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book 18
Those who undertake to write histories, do not, I perceive, take
that trouble on one and the same account, but for many reasons, and those
such as are very different one from another. For some of them apply themselves
to this part of learning to show their skill in composition, and that they
may therein acquire a reputation for speaking finely: others of them there
are, who write histories in order to gratify those that happen to be concerned
in them, and on that account have spared no pains, but rather gone beyond
their own abilities in the performance: but others there are, who, of necessity
and by force, are driven to write history, because they are concerned in
the facts, and so cannot excuse themselves from committing them to writing,
for the advantage of posterity; nay, there are not a few who are induced
to draw their historical facts out of darkness into light, and to produce
them for the benefit of the public, on account of the great importance
of the facts themselves with which they have been concerned. Now of these
several reasons for writing history, I must profess the two last were my
own reasons also; for since I was myself interested in that war which we
Jews had with the Romans, and knew myself its particular actions, and what
conclusion it had, I was forced to give the history of it, because I saw
that others perverted the truth of those actions in their writings.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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