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. [
5] Now I have undertaken the present work, as
thinking it will appear
to all the Greeks
3
worthy of their study; for it will contain all our antiquities, and the
constitution of our government, as interpreted out of the Hebrew
Scriptures.
And indeed I did formerly intend, when I wrote of the war,
4
to explain who the Jews originally were, - what fortunes they had been
subject to, - and by what legislature they had been instructed in
piety,
and the exercise of other virtues, - what wars also they had made in
remote
ages, till they were unwillingly engaged in this last with the Romans:
but because this work would take up a great compass, I separated it
into
a set treatise by itself, with a beginning of its own, and its own
conclusion;
but in process of time, as usually happens to such as undertake great
things,
I grew weary and went on slowly, it being a large subject, and a
difficult
thing to translate our history into a foreign, and to us unaccustomed
language.
However, some persons there were who desired to know our history, and
so
exhorted me to go on with it; and, above all the rest, Epaphroditus,
5
a man who is a lover of all kind of learning, but is principally
delighted
with the knowledge of history, and this on account of his having been
himself
concerned in great affairs, and many turns of fortune, and having shown
a wonderful rigor of an excellent nature, and an immovable virtuous
resolution
in them all. I yielded to this man's persuasions, who always excites
such
as have abilities in what is useful and acceptable, to join their
endeavors
with his.
To this my friend's answer, as he told
me, was: “I am
afraid mine, most likely, is a case that fits not your version,
Socrates, but Homer's—a dolt coming unbidden to the banquet of a
scholar. Be sure, then, to have your excuse quite ready when you bring
me; for I shall not own to coming unasked,
Henry
George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and
augmented throughout by. Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance
of. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940.
The National Science Foundation provided
support for entering this text.
