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Dionysius again saith thus: The next office of him that will write a history, is to know where to begin, and where to end. And in this point Herodotus seemeth to be far more discreet than Thucydides. For in the first place he layeth down the cause for which the barbarians began to injure the Grecians; and going on, maketh an end at the punishment and the revenge taken on the barbarians. But Thucydides begins at the good estate of the Grecians; which, being a Grecian and an Athenian, he ought not to have done: nor ought he, being of that dignity amongst the Athenians, so evidently to have laid the fault of the war upon his own city, when there were other occasions enough to which he might have imputed it. Nor ought he to have begun with the business of the Corcyræns, but at the more noble acts of his country, which they did immediately after the Persian war: which afterward in convenient place he mentioneth, but it is but cursorily, and not as he ought. And when he had declared those with much affection, as a lover of his country, then he should have brought in, how that the Lacedamonians, through envy and fear, but pretending other causes, began the war: and so have descended to the Corcyræan business, and the decree against the Megareans, or whatsoever else he had to put in. Then in the ending of his history, there be many errors committed. For though he profess he was present in the whole war, and that he would write it all: yet he ends with the naval battle at Cynos-sema, which was fought in the twenty-first year of the war. Whereas it had been better to have gone through with it, and ended his history with that admirable and grateful return of the banished Athenians from Phile; at which time the city recovered her liberty.
