Collected Works of Xenophon

of boundless ages. We, however, have set the beginning of our history here. We shall omit those things which the ancients and the blessed mythologizers relate, since the accounts of the origins of each people are already recorded in their own archaeological treatises; let it be our law that men who have departed from glory should not be confused with the mythic. The myths are sufficient to reach only the limits of their own nature. I wish to briefly predetermine the scope of the entire treatise, for we are at a distance of a thousand years from those who lived before Christ and before the previously exposed accounts of archaeology and mythology, even though these things now precede our own times. How blessed were those who went through the antiquities before the Greeks, establishing them as pillars for the books that follow. We have recorded the common deeds from the Trojan War up to the beginning of the reign of Diomedes; in the subsequent chapters, we have arranged all the rest in systematic cycles, up to the start of the war that arose for the Romans against Carthage, during which the cause of the conflict, Julius Caesar, was named a god because of his deeds. And the war had ceased, and the battles in Crete and Europe. We have set before ourselves the hegemony of Rome up to our own times, and in this manner, we have explained the beginnings. For of the seventy years of the displacement, the time is measured according to the content spanning the numbers, with much of the discussion included within the treatise itself. We limit the length to three hundred years. Now, I shall forgo the general discussion of these matters.

And the following: For Apollodorus the Athenian, in his ninety years of deeds against? those before the Trojan period, having taken them back to the time before the Olympiads, calculating two hundred and forty-four years, in accordance with the agreed-upon times. From the cycles—he, having collected the lawful accounts—from the first Olympiad, we have made this the beginning of the history of wars, for in it we have crafted the history; it drew in the others as well, so that the entire treatise, together with the writing, has not been left out. These books contain five thousand one hundred and forty years, excluding the times before the general use of the deeds before the Trojan War. These things, then, we have precisely predetermined, and to the great fruits of the discourse, so that there might be an understanding of the entire intention. As for those already reading the individual accounts, from the Book of Laws to the alien treatises—but for us, beyond history, the things written in the causes, not from fear of length, and the others, these are subject to correction by the rulers. We shall speak of the return of the men, making the promise of the writing. The beginning is about to be spoken: + + +