Polybius, Histories

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Plan: Causes of Wars

First I shall indicate the causes of the Punic or

1. The cause and course of the Hannibalian war.

Hannibalian war: and shall have to describe how the Carthaginians entered Italy; broke up the Roman power there; made the Romans tremble for their safety and the very soil of their country; and contrary to all calculation acquired a good prospect of surprising Rome itself.

I shall next try to make it clear how in the same period

2. Macedonian treaty with Carthage, B. C. 216.

Philip of Macedon, after finishing his war with the Aetolians, and subsequently settling the affairs of Greece, entered upon a design of forming an offensive and defensive alliance with Carthage.

Then I shall tell how Antiochus and Ptolemy Philopator

3. Syrian war, B. C. 218.

first quarrelled and finally went to war with each other for the possession of Coele-Syria.

Next how the Rhodians and Prusias went to war with the

4. Byzantine war. B. C. 220.

Byzantines, and compelled them to desist from exacting dues from ships sailing into the Pontus.

At this point I shall pause in my narrative to introduce a

First digression on the Roman Constitution.

disquisition upon the Roman Constitution, in which I shall show that its peculiar character contributed largely to their success, not only in reducing all Italy to their authority, and in acquiring a supremacy over the Iberians and Gauls besides, but also at last, after their conquest of Carthage, to their conceiving the idea of universal dominion.

Along with this I shall introduce another

Second on Hiero of Syracuse.

digression on the fall of Hiero of Syracuse.

After these digressions will come the disturbances in

5. The attempted partition of the dominions of Ptolemy Epiphanes, B. C. 204.

Egypt; how, after the death of King Ptolemy, Antiochus and Philip entered into a compact for the partition of the dominions of that monarch's infant son. I shall describe their treacherous dealings, Philip laying hands upon the islands of the Aegean, and Caria and Samos, Antiochus upon Coele-Syria and Phoenicia.