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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: In other cases he appeals to public documents, the importance of
which he was always foremost in recognising; showing, for instance,
by a document in the public archives of Rhodes how inaccurate were
the accounts given of the battle of Lade by Zeno and Antisthenes.
Or he appeals to psychological probability, rejecting, for
instance, the scandalous stories told of Philip of Macedon, simply
from the king's general greatness of character, and arguing that a
boy so well educated and so respectably connected as Demochares
(xii. 14) could never have been guilty of that of which evil rumour
accused him.
But the chief object of his literary censure is Timaeus, who had
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