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while the projects and achievements of his splendid reign continually dart light into the distance and dimness of more remote ages. For the sake of this double reflection, I have ventured, at the commencement of my "Survey," to deviate from the order of time, strictness in this particular being less essential in a work, which is not confined to the mere annals of kings and dynasties, but which is principally directed to objects of more utility or allurement: the local circumstances; the mutual wants; the manners, arts, and occupations of communities at large, and of the various ranks of persons composing them; in which extensive retrospect, I am conscious of having spared no pains to avail myself of all such scattered information as either the fragments of antiquity have handed down, or the casual notices of modern travellers have presented. The Assyrians, and other great nations of Asia, stand, apart, in the front of my work; and, in the body of it, similar notices are afforded, respecting the Carthaginians, Romans, Gauls, Parthians, and the assemblage of warlike subjects under Mithridates of Pontus.

After the example of the earliest and most elegant of Greek historians, whose

subject is akin to mine, though terminating at a far earlier date, I have enquired, as he does on similar occasions *, who they were, those renowned and once powerful nations, subdued and long governed by the Greeks and Macedonians: in what particulars they agreed; wherein they essentially differed; what had been their pursuits; and what were their attainments. Through my adherence to this best of models, my readers will be led from the known to the unknown; and the history of Greece, the country to which we are indebted for our general acquaintance with antiquity, will naturally expand into that of the eastern continent, and of those remote regions of the south and west, which gradually fell within the sphere, either of its military enterprise, or of its commercial intercourse.

This plan of history should seem the best adapted to excite interest, and to convey information. Yet this is not the method that has generally been adopted; for, in all things, the opinions of men are influenced, rather governed, by the decisions of fortune. The grave and judicious Polybius composed his invaluable

*Herodotus, 1. i. c. 95. et passin.

work, to show by what means the Romans, in the space of fifty-three years, commencing with the second Punic war, acquired a preponderancy over all those nations, which, in the course of the following century, they reduced into provinces. It appeared to him a task more easy, certainly more animating, to trace the progress of the rising commonwealth, than to rake into the vices and miseries of decaying monarchies: and the same motives that actuated Polybius, have so generally prevailed with succeeding authors, that the history of Rome is very commonly confounded with that of the world. Thus, instead of proceeding from the Greeks to the Romans, from the stock to the branches, the contrary order has become familiar; a practice that might be suspected to rest on some better foundation than mere flattery to power, had it prevailed uniformly. But, fortunately, we possess remains or notices of many ancient writers, who preferred nearly the same plan that is pursued in the present work: witness, among the Latins, Trogus Pompeius,

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In the title, therefore, of this work, as first published at home, and printed repeatedly abroad, there was an ambiguity, which it has been thought right to remove in the present edition.

*

unhappily abridged by Justin; and the great Posidonius of Rhodes, at approaching whose door, Pompey, in his meridian glory, arrested the thunder of his lictors, and commanded them humbly to recline the consular fasces.

Between the reigns of Alexander and Augustus, there is an interval of three hundred years, involving many subordinate changes of fortune, while the principal action consists in the transfer of power from the Greeks and Macedonians, to the Romans and Parthians. Of this period, the first century, from the death of Alexander to the commencing ascendency of Rome, has hitherto been treated imperfectly, leaving many chasms to be filled up from authors little consulted for history, and many perplexed passages to be unravelled by suggestions from parallel occurrences in earlier and later times. This first century may be considered as wholly Grecian: the second may be ascribed indifferently to Greek or Roman story; while the transactions of the third may be fitly embodied in the annals of Rome. This third century, contiguous to Augustus, contains twenty years of Ro

* The abridgement is said to have caused the loss of the original.

man civil wars, contributing but little to our better acquaintance with those countries, which were their scene, and which produced no other political change than that of conveying, from one military usurper to another, the power already acquired and consolidated by the republic. As the greater part of it, however, was an age of Roman aggrandisement, the writers of Rome may be allowed to claim the whole century for their own, and to interweave its subordinate events in the majestic series of consular triumphs. This proud monument, they emulously raised to the glory of their country; a country, in many points to be envied, but in nothing more than for the patriotism of its authors. Their justly admired compositions, who shall presume to rival? Mine is a humbler aim, to serve as a perpetual commentary on them, and to give them new interest with the modern reader, by explaining more fully than is done by themselves, the resources and institutions of the various nations, who either submitted to the legions, or who, like the Parthians, and the Germans, always defied their arms. At the beginning, indeed, the Romans were mainly a Greek colony; and will be shown to have long continued Greeks, in all essen

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