HKB
[Sidenote: B.C. 405. Hermocrates was not there. Xen. Hellen. 1, 1, 27-31.]
(k) To confirm the judgment I have expressed of Timaeus, on his wilful misstatements as well as his ignorance, I shall now quote certain short passages from his acknowledged works as specimens.... Of all the men who have exercised sovereignty in Sicily, since the elder Gelo, tradition tells us that the most able have been Hermocrates, Timoleon, and Pyrrhus of Epirus, who are the last persons in the world on whom to father pedantic and scholastic speeches. Now Timaeus tells us in his twenty-first book that on his arrival in Sicily Eurymedon urged the cities there to undertake the war against Syracuse; that subsequently the people of Gela becoming tired of the war, sent an embassy to Camarina to make a truce; that upon the latter gladly welcoming the proposal, each state sent ambassadors to their respective allies begging them to despatch men of credit to Gela to deliberate on a pacification, and to secure the common interests. Upon the arrival of these deputies in Gela and the opening of the conference, he represents Hermocrates as speaking to the following effect: “He praised the people of Gela and Camarina first, for having made the truce; secondly, because they were the cause of the assembling of this peace congress; and thirdly because they had taken precautions to prevent the mass of the citizens from taking part in the discussion, and had secured that it should be confined to the leading men in the states, who knew the difference between peace and war.” Then after making two or three practical suggestions, Hermocrates is represented as expressing an opinion that “if they seriously consider the matter they will learn the profound difference between peace and war,”—although just before he had said that it was precisely this which moved his gratitude to the men of Gela, that “the discussion did not take place in the mass assembly, but in a congress of men who knew the difference between peace and war.” This is an instance in which Timaeus not only fails to show the ability of an historian, but sinks below the level of a school theme. For, I presume, it will be universally admitted that what an audience requires is a demonstration of that about which they are in ignorance or uncertainty; but to exhaust one’s ingenuity in finding arguments to prove what is known already is the most futile waste of time. But besides his cardinal mistake of directing the greater part of the speech to points which stood in need of no arguments at all, Timaeus also puts into the mouth of Hermocrates certain sentences of which one could scarcely believe that any commonplace youth would have been capable, much less the colleague of the Lacedaemonians in the battle of Aegospotami, and the sole conqueror of the Athenian armies and generals in Sicily.
+26.+ For first he “thinks that he should remind the congress that in war sleepers are woke at dawn by bugles, in peace by cocks.”[42] Then he says that “Hercules established the Olympic games and the sacred truce during them, as an exemplification of his own principles;” and that “he had injured all those persons against whom he waged war, under compulsion and in obedience to the order of another, but was never voluntarily the author of harm to any man.”[43] Next he quotes the instance of Zeus in Homer as being displeased with Ares, and saying[44]—
“Of all the gods that on Olympus dwell I hold thee most detested; for thy joy Is ever strife and war and battle.”
And again the wisest of the heroes says[45]—
“He is a wretch, insensible and dead To all the charities of social life, Whose pleasure is in civil broil and war.”
Then he goes on to allege that Euripides agrees with Homer in the lines[46]—