“What great profit and delight is like to arise to the Reader in perusing this History, let himself imagine, when he shal meet here with Prudent Letters & Dispatches from Princes and Generals; Wise Laws and Provisions for the publique Safety; Politick Leagues and Confederacies to secure Interests; Elegant Speeches and Exhortations to animate the Souldier; Notable Examples of Vices and Virtues; Inevitable Stratagems to circumvent Adversaries; Lively Descriptions of the Scituations of Countries, Cities, Buildings, Hils, Seas, Rivers, and Fountains; Various and Interchangeable Turns and Inconstancies of Wars and Fortunes; in a word, all the Treasury and Wardrobe that can inrich and beautifie a History.”

Such is the preface to Holcroft' version of Procopius' History (1653), in which he himself enumerates ‘Deinotes’, ‘Mythopoiia’, ‘Aletheia’, as proper characteristics of orator, poet, and historian respectively, announcing the intention of concealing nothing of delinquencies even of closest friends.