Thursday, December 24, 2009

Journalism: 75

Whilst Scipio was thus employed, Caesar with incredible dispatch made his way through thick woods, and a country supposed to be impassable, cut off one part of the enemy and attacked another in the front. Having routed these, he followed up his opportunity and the current of his good fortune, and on the first carried Afranius's camp, and ravaged that of the Numidians, Juba, their king, being glad to save himself by flight; so that in a small part of a single day he made himself master of three camps, and killed fifty thousand of the enemy, with the loss only of fifty of his own men. This is the account some give of that fight. Others say he was not in the action, but that he was too far disordered his senses, when he was already beginning to shake under its influence, withdrew into a neighbouring fort where he reposed himself.
--From Plutarch's Lives--

Caesar either killed 50,000 people in a brilliant battle or was quietly having a seizure, but at least the author admits he doesn't know. That's all it takes to be unbiased, a willingness to admit you may not have perfect knowledge of events. Who is willing to do something like that anymore?

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