Flawed Structure of Theopompus's History
For, after premising that he is going to write about a
king most richly endowed by nature with virtue, he has raked up
against him every shameful and atrocious charge that he could
find. There are therefore but two alternatives: either this
writer in the preface to his work has shown himself a liar and
a flatterer; or in the body of that history a fool and utter
simpleton, if he imagined that by senseless and improper
invective he would either increase his own credit, or gain
great acceptance for his laudatory expressions about Philip.
But the fact is that the general plan of this writer is one
Thucydides breaks off in B. C. 411. Battle of Leuctra, B. C. 371. |
also which can meet with no one's approval. For
having undertaken to write a Greek History from
the point at which Thucydides left off, when he
got near the period of the battle of Leuctra, and
the most splendid exploits of the Greeks, he threw aside
Greece
and its achievements in the middle of his story, and, changing
his purpose, undertook to write the history of Philip. And yet
it would have been far more telling and fair to have included
the actions of Philip in the general history of
Greece, than the
history of
Greece in that of Philip. For one cannot conceive
any one, who had been preoccupied by the study of a royal
government, hesitating, if he got the power and opportunity, to
transfer his attention to the great name and splendid personality
of a nation like
Greece; but no one in his senses, after beginning
with the latter, would have exchanged it for the showy biography
of a tyrant. Now what could it have been that compelled
Theopompus to overlook such inconsistencies? Nothing
surely but this, that whereas the aim of his original history was
honour, that of his history of Philip was expediency. As to
this deviation from the right path however, which made him
change the theme of his history, he might perhaps have had
something to say, if any one had questioned him about it; but
as to his abominable language about the king's friends, I do not
think that he could have said a word of defence, but must have
owned to a serious breach of propriety. . . .