XXII. Our want of historical information, respecting those numerous swarms of courageous and powerful people, who came out of Northern Scythia, and, under different names, dismembered the whole Western Roman Empire, is very extraordinary; which they did many centuries before the original Turks of Eastern Scythia, who came from the coasts of the Caspian Sea, and were called in, as some say, by the emperors of Constantinople, and, as others say, by the kings of Persia; and who, upon the ruins of the Eastern, Roman, and Arabian empires, established a power more formidable than ever that of Rome had been[4]; the history of all which warlike and formidable people, is very little known. _Of the Passion for the wonderful._ XXIII. The love of the marvellous is one of the stumbling-blocks of history. There are some historians, who take a pleasure in relating incredible things, and seem as if they sympathized in the admiration which they produce in credulous readers. XXIV. The passion for the prodigious, has been the cause of inventing many extraordinary stories. Justin tells us, that after the defeat of the Persians at the battle of Marathon, Cynegyrus, an Athenian, pursued the enemy in their flight; and when they in great disorder threw themselves into their ships, he, to prevent their escape, laid hold of one of the ships with his hands, but they being successively cut off, he seized and detained her with his teeth. XXV. Plutarch relates, that Pyrrhus being wounded in the head in a combat with the Mamertines, was obliged to retire, to get his wound dressed, and to refresh himself; but, after a little while, in spite of all the opposition his own people could make against it, he returned to the field, and, irritated by the bravados of one of the enemy of gigantic stature, he, fired with indignation, advanced up to him, and with his sword discharged a blow on his head with such fury, that he split him in two, and that one half of his carcase fell down on one side of him, and the other on the other. XXVI. Procopius writes, that two women, who kept a house of lodging and entertainment for travellers, in the time of a famine, killed and ate up seventeen men: and we read in Maffeus, that a Portuguese soldier, having in an engagement expended all his ball, drew his own teeth, with which he charged his musquet, and fired them on the enemy. _Obligations of an Historian._ XXVII. History should not resemble a picture, which aims at representing nature in a beautiful light; for, as Father Orleans observes, a fine touch passes easily from the imagination to the pen; and, although it may illustrate a hero, is very apt to wound the truth, which is the most essential character of history.