Kitap 37
3
A despatch from Manius Manilius to the Achaeans Polybius sent for to negotiate with Carthage, B. C. 149. having reached the Peloponnese, saying that they would oblige him by sending Polybius of Megalopolis with all speed to Lilybaeum, as he was wanted on account of certain public affairs, the Achaeans decided to send him in accordance with the letter of the consul. And as I felt bound to obey the Romans, I put everything else aside, and sailed at the beginning of summer. But when we arrived at Corcyra, we found another despatch from the consul to the Corcyreans had come, announcing that the Carthaginians had already surrendered all the hostages to them, and were prepared to obey them.Livy, Ep. 49. Thinking, therefore, that the war was at an end, and that there was no more occasion for our services, we sailed back to the Peloponnese. . . .
4
It should not excite surprise that I sometimes designate myself by my proper name, and at other times by the common forms of expression—for instance, when I had said this, or we had agreed to this. For as I was much personally involved in the transactions about to be related, it becomes necessary to vary the methods of indicating myself; that I may not weary by continual repetition of my own name, nor again by introducing the words of me, or through me, at every turn, fall insensibly into an appearance of egotism. I wished, on the contrary, by an interchangeable use of these terms, and by selecting from time to time the one which seemed most in place, to avoid, as far as could be, the offensiveness of talk about one’s self; for such talk, though naturally unacceptable, is frequently inevitable, when one cannot in any other way give a clear exposition of the subjects. I am somewhat assisted in this point by the accident that, as far as I know, no one up to our own time has ever had the same name as myself.He seems to have forgotten his namesake mentioned in 11, 15. . . .
