Introducing his own study of Libanius, Émile Monnier explains why he will not look to Libanius’ account of his own life for reliable facts.
No one has left more documents on his own life and character than Libanius, but of all those documents the least veracious and the least worthy of credit is the one he has given us as an outline of his own history, and which has come down to us under the title Discourse on His Destiny.
These memoirs—to give them their real name—written in fits and starts and at various times—are nothing at all like a sincere and complete account. This is an apology, and the most outlandish of apologies. In it facts are sterilized, dissimulated, placed in a doubtful light, and in a capricious order on which we cannot always rely. From one end to the other, even in its style, it has an air of artificiality and equivocation. We suspect lacunas in it, we sense certain areas of reticence, we detect disguises and detours. The one thing that appears to be natural in it is the character; and the painting of that character, infected with pride and vanity, is not a confession, but an involuntary testimony of the painter himself against himself. We must not look for the truth about Libanius here, and we shall make use of these memoirs only to follow the general order of the facts, and more often to show the opposition of these complaisant annals to the less suspect parts of his other writings.