The Historians' History of the World 01

Considering the time when it was written, this work of Diodorus was really an extraordinary production, though there has been a tendency on the part of the modern critic to dwell rather upon its defects than its merits. It has indeed become quite the fashion to speak of Diodorus as a weak-minded, prejudiced person, who gathered together materials for history from all sources indiscriminately, and gave them to the world, true and false together, quite unsifted by criticism. Such an estimate, however, does Diodorus a very great injustice, as the briefest perusal of his work must suffice to demonstrate. Indeed, it is perhaps not saying too much to assert that one would be nearer the truth were he to accept an estimate by Pliny, who affirms that Diodorus was the first of the Greeks who wrote seriously and avoided trifles. That Diodorus did write seriously, his work clearly testifies; that he largely avoided trifles, is shown by the mass of matter which he crowded into a comparatively small space; and that he was far from using his materials without exercising selective judgment, should be evident to any one who scans these materials themselves. It is quite true that he made many mistakes. He sometimes accepted as fact what was only fable, his chronologies are not always secure, his narratives of events not always photographically accurate. But consider the task he had set himself. He was endeavouring to write a history of the entire world so far as known in his day and generation, including within the scope of his narrative all the leading events of all the nations of the globe as known in that day. No man can perform such a task, even in this day of multiplied records and edited authorities, without making mistakes.

Whoever attempts to write history philosophically is brought, sooner or later, face to face with the fact that all historical records are woven through and through with fiction. To separate the threads of truth from the threads of fable is the task of critical judgment. It will be perfectly clear to any one who considers the case, that in making such selection the historian of any generation must be biased and influenced by the prejudices and preconceptions of his time. From such prejudices and preconceptions Diodorus was, of course, not free. He looked out upon the world with eyes of the first century B.C., not with eyes of the twentieth century A.D. That century, no less than this,—perhaps not more than this,—was an age of faith and superstition; but the faith of that time was not the faith of this time; the superstitions of the Greek and Roman were not our superstitions. They were a credulous people; we are a credulous people: but the exact type of their credulity differed in many ways from the type of our credulity.

In judging Diodorus, then, one must judge him as a Roman of the first century B.C., not as a European of the twentieth century A.D. And if we bear this in mind, we shall find, after scanning his pages, that Diodorus was by no means marked among his fellows by simple credulity of the unquestioning type which accepts whatever is told it without subjecting it to criticism. Diodorus, to be sure, tells us fabulous tales as to the origin of the world and the creation of its various peoples; but he explicitly forewarns us that he tells these tales, not as matters of his own belief, but in order to make an historical record of the opinions current among the different nations themselves as to their own origin.

These tales seem to us fabulous, grotesque, absurd; but we have no reason to doubt that many of them seemed equally mythical to Diodorus himself; and modern criticism should not forget that there is one other myth tale of the creation of the world and the origin of a particular race, which, had Diodorus known it, he would doubtless have narrated with the rest, and viewed with the same scepticism which he shows towards the others, as being fabulous, grotesque, and absurd, but which would have been accepted by the critics of all Christendom, in every age prior to our own, as the authentic historical record of the actual creation of the earth, and as the true account of its chosen people.

In a word, modern criticism should bear in mind, when reproaching Diodorus and others like him for their credulity, that the accepted faith of nineteenth-century Europe would have seemed to Diodorus as absurd and fabulous and mythical as any tale which he has to tell us can seem to the twentieth-century critic.