continuous narrative, Diodorus shows much skill as a story-teller. In the earlier portion of his work, that portion which, fortunately, has in the main been preserved to us, when dealing with what he regards as the fabulous history of the nations prior to the establishment of a fixed chronology, his narrative runs on continuously, suggesting in many ways that of the Father of History. It was so with his treatment of early Egypt, and with his even more interesting history of ancient Assyria. These parts alone of his work serve to make him one of the most important authors of antiquity whose writings have been preserved to us, and we shall have occasion to draw largely upon him for the history of this period.

What has just been said about the attitude of modern critics toward Diodorus must not be taken to imply that this earliest of great world historians has, on the whole, failed of an appreciative audience. The facts of the case amply refute such a supposition as this. An author writes to be read, and in the last resort the only valid criterion as to the value of his work is found in the preservation or neglect of that work by successive generations of readers.

Tested by this standard, very few of the ancient writers have obtained such a measure of appreciation as has been accorded to Diodorus. Something like three-fourths of what he wrote has been lost, it is true; but in fairly estimating the import of this, one must consider the bulk of what remains. The briefest comparison supplies us with some very interesting data. It appears that, of the entire series of the predecessors of Diodorus, no single historian has left us anything like a comparable bulk of extant matter. Only one predecessor in any field of literature, namely, Aristotle, greatly exceeds him in this regard, and a single other writer, Plato, about equals him. Turning to the contemporaries of Diodorus and to his successors in the use of the Greek language, a similar result is shown. A single writer exceeds him in output. This is Plutarch, the biographer and philosopher rather than historian proper. No other Greek writer in any field equals Diodorus, though two historians, Dion Cassius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, are within hailing distance. When one reflects on the actual labour implied by the preservation of any manuscript throughout the long generations of the middle ages, these data speak volumes for the aggregate judgment passed upon the work of Diodorus by posterity. Of the long list of Greek historians,--a list mounting far into the hundreds, as proved by fragmentary remains,--only three as ancient as Diodorus have fared better than he, these three being Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. But the entire bulk of the works of these three writers does not so very greatly exceed the bulk of the extant writings of Diodorus. The works of Herodotus and Thucydides together do not comprise more matter than is contained in books eleven to twenty of Diodorus, which are preserved _en bloc_.

It would, of course, be absurd to imply that the mere bulk of the manuscripts preserved before the age of printing is a test of the value of an ancient author’s work; but, on the other hand, bearing in mind always the labour employed in the production of a single copy of a large work, it would be equally absurd to deny that the bulk of manuscripts has a certain bearing upon the value of the matter which they preserve. No doubt many a scribe would be deterred from starting out to copy manuscript by the great bulk of the work, and where he had no great preference, would be influenced by this alone to choose a smaller book. Again, doubtless many a scribe wearied of his task in the case of the more ponderous works, and gave it up after copying a few books. This common-sense explanation no doubt accounts for the fact that quite generally the earlier books rather than the later ones of works that have come down to us in a fragmentary condition are the ones preserved. Had Herodotus and Thucydides written forty books instead of eight or nine, it is very unlikely that even their genius would have sufficed to preserve the entire number. The case of Livy, whose work, despite the beauty of its style, has come down to us so sadly mutilated, sufficiently sustains this supposition. It is nothing against the merit of Diodorus, then, to reflect that half his work is lost; the wonder is rather that so much of it has been preserved.

We have dwelt thus at length upon the work of Diodorus because it is a work that may be taken as in many ways representative of world histories in general. Certainly it was by far the greatest world history produced in antiquity, of the exact merits of which we have any present means of judging. Indeed, there is only one other world history that has come down to us, and this, the work of Justin, is in itself only an abridgment of the writing of another author, Trogus Pompeius. Considering when it was written, this work of Trogus, if we may judge from the abridgment, was an admirable production, and the abridgment itself is of great value in throwing light on some periods that otherwise are not well covered by extant documents. As a whole, however, it is a compendium of history rather than a comprehensive work like that of Diodorus. Of the works of the other world historians of antiquity it is impossible to speak with any measure of certainty. Polybius accredited Aphorus with being the only man who had written a world history before his day. It is known that Aphorus lived in the fifth century B.C., and that he was a fellow-pupil of another historian, Theopompus, in the famous school of Isocrates at Athens; but his work is only known to us through inadequate fragments and the indirect quotations of other authors. The same is true of the works of Theopompus just referred to, and of Timæus, another Greek whose writing had something of world historic comprehensiveness. But, even had these works been preserved, it may well be doubted whether any one of them would compare favourably with the great history of Diodorus, which must stand out for all time as the greatest illustration of the writing of world history in antiquity.

Diodorus, as we have seen, brought his work down to the time of the Gallic wars of Cæsar. There are references in his writing which imply that he lived well into the time of Augustus. He probably died not long before the beginning of the Christian era.

No Greek of later time and no Roman of any period produced a work that supplanted the history of Diodorus, though most of the Byzantine historians produced chronicles, many of which had more or less aspect of world history in epitome. Several of these have been preserved, but no one thinks of comparing them with the work of the older writer. The chronological work of Eusebius, however, deserves a word of special mention. It was a mere epitome of world history, but a relatively comprehensive one, and one which, through the loss of more pretentious works, has come to be of great value to the modern historian. It was written originally in Greek, but the most important copy of it that has come down to us is, curiously enough, an Armenian translation. It is the Latin translation of this Armenian manuscript that is the work usually referred to by modern historians in speaking of Eusebius. The encyclopædia of history compiled for Constantine Porphyrogenitus, to which reference has already been made, must also be mentioned as a world history of real importance. It was based almost exclusively upon Greek authors, who were quoted at length, with such abbreviations or modifications as were made necessary in adjusting the various texts to one another. As a means of preserving the work of numerous important Greek historians this collection had the utmost value, but, unfortunately, it has come down to us in a much mutilated condition. During the Byzantine period the minds of would-be historians of the Western world were so occupied with ecclesiastical quarrels and the chronicles of local princes, that no one thought of world histories in the broader sense. We should be thankful that here and there a monk had interest and energy enough to copy the ancient authors, and thus in part to preserve them. Considering the intellectual atmosphere of the time, the wonder is, not that so many of the pagan authors were lost, but rather that any of them were preserved. Yet there were occasional gleams of light, even in the so-called dark age. Such a one of peculiar interest to the English reader is found in the fact that King Alfred translated into Anglo-Saxon the compendious world history of Orosius, a work that otherwise would be but little known to fame, but which, thanks to its brevity of treatment, and to this very unusual distinction of translation into a “barbaric tongue,” no doubt served a most excellent purpose in giving to the Anglo-Saxons of the ninth century a glimpse of the events of ancient times.

The best guide to the historic point of view of the generations that ushered in what we are accustomed to think of as the modern period is furnished by the _History of the World_ which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote toward the close of his life, late in the sixteenth century. Raleigh was not an historian from choice, but was led to his task as a diversion during the time of his imprisonment. The work as far as he completed it is in five books, the titles of which are instructive. First book, “In treating of the First Ages of the World, from the Creation to Abraham.” Second book, “Of the Times from the Birth of Abraham to the Destruction of the Temple of Solomon.” Third book, “From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Time of Philip of Macedon.” Fourth book, “From the Reign of Philip of Macedon to the Establishing of that Kingdom in the Race of Antigonus.” Fifth book, “From the Settled Rule of Alexander’s Successors in the East, until the Romans (prevailing over all) made Conquest of Asia and Macedon.”

It will appear that Raleigh did not carry his history beyond the early Roman period, yet, even so, it is a very bulky book, comprising more than eight hundred enormous quarto pages, an actual bulk far exceeding the extant portions of Diodorus. Raleigh very generally names his authorities in the margin, but even had he failed to do so, it would be easy to understand the sources on which he must have drawn. Obviously he depended largely upon the Bible for the early history of mankind, and for the rest he had access, no doubt, to the dozen or so of classical authors whose names we have had occasion to mention again and again. Naturally enough, the pages of Raleigh seem archaic to the modern reader, yet passages are not wanting which show the shrewd practical insight of the courtier and statesman. As a whole, the work had sufficient interest to be reprinted in 1687, a century after the author’s death. Indeed, until this time there was practically no world history in the field in competition with Raleigh’s that had been written since classical times. It is a curious commentary on the life of the post-classical times and of the middle ages that between the work of Diodorus, written just before the beginning of the Christian era, and the work altogether similar in scope of Sir Walter Raleigh, written sixteen hundred years later, there was no world history produced that is strictly comparable to either. Nor did the seventeenth century produce any marked change in the situation as regards the literature of world history.

The true renaissance of history writing came with the eighteenth century. About 1730 an English publisher was led to notice the paucity of recent literature in this field, and to project a universal history of the widest scope. Such men as Archibald Bower, John Campbell, William Guthrie, George Sale, George Psalmanazar, and John Swinton were associated in the undertaking, and in the course of the following twenty years a long series of volumes dealing with all phases of universal history, except, curiously enough, the history of Great Britain, was brought to a close. A subsequent edition, modified and improved as regards the earlier volumes, and supplemented with an account of English history, was published toward the close of the eighteenth century, the editor being the famous Dr. Tobias Smollett. This work, the first important history of the world produced in modern times, excited great interest. It is odd to reflect in the light of more recent events that the work was translated into various European languages, including German. The production of this work was a notable achievement, but the various parts of the work had widely different degrees of merit. A competent German critic, writing about the middle of the nineteenth century, conceded that the parts of the universal history referring to antiquity were fairly well done, but noted that the treatment of the middle ages was superficial, and the treatment of modern history even worse.

Inasmuch as the history of antiquity has been very largely reconstructed within the past fifty years, it will be obvious that the universal history in question cannot now be regarded with other than an antiquarian interest. Nevertheless, it contains numberless descriptive passages, which are as historically accurate and as interesting to-day as they were when written.

The impulse to historical composition, of which this universal history is a monumental proof, found expression a little later in the great histories of Hume and Robertson and Gibbon. Thanks to these writers, England was easily in advance of all other countries at the close of the eighteenth century in the matter of historical composition. Indeed, as to world histories she was first, without a second. Early in the nineteenth century, however, a great world history was produced in Germany. This was the work of Schlosser. In its earliest form this work was completed in 1824; it was a strictly technical production. But about twenty years later a pupil of Schlosser, under the direction of the author himself, elaborated a popular edition of the world history, which soon had an enormous circulation in Germany, and which in recurring editions still finds a multitude of readers. This work of Schlosser’s would probably have been translated into English were it not that the field had been preoccupied by another great universal history. This was the work which Dr. Lardner edited, and which began to appear in 1830, about a century after the inauguration of that first universal history in English to which we have just referred. Dr. Lardner’s work, like its English predecessor, was produced by a company of specialists; but it differed from the other in that each volume or set of volumes dealing with a period or country was written by a specialist whose authorship was acknowledged on the title-page, whereas the previous work had been altogether anonymous. In other words, it was essentially a collection of monographs, each by a more or less distinguished authority, which, in the aggregate, constituted a history of the world. The work as a whole comprised a large number of volumes. Needless to say the component parts were of varying merit; but as a whole the work was an excellent one, and many of the volumes still have value, though necessarily much of their contents is antiquated.

The production of the popular edition of Schlosser’s world history in Germany marked an epoch in this class of literature. Almost contemporaneously with this production several other world histories saw the light in Germany, and from that day to this world histories have come from the German press in unbroken succession. These are varied in scope, from the marvellously compressed and beautifully philosophical work of Rottock in four small volumes, published about 1830, to the gigantic Oncken series, which is just completed. In this list of German world histories the works of Bekker, of Leo, and of Weiss hold conspicuous places, in addition to those just named. But perhaps the most notable of all is the world history of Dr. George Weber. This work of Dr. Weber occupied the author during the best years of his life. It is in eighteen volumes, and occupied about twenty years in passing through the press. We shall have occasion to refer more at length to Dr. Weber’s work in another place, as well as to quote from it frequently. Suffice it here that Dr. Weber may justly be called the Diodorus of modern times, his work being certainly the most complete and comprehensive exposition of world history that has ever issued from a single pen.

One other world history of German origin must be mentioned as holding a place beside that of Weber. This is the work of Ranke. It is very different in plan from Weber’s, in some ways more philosophical, and often less detailed in its narrative of events. The author, recognised as almost the greatest of German historians, began the work late in life, and brought to bear upon it perhaps as full an equipment of historical knowledge in divers fields as any single man has ever attained. Unfortunately, he did not live to complete his work, which, as it stands, comes only to the close of the middle ages, and which, therefore, cannot be compared in its entirety with the completed work of Weber.

The most recent of all the great German world histories, the Oncken series, just referred to, is a work built essentially upon the plan of Dr. Lardner’s series of the early part of the century. Each volume of the Oncken series is written virtually as an independent work by an authority, and there is no close bond between the various component parts of the structure, though doubtless an attempt was made on the part of the editor to have the various authors conform somewhat to the same scheme of treatment. The work comprises about fifty very large octavo volumes, being therefore the bulkiest, as it is the most recent, of world histories.