These I designed to make the starting-point of what may almost
be called a new work, partly because of the greatness and surprising
nature of the events themselves, but chiefly because, in the case of
most of them, I was not only an eye-witness, but in some cases one of
the actors, and in others the chief director.
[Sidenote: A new departure; the breaking-up of the arrangement made
after the fall of Macedonia. Wars of Carthage against Massinissa; and
of Rome against the Celtiberians, B.C. 155-150; and against Carthage
(3d Punic war, B.C. 149-146).]
+5.+ The events I refer to are the wars of Rome against the
Celtiberians and Vaccaei; those of Carthage against Massinissa, king of
Libya; and those of Attalus and Prusias in Asia. Then also Ariarathes,
King of Cappadocia, having been ejected from his throne by Orophernes
through the agency of King Demetrius, recovered his ancestral power by
the help of Attalus; while Demetrius, son of Seleucus, after twelve
years' possession of the throne of Syria, was deprived of it, and of
his life at the same time, by a combination of the other kings against
him. Then it was, too, that the Romans restored to their country those
Greeks who had been charged with guilt in the matter of the war with
Perseus, after formally acquitting them of the crimes alleged against
them. Not long afterwards the same people turned their hands against
Carthage: at first with the intention of forcing its removal to some
other spot, but finally, for reasons to be afterwards stated, with the
resolution of utterly destroying it. Contemporaneous with this came the
renunciation by the Macedonians of their friendship to Rome, and by the
Lacedaemonians of their membership of the Achaean league, to which the
disaster that befell all Greece alike owed its beginning and end.
This is my purpose: but its fulfilment must depend upon whether Fortune
protracts my life to the necessary length. I am persuaded, however,
that, even if the common human destiny does overtake me, this theme
will not be allowed to lie idle for want of competent men to handle
it; for there are many besides myself who will readily undertake its
completion. But having given the heads of the most remarkable events,
with the object of enabling the reader to grasp the general scope of my
history as well as the arrangement of its several parts, I must now,
remembering my original plan, go back to the point at which my history
starts.
[Sidenote: The origin of the 2d Punic war;]
[Sidenote: B.C. 334,]
[Sidenote: B.C. 192,]
[Sidenote: B.C. 401-400,]
[Sidenote: B.C. 396-394,]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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