Note 971 — Chapter X

The first paragraph of the preface to Niebuhr’s history deserves to be quoted. The History of Rome was treated, during the first two centuries after the revival of letters, with the same prostration of the understanding and judgment to the written letter that had been handed down, and with the same fearfulness of going beyond it, which prevailed in all the other branches of knowledge. If any one had asserted a right of examining the credibility of the ancient writers and the value of their testimony, an outcry would have been raised against his atrocious presumption. The object aimed at was, in spite of all internal evidence, to combine what was related by them; at the utmost, one authority was in some one particular instance postponed to another as gently as possible, and without inducing any further results. Here and there, indeed, a free-born mind, such as Glareanus, broke through these bonds; but infallibly a sentence of condemnation was forthwith pronounced against him; besides, such men were not the most learned, and their bold attempts were only partial, and were wanting in consistency. In this department, as in others, men of splendid talents and the most copious learning conformed to the narrow spirit of their age; their labours extracted from a multitude of insulated details what the remains of ancient literature did not afford united in any single work, a systematic account of Roman antiquities. What they did in this respect is wonderful; and this is sufficient to earn for them an imperishable fame.