Regarding truth as 'the most divine thing in Nature,' the very 'eye
and light of history without which it moves a blind thing,'
Polybius spared no pains in the acquisition of historical materials
or in the study of the sciences of politics and war, which he
considered were so essential to the training of the scientific
historian, and the labour he took is mirrored in the many ways in
which he criticises other authorities.
There is something, as a rule, slightly contemptible about ancient
criticism. The modern idea of the critic as the interpreter, the
expounder of the beauty and excellence of the work he selects,
seems quite unknown. Nothing can be more captious or unfair, for
instance, than the method by which Aristotle criticised the ideal
state of Plato in his ethical works, and the passages quoted by
Polybius from Timaeus show that the latter historian fully deserved
the punning name given to him. But in Polybius there is, I think,
little of that bitterness and pettiness of spirit which
characterises most other writers, and an incidental story he tells
of his relations with one of the historians whom he criticised
shows that he was a man of great courtesy and refinement of taste -
as, indeed, befitted one who had lived always in the society of
those who were of great and noble birth.
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