“Consider how the great architect of Cnidos acted. After constructing the tower on Pharos, the mightiest and most beautiful building ever, so that he could send a beacon-signal from it to sailors far and wide on the seas, to stop them being carried on to Paraetonia, a cruel spot they say, with no escape for anyone running on the reefs – well, after completing the building he inscribed it with his own name inside on the stones, plastered over it with gypsum till it was hidden, and inscribed over that the name of the king of the day, knowing that, as actually happened, the letters would very soon fall away with the plaster to reveal “Sostratus of Cnidus, son of Dexiphanes, in dedication to the Saviour Gods on behalf of seafarers’. So too he kept his eyes not on those times or his own brief life, but on today and eternity, as long as the tower stands and his craftsmanship survives.

Well, history too should be written in the same way, with truthfulness and hopes for the future rather than flattery to please today’s recipients of praise.

Lucian, How to Write History, 63.