Since the barbarian war began, says Lucian, everyone is writing history. It is just as when an epidemic of madness at Abdera made all the people chant tragedies. It recalls too Diogenes, who, when Corinth was in danger of a siege from Philip and the citizens were hurrying defense measures, kept rolling his jar up and down hill that he might seem as busy as the rest of the world. Lucian’s advice will include the faults of historians which are to be avoided, the virtues to be cultivated. History must not be written as panegyric. History must not be written as poetry. Among the faults of contemporary historians are lack of taste, over-abundance of details, purple patches, inaccuracies about facts. “There are some ... who leave alone, or deal very cursorily with, all that is great and memorable; amateurs and not artists, they have no selective faculty, and loiter over copious laboured descriptions of the various trifles; it is as if a visitor to Olympia, instead of examining, commending or describing to his stay-at-home friends the general greatness and beauty of the Zeus, were to be struck with the exact symmetry and polish of its footstool, or the proportions of its shoe, and give all his attention to these minor points.”[316] Indispensable qualities of the ideal historian are political insight and ability in writing. His “one task is to tell the thing as it happened.”[317] He will be “fearless, incorruptible, independent, a believer in frankness and veracity; one that will call a spade a spade, make no concession to likes and dislikes, nor spare any men for pity or respect or propriety; an impartial judge, kind to all, but too kind to none; a literary cosmopolite with neither suzerain nor king, never heeding what this or that man may think, but setting down the thing that befell.”[317] Thucydides fulfills this ideal. In diction and style, the marks of the true historian are frankness and truth, lucidity and simplicity. The preface should be in proportion to the subject. “The body of the history ... is nothing from beginning to end but a long narrative; it must therefore be graced with the narrative virtues—smooth, level, and consistent progress, neither soaring nor crawling, and the charm of lucidity.” “Brevity is always desirable.” “Restraint in descriptions of mountains, walls, rivers, and the like, is very important.” If a speech is introduced, “the first requirement is that it should suit the character both of the speaker and of the occasion.” “It may occasionally happen that some extraordinary story has to be introduced; it should be simply narrated, without guarantee of its truth, thrown down for any-one to make what he can of it.” The historian should write not for the present, but for eternity. He should hope to have said of himself: “This was a man indeed, free and free-spoken; flattery and servility were not in him; he was truth all through.”[318]