Conclusion of the History
Having accomplished these objects, I returned home
from Rome, having put, as it were, the finishing-stroke to my
whole previous political actions, and obtained a worthy return
for my constant loyalty to the Romans. Wherefore I make my
prayers to all the gods that the rest of my life may continue in
the same course and in the same prosperity; for I see only
too well that Fortune is envious of mortals, and is most apt to
show her power in those points in which a man fancies that he
is most blest and most successful in life.
Such was the result of my exertions. But having now
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. . . .
