XXXIII. Herodotus, who is called the Father of History, was looked upon by the antients as a very fabulous writer. Strabo, Quintilian, and Causabon, don’t give more credit to Herodotus, than to Homer, Hesiod, and the tragic poets. Lucian, in his Journey to Hell, tells us, he saw Herodotus there, who was tormented among others, for having deceived posterity. XXXIV. Pliny gives Diodorus Siculus the honour of having been the first historian among the Greeks, who wrote seriously, and abstained from fables. Louis Vives, on the contrary, thinks Diodorus was a fabulous writer, and one of no solidity; and the same Diodorus, treats as fabulous, all the writers who went before him. XXXV. The learned are divided in their opinions upon the _Cyropedia_ of Xenophon. Many adopt the sentiment of Cicero, who looked upon it as a drawing of invention, designed to represent a perfect prince. Notwithstanding this, a contrary opinion seems to prevail at this day, and the _Cyropedia_ is considered as a true history. XXXVI. Asinius Pollio, thinks the Commentaries of Cæsar are not written with much care, nor with much sincerity: and Vossius makes mention of the strange caprice of a man, who told him, that after having meditated deliberately, and with much application on the subject, he had wrote a book, in which he had proved with invincible arguments, that Cæsar had never passed the Alps, and that all he had wrote in his Commentaries about his wars with the Gauls was false. Procopius, in his General History, loads the emperor Justinian and his wife the empress Theodosia with eulogiums; and likewise Belisarius and his wife Antonina; but in his Anecdotes, or Secret History, he is outrageous in his abuse of them, and calls them by the most opprobrious names. Aretinus boasted that he was the arbiter and disposer of the reputation of princes, dispensing among them eulogiums or reflections, just as they were generous or parsimonious towards him. He tells us, that Charles the Fifth upon his return from the expedition against Tunis, presented him with a gold chain, and that he said to the emperor upon receiving it, “This is but a very scanty reward to excite me to speak well of an enterprize that was so badly concerted.” XXXVII. The monuments themselves are not always faithful vouchers for the truth of facts; for even the brass and the marble will sometimes lie. The inscription on the triumphal arch of Titus, erected to celebrate the conquest of Jerusalem, declares, that no emperor before him had ever taken or dared to besiege that city. Notwithstanding this, besides the assertion being contradicted by the authority of holy writ, Cicero in one of his letters to Atticus, calls Pompey, _our Jerusalemite_; and no one at Rome was ignorant that Jerusalem was one of the conquests of Pompey. _Of the ancient Chronicles._