How histories are to be read

Before we begin our defence, it must be said that to try to establish that almost any story, even a true one, actually happened, and to produce a certain and convincing impression about it, is among the very hardest of tasks, and in some cases impossible. Suppose someone says that the Trojan War did not happen, chiefly because an impossible tale has been woven into it, that a certain Achilles was born the son of a sea goddess, Thetis, and of a man, Peleus, or Sarpedon the son of Zeus, or Ascalaphus and Ialmenus the sons of Ares, or Aeneas the son of Aphrodite. How could we establish such a thing, especially when we are hard pressed by the fiction that has somehow been woven into the opinion, held by everyone, that the war at Ilium between the Greeks and the Trojans really happened? Suppose, too, someone disbelieves the story of Oedipus and Jocasta and of Eteocles and Polynices, who were born of them both, because the Sphinx, a kind of half-maiden, has been woven into the tale. How could we prove such a thing? So too with the story of the Epigoni, even though nothing of the kind is woven into it, or with the return of the Heraclidae, or with countless others.

But one who reads histories with fairness, and who wants to keep himself from being deceived even in them, will judge which things he will assent to, which he will take figuratively, searching out the intention of those who invented such things, and which he will disbelieve as written to please certain people. And we have said this in advance with the whole account of Jesus found in the Gospels in view. We are not calling the more intelligent to a bare and unreasoning faith; we want to show that those who are to read them need fairness, much examination, and, if I may call it so, an entering into the intention of the writers, so that it may be found in what sense each thing has been written.