Book I.] 
DEDICATION. 
7 
Pather, yourself, and your Erother, in a history of our own 
times, beginning wliere Aufidius Bassus concludes ^ You 
will ask, Where is it ? It has been long completed and its 
accuracy confirmed^ ; but I have determined to commit the 
charge of it to my heirs, lest I should have been suspected, 
during my lifetime, of having been unduly influenced by 
ambition. By this means I confer an obligation on those 
who occupy the same ground with myself; and also on 
posterity, who, I am aware, will contend with me, as I have 
done with my predecessors. 
Ton may judge of my taste from my having inserted, in 
the beginning of my book, the names of the authors that I 
have consulted. Por I consider it to be courteous and to 
indicate an ingenuous modesty, to acknowledge the soutces 
whence we have derived assistance, and not to act as most 
of those have done whom I have examined. For I must 
inform you, that in comparing various authors with each 
other, I have discovered, that some of the most grave and of 
the latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from 
former works, without making any acknowledgement ; not 
avowedly rivalling them, in the manner of Virgil, or with 
the candour of Cicero, who, in his treatise " De Bepublica^," 
professes to coincide in opinion with Plato, and in his Essay 
on Consolation for his Daughter, says that he follows 
Crantor, and, in his Offices'^, Pansecius ; volumes, which, as you 
well know, ought not merely to be always in our hands, but 
to be learned by heart. Por it is indeed the mark of a per- 
verted mind and a bad disposition, to prefer being caught in 
^ " A fine Aufidii Bassi ; " as Alexandre remarks, " Finis autem Au- 
fidii Bassi intelligendus est non mors ejus, sed tempns ad quod suas ipse 
perduxerat historias. Quodnam illud ignoramus." Lem. i. 18. For an 
account of Aufidius Bassus we are referred to the catalogue of Hardouin, 
but his name does not appear there. Quintihan (x. 1) informs us, that 
he wrote an account of the G-ermanic war. 
2 " Jam pridem peracta sancitur." 
3 This sentiment is not found in that portion of the treatise which has 
been lately puhhshed by Angelus Maius. Alexandre in Lemaire, i. 19. 
^ The following is probably the passage in the Offices to which Pliny 
refers : " Pansecius igitur, qui sine eontroversia de officiis accuratissime 
disputavit, quemque nos, correctione quadam exhibita, potissunum secuti 
Bumus . . . . " (iu. 2.) 
