Collected Works of Xenophon

A decorative headpiece sits at the top of the page. ...rightly having made a single grammatical synthesis of them, so that the learning might be easy to survey and might encompass the recent time of events in all treatises and various writings. Therefore, the opportunity for the history we require has come to us from them. Having examined the relevant materials, we not only went through them, but we judged the treatises before the historians. We consider the present book useful for readers due to its brevity in the preparation of a discourse on the events of the whole world. Beginning like a history of a single city, from the most ancient time, we record them as far as possible up to our own times. We know that we have left behind much patience/effort, but having composed a most useful treatise for the studious, we allow the reader to easily take what is useful through everything, drawing as if from a great spring. For those who attempt to go through the histories of so many authors, first, it is laborious to obtain the necessary books. Then, because of the irregularity and the multitude of writings, memory of what has passed is difficult to grasp due to the process of remembering the events. But the description carried out by us has given the knowledge of the deeds in a similar way, providing it ready-made, and allowing the intake to follow without obstruction for those who wish to read.

We act. May this effort of ours be accepted in all the parts and deeds of men. The praise of it is appropriate. For of those things delivered by us, it is necessary that we seek the true account in the midst of the choir of those things spoken. Regarding the events of this history, the greatest and most authoritative result is to find the cause of many things that have reached a resolution, so that mistakes occurring from error might not persist. This very thing is the intent, for many struggles have the same power, not only toward the race of writers but also toward those things accomplished in glory. We have used this as an opportunity for instruction, thinking that with the desire for the treatise, just as food exhausts desire, so also does reading provide pleasure. It is fitting for all who love learning, so that this reading might be the record of the city. In this way, by the continuity of the record, the events of the inhabited world might provide opportunities for our hopes. For the greatest thing is in the time itself, under hand, the benefits of ten thousand sufferings together. Their community makes something valuable, as many divine things are written in the Roman dialect. For these are the deeds through the same dialect, by which they might easily be seen. Whence the present form corrects those things regarding...