discipline gradually declined, let him follow in his thoughts their
morals, at first as slightly giving way, anon how they sunk more and
more, then began to fall headlong, until he reaches the present times,
when we can endure neither our vices nor their remedies. This it is
which is particularly salutary and profitable in the study of history,
that you behold instances of every variety of conduct displayed on a
conspicuous monument; that thence you may select for yourself and for
your country that which you may imitate; thence note what is shameful
in the undertaking, and shameful in the result, which you may avoid.
But either a fond partiality for the task I have undertaken deceives
me, or there never was any state either greater, or more moral, or
richer in good examples, nor one into which luxury and avarice made
their entrance so late, and where poverty and frugality were so much
and so long honoured; so that the less wealth there was, the less
desire was there. Of late, riches have introduced avarice and
excessive pleasures a longing for them, amid luxury and a passion for
ruining ourselves and destroying everything else. But let complaints,
which will not be agreeable even then, when perhaps they will be also
necessary, be kept aloof at least from the first stage of beginning so
great a work. We should rather, if it was usual with us (historians)
as it is with poets, begin with good omens, vows and prayers to the
gods and goddesses to vouchsafe good success to our efforts in so
arduous an undertaking.

[Footnote 1: The tone of dignified despondency which pervades this
remarkable preface tells us much. That the republican historian was
no timid or time-serving flatterer of prince or public is more than
clear, while his unerring judgment of the future should bring much of
respect for his judgment of the past. When he wrote, Rome was more
powerful than ever. Only the seeds of ruin were visible, yet he