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... These things he rightly spoke to the commanders that accompanied him, to whom he opened the way
for future performances, while he expelled the barbarians
and restored Greece to her ancient liberty. And the same
thing may be said to those that magnify themselves for
their writings. For if there were none to act, there would
be none to write. Take away the political government of
Pericles, and the naval trophies of Phormio at Rhium, and
the brave achievements of Nicias at Cythera, Megara, and
Corinth, Demosthenes's Pylos, and the four hundred captives taken by Cleon, Tolmides sailing round the Peloponnesus, and Myronidas vanquishing the Boeotians at
Oenophyta: and you murder Thucydides. Take away the
daring braveries of Alcibiades in the Hellespont, and of
Thrasyllus near Lesbos; the dissolution of the oligarchy
by Theramenes; Thrasybulus, Archippus, and the seventy
that from Phylae ventured to attack the Lacedaemonian
tyranny; and Conon again enforcing Athens to take the
sea: and then there is an end of Cratippus. For as for
Xenophon, he was his own historian, relating the exploits
of the army under his command, but saying that Themistogenes the Syracusan had written the history of them;
dedicating the honor of his writing to another, that writing of himself as of another, he might gain the more
credit. But all the other historians, as the Clinodemi,
[p. 400]
Diyli, Philochorus, Philarchus, were but the actors of
other men's deeds, as of so many plays, while they compiled the acts of kings and great generals, and thrusting
themselves into the memory of their fame, partake of a
kind of lustre and light from them. For there is a certain
shadow of glory which reflects from those that act to those
that write, while the actions of another appear in the discourse as in a mirror.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 5.
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