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Yet most of them think they don’t even need advice for the job any more than they need a set of rules for walking or seeing or eating; no, they think it is perfectly simple and easy to write history and that anyone can do it if only he can put what comes to him into words. As to that, I’m sure you know as well as I do, my dear friend, that history is not one of those things that can be put in hand without effort and can be put together lazily, but is something which needs, if anything does in literature, a great deal of thought if it is to be what Thucydides calls “a possession for evermore.” Now I know that I shall not convert very many: some indeed will think me a great nuisance, particularly anyone whose history is already finished and has already been displayed in public. And if in addition he was applauded by his audience it would be madness to expect his sort to remodel or rewrite any part of what has once been ratified and lodged, as it were, in the royal palace. Nevertheless it is as well to address my remarks to them also so that if ever another war comes along, whether Celts against Getans or Indians against Bactrians (no one would dare to fight us—we’ve beaten everybody already), they may write better by applying this yard-stick if they think it accurate; if they don’t, then they must use the same rule to do their measuring as now. The doctor will not be greatly annoyed if every man of Abdera The Abderites were proverbially simpletons. plays the “Andromeda” and is happy to do it.
