- [139] All that is original in Fustel de Coulanges rests on his interpretative criticism; he never did personally any work in external criticism, and his critical examination of authors' good faith and accuracy was hampered by a respect for the statements of ancient authors which amounted to credulity.
- [140] A parallel difficulty occurs in the interpretation of illustrative monuments; the representations are not always to be taken literally. In the Behistun monument Darius tramples the vanquished chiefs under foot: this is a metaphor. Mediæval miniatures show us persons lying in bed with crowns on their heads: this is to symbolise their royal rank; the painter did not mean that they wore their crowns to sleep in.
- [141] A. Boeckh, in the Encyclopædie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissenschaften, second edition (1886), has given a theory of hermeneutic to which Bernheim has been content to refer.
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INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY
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