The historian Edward Gibbon, in Chapter LII of his history, offers an instructive quotation alleged to have been spoken by the first emir of Cordoba, Abd Al Rahman III. This prince ruled a considerable part of Spain for a period of thirty-two years, from A.D. 929 to 961. Upon the death of this laborious and tolerant caliph, the following rumination was found among his writings:
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It has been said that both courage and cowardice are contagious. This is certainly true, as anyone who has spent time with a group engaged in some kind of enterprise knows well. Courageous or cowardly actions always begin with one man; his example, witnessed by the rest of the group, is like a firebrand thrown on dried kindling. And it has precisely the same effect.
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In Gibbon’s history (Ch. 51), there is an anecdote related to the Arab military campaigns in Persia in A.D. 639 to 640. It concerns a nobleman named Hormuzan, who was, we are told, “a prince or satrap of Ahwaz and Susa.” Modern historians have identified him as the governor of Khuzestan, and one of the Persian military officers during the famous Battle of Qadisiyya in A.D. 636. Gibbon apparently extracted this story from the historical writings of Al Tabari or Al Masudi.
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In a letter to Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV in 1361, the scholar Petrarch included the following lines of advice:
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The Italian scholar Petrarch spent a significant period of time in southeastern France as a boy and a young man. In 1311, when he was seven years old, he moved to Avignon with his family; in 1312, he moved to the small town of Carpentras and remained there until 1316. During other periods of his life from the 1330s to the 1350s, he chose to reside in what is now the French department of Vaucluse.
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Of all the emotions that palpitate the breast of man, none is so potentially destructive as anger. It comes in many flavors and varieties; but the common thread running through all of them is a ruinous loss of control that renders a man incapable of exercising rational judgment.
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Anyone who has bothered to open the works of ancient Greek and Roman historians will notice marked differences between them and modern historians. The differences are not trivial. In how they express themselves, in what they emphasize or ignore, in how they view their responsibilities, and in various other ways, the ancients are simply different. There is no getting around this fact. I wanted to use this essay to suggest some ways of understanding the ancient historians; and if informed readers wince at my gross generalizations and oversimplifications, I make no apologies. Judgmental economy has its uses.
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We recently discussed some words spoken by the Greek mercenary general Charidamus to the Persian king Darius III on the eve of the Battle of Issus in 333 B.C. But we discussed only a small part of his speech. His complete comments are worthy of our meticulous consideration.
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There is an anecdote told about the prelude to the Battle of Issus in 333 B.C. This momentous contest, which involved the armies of Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia, was to decide the fate of Asia.
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In the 1340s the Italian scholar Petrarch composed a long letter to the poet Homer. He enjoyed these imaginary exercises in which he could “communicate” with some of the great literary figures of the past; there exist letters to Cicero, Livy, and some other ancient writers.
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Quintus Curtius 
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