THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

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Eduaid
WHO WERE THE MAKERS ? 129
very diflferent accounts of the same incident from different eyewitnesses.
Though Polybius and LiVy may differ in details, yet no one
doubts that there was such a person as Hannibal, against whom
Rome had a life and death struggle for some sixteen years.
Though Thucydides cites only the quarrel between Corcyra
and Corinth and the siege of Potidaea as the proximate causes
of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, some of his Athenian
contemporaries held that it was largely due to the personal
spite of Aspasia towards the Megarians. Yet we do not for
this discrepancy jondenin Thucydides' history as a mere tissue
of inventions.
It was a matter of dispute whether Xerxes had sailed
round Mount Athos, or through a canal, intersecting Some
it.
held that Themistocles died naturally, while others averred
that he had poisoned himself with bull's blood. Yet no one
has yet denied that there were such persons as Xerxes and
Themistocles, and that there was a gi'eat battle at Salamis.
On the other hand when there is uo vai-iation in the statements
of different writers touching the same incident, the
sceptic is prone to say that the accounts iiave no independent
value, for B, C\ and J) are simply repeating the statement of ^,
and that as A is
unsupported by independent testimony he has
probably concocted the tale. This last method of attack contains
an elenit;nt of truth, for as we have demonstrated the
exceeding diffieulty of getting complete ai^reement touching
the details of historical occtirronces, it is highly probable that
if there is no variation of any kind in scvci-al accounts of the
same event, these re})()rts
have not come Irom several independent
witnesses, but are simply the repetitions of a single
testimony. Yet it docs not follow that because an acc