224 ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE 



In the next year: ' Making 35 hunting lodges, 122 cattle 

 tanks. Building a ship of 1 70 feet of cedar wood, and 

 two such ships of another wood. Seventh cattle census.' 

 Such a system of register lasted on into the monastic 

 chronicles of four or five centuries ago. 



The next stage of history regards the connexion of 

 events, and in Herodotus this interest over-shadowed the 



v systematic record altogether. But it is in Polybius that 

 N I the nature and value of history receives its full place and 

 I development. ' Neither the writer nor the reader of 

 history, therefore, should confine his attention to a bare 

 statement of facts ; he must take into account all that 

 preceded, accompanied, or followed them. For if you 

 take from history all explanation of cause, principle, and 

 motive, and of the adaptation of the means to the end, 

 what is left is a mere panorama without being instruc- 

 tive ; and, though it may please for the moment, has no 

 abiding value/ ' For it is history, and history alone, 

 which, without involving us in actual danger, will mature 

 our judgement and prepare us to take right views, what- 

 ever may be the crisis or the posture of affairs.' The 

 original documents were diligently studied, such as the 

 treaty of 509 B.C. between the Romans and Cartha- 

 ginians. ' Of this treaty I append a translation, as 

 accurate as I could make it, for the fact is that the 

 ancient language differs so much from that at present in 



\ use* (about 140 B.C.), ' that the best scholars among the 

 Romans themselves have great difficulty in interpreting 

 some points in it, even after much study.' And the 

 travels of Polybius in all the countries of the Mediter- 

 ranean, and in Gaul and the Atlantic, qualified him to 

 write with full acquaintance of the local facts and of the 

 knowledge which was preserved in the countries which 

 he visited. Later writers may elaborate more fully one 



