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 from 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, amidst luxury and a passion for ruining ourselves and destroying every thing 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 commencing 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: "Employ myself to a useful purpose,"-- _facere operae pretium_, "to do a thing that is worth the trouble,"-- "to employ oneself to a good purpose."-- See Scheller's Lat.

Lexicon.] [Footnote 2: "A practice,"-- _rem_ .-- Some, as Baker, refer it to _res populi R._ Others, as Stroth, to _res pop.Rom.