Kitap 39
19
Such was the result of my exertions. But having nowSee 1, 3. and 3, 4. arrived at the end of my whole work, I wish to recall to the minds of my readers the point from which I started, and the plan which I laid down at the commencement of my history, and then to give a summary of the entire subject. I announced then at starting that I should begin my narrative at the point where Timaeus left off, and that going cursorily over the events in Italy, Sicily, and Libya—since that writer has only composed a history of those places,—when I came to the time when Hannibal took over the command of the Carthaginian army; Philip son of Demetrius the kingdom of Macedonia; Cleomenes of Sparta was banished from Greece; Antiochus succeeded to the kingdom in Syria, and Ptolemy Philopator to that in Egypt,—I promised that starting once more from that period, namely the 139th Olympiad, I would give a general history of the world: marking out the periods of the Olympiads, separating the events of each year, and comparing the histories of the several countries by parallel narratives of each, up to the capture of Carthage, and the battle of the Achaeans and Romans in the Isthmus, and the consequent political settlement imposed on the Greeks. From all of which I said that students would learn a lesson of supreme interest and instructiveness. This was to ascertain how, and under what kind of polity, almost the whole inhabited world came under the single authority of Rome, a fact quite unparalleled in the past. These promises then having all been fulfilled, it only remains for me to state the periods embraced in my history, the number of my books, and how many go to make up my whole work. . . .
