Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Printed by Strahan and Spottiswoode, Printers-Street, London.

PREFACE.

THE affairs of the Greeks, an ingenious and enterprising people, were gradually interwoven with those of surrounding nations. By their commerce, their colonies, and their conquests, they formed, at length, a very complex, yet clear, chain of connection among all the countries that belong to the subject of ancient history. Their commonwealths, in Italy and Sicily, will appear, in the present Work, as prime movers in the wars and revolutions of Europe and of Africa; and the Grecian dynasty in Asia comprehends that interesting period in which, chiefly, the affairs of eastern monarchies admit of any copious and consistent narrative. To prepare my readers for this latter subject, it was necessary to advert to the anterior condition, and long unvarying policy, of the East; because the recorded transactions of former conquerors serve occasionally to explain those of Alexander,

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 passim.

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,

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.

« AnteriorContinuar »