XXI. Seneca reduces the want of truth in history, to three principles or causes, which are credulity, negligence, and a propensity to lying in historians: _Quidam creduli, quidam negligentes sunt: quibusdam mendacium obrepit, quibusdam placet: illi non evitant, hi appetunt._ (lib. 7. Natur. Quæst. cap. 16.) He omitted to point out two other principles, which are sometimes the impossibility of coming at the truth, and at others the want of critical judgment to discern it. XXII. Lying historians occasion others who are not lyars to relate many fables. It seems as if the greatest diligence of an historian, who relates the event of remote ages, can enable him to do no more than examine carefully the authors who lived at that time, or immediately after it, and to give the sum of their relations faithfully. But how often has flattery or resentment been known to warp the pens of those very authors? The first of these faults was remarked by Tacitus, in those writers, who related the affairs of Tiberius, Cayus, Claudius, and Nero, in the life-time of those Cæsars; and the second, in those who gave an account of them a short time after their deaths: _Tiberii, Caiique, Claudii, ac Neronis, res florentibus ipsis, ob metum falsæ, postquam occiderant, recentibus odiis compositæ sunt._ By so much the nearer historians are to the circumstances they relate, in so much a nearer point of view do they see the truth, and are so much the better enabled to distinguish it; but in proportion to these opportunities of their knowing it, are the suspicions that various affections induce them to conceal it. Fear, hope, love, and hatred, are four strong winds which violently agitate the pen, and will not permit the nib of it to rest or dwell on the point of truth. We shall select two examples, out of a great number of others, that might be produced to prove this assertion, which are Procopius a Greek historian, and Velleius Paterculus a Roman one. The last of these, after having given an excellent account of the things appertaining to Rome, in the anterior ages, when he came to relate those of his own times, fouled the page of his history with gross adulations of Tiberius, and his favourite Sejanus; and heaped the highest eulogiums, on the heads, of two of the most perfidious and flagitious men that were known in that corrupt age. Procopius, in his _Secret History_, describes the Emperor Justinian, and the Empress Theodosia, as the most abominable prince and princess upon earth. Paterculus lived under Tiberius, and Procopius under Justinian; and, as they were both men of rank, and filled considerable employments, could not be ignorant of the reality of things. But envy in one, and dependence in the other, caused them both, equally to deviate from the truth.