his daughters to Rhodes, whom
he had given in marriage to the tyrant of that place, thought of passing
on to Sardis, to remain with Ardys, king of the Lydians, or to Ecbatana,
with Phraortes, king of the Medes; but death prevented the execution of
all his designs.

(M12) The second Messenian war was of fourteen years' duration, and ended
the first year of the twenty-seventh Olympiad.

There was a third war between these people and the Lacedaemonians, which
began both at the time and on the occasion of a great earthquake that
happened at Sparta. We shall speak of this war in its place.

The history, of which it remains for me to treat in this work, is that of
the successors of Alexander, and comprehends the space of two hundred and
ninety-three years; from the death of that monarch, and the commencement
of the reign of Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, in Egypt, to the death of
Cleopatra, when that kingdom became a Roman province, under the emperor
Augustus.

The history will present to our view a series of all the crimes which
usually arise from inordinate ambition; scenes of jealousy and perfidy,
treason, ingratitude, and flagrant abuses of sovereign power; cruelty,
impiety, an utter oblivion of the natural sentiments of probity and
honour, with the violation of all laws human and divine, will rise before
us. We shall behold nothing but fatal dissensions, destructive wars, and
dreadful revolutions. Men, originally friends, brought up together, and
natives of the same country, companions in the same dangers, and
instruments in the accomplishment of the same exploits and victories, will
conspire to tear in pieces the empire they had all concurred to form at
the expense of their blood. We shall see the captains of Alexander
sacrifice the mother, the wives, the brother, the sisters, of that prince,
to their own ambition; without sparing even those to whom they themselves
either owed or gave life. We shall no longer behold those glorious times
of Greece, that were once so productive of great men and great examples;
or, if we should happen to discover some traces and remains of them, they
will only resemble the gleams of lightning that shoot along in a rapid
track, and attract attention only in consequence of the profound darkness
that precedes and follows them.

I acknowledge myself to be sufficiently sensible how much a writer is to
be pitied, for being obliged to represent human nature in such colours and
lineaments as dish