Greece At This Time
At the same period the Achaean league and King
note
Philip, with their allies, were entering upon the
war with the Aetolian league, which is called the
Social war. Now this was the point at which I
proposed to begin my general history; and as I have brought
the account of the affairs of Sicily and Libya, and those which
immediately followed, in a continuous narrative, up to the date
of the beginning of the Social and Second Punic, generally
called the Hannibalic, wars, it will be proper to leave this branch
of my subject for a while, and to take up the history of events
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in Greece, that I may start upon my full and detailed narrative,
after bringing the prefatory sketch of the history of the several
countries to the same point of time. For since I have not
undertaken, as previous writers have done, to write the history
of particular peoples, such as the Greeks or Persians, but the
history of all known parts of the world at once, because there
was something in the state of our own times which made such
a plan peculiarly feasible,—of which I shall speak more at
length hereafter,—it will be proper, before entering on my main
subject, to touch briefly on the state of the most important of
the recognised nations of the world.
Of Asia and Egypt I need not speak before the time at
which my history commences. The previous history of these
countries has been written by a number of historians
already, and is known to all the world; nor in our days has
any change specially remarkable or unprecedented occurred to
them demanding a reference to their past. note But in regard to
the Achaean league, and the royal family of
Macedonia, it will be in harmony with my
design to go somewhat farther back: for
the latter has become entirely extinct; while the Achaeans,
as I have stated before, have in our time made extraordinary progress in material prosperity and internal unity.
For though many statesmen had tried in past times to induce
the Peloponnesians to join in a league for the common interests
of all, and had always failed, because every one was working
to secure his own power rather than the freedom of the whole;
yet in our day this policy has made such progress, and been
carried out with such completeness, that not only is there in
the Peloponnese a community of interests such as exists between allies or friends, but an absolute identity. of laws, weights,
measures, and currency. note All the States have the same magistrates, senate, and judges. Nor is there any difference
between the entire Peloponnese and a single city, except in
the fact that its inhabitants are not included within the
same wall; in other respects, both as a whole and in their
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individual cities, there is a nearly absolute assimilation of
institutions.
