Homer was a great poet, and so was Callimachus.

The epistles of Cicero were fine, and so were those of Phalaris.

Even with respect to questions of evidence they fell into the same error.

The authority of all narrations, written in Greek or Latin, was the same with them.

It never crossed their minds that the lapse of five hundred years, or the distance of five hundred leagues, could affect the accuracy of a narration;--that Livy could be a less veracious historian than Polybius;--or that Plutarch could know less about the friends of Xenophon than Xenophon himself.