Note 19:1 — Chapter I

Thus Strabo says, when speaking of Sicyon, that the tyrants who had long ruled the city before its liberation by Aratus were for the most part good men; and this accounts for the high reputation of Sicyon for culture. It was Lycophron, in his tragedy entitled the Casandreans, who painted the typical portrait of a tyrant in the monster Apollodorus. (Cf. my Greek Life and Thought, p. 283.) Whether he was really as bad as he was painted, and whether his Galatian guards really drank human blood, &c., depends on the comparative weight the critic assigns to general improbability, as against the veracity of a stage portrait. We have no other evidence, for the late historians borrow the traditional features without criticism. But let us suppose that in the next century the evidence concerning the character of Napoleon III depended upon Mr. Freeman's allusions in his Federal Government, and upon V. Hugo's monograph, would the inferences from these great writers be even near the real truth?