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İngilizce İngilizce Yunanca Yunanca

33 Well now, someone will say, you have carefully cleared your ground and cut out all the thorns and brambles, and all the debris has been carried away and all the rough places are now smooth, so now build something yourself to show you are good not only at overturning other peoples’ edifices but at thinking out something clever yourself which no one, not even Momus, Momus was a literary personification of fault-finding—he appears in Lucian’s Zeus Rants, Loeb, vol. ii, p. 119. could censure.

34 I maintain then that the best writer of history comes ready equipped with these two supreme qualities: political understanding and power of expression; the former is an unteachable gift of nature, while power of expression may come through a deal of practice, continual toil, and imitation of the ancients. These then need no guiding rules and I have no need to advise on them; my book does not promise to make people understanding and quick who are not so by nature. It would be worth a good deal—everything rather—if it could remodel and transform things to that extent, or make gold out of lead or silver from tin, or manufacture a Titormus from a Conon or a Milo from a Leotrophides. Conon and Leotrophides were little men, Titormus and Milo of great size and strength.