nds good actions, is to inspire us with the love of virtue. And these,
according to Tacitus, are the two ends which every historian ought to
propose to himself, by making a judicious choice of what is most
extraordinary both in good and evil, in order to occasion that public
homage to be paid to virtue, which is justly due to it, and to create the
greater abhorrence for vice, on account of that eternal infamy that
attends it.(226)

The history which I am writing furnishes but too many examples of the
latter sort. With respect to the Persians, it will appear, by what is said
of their kings, that those princes, whose power has no other bounds than
those of their will, often abandon themselves to all their passions; that
nothing is more difficult than to resist the illusions of a man's own
greatness, and the flatteries of those that surround him; that the liberty
of gratifying all one's desires, and of doing evil with impunity, is a
dangerous situation; that the best dispositions can hardly withstand such
a temptation; that even after having begun their career favourably, they
are insensibly corrupted by softness and effeminacy, by pride, and their
aversion to sincere counsels; and that it rarely happens they are wise
enough to consider, that, when they find themselves exalted above all laws
and restraints, they stand then most in need of moderation and wisdom,
both in regard to themselves and others; and that in such a situation they
ought to be doubly wise, and doubly strong, in order to set bounds within,
by their reason, to a power that has none without.

With respect to the Grecians, the Peloponnesian war will show the
miserable effects of their intestine divisions, and the fatal excesses
into which they were led by their thirst of dominion: scenes of injustice,
ingratitude, and perfidy, together with the open violation of treaties, or
mean artifices and unworthy tricks to elude their execution. It will show,
how scandalously the Lacedaemonians and Athenians debased themselves to the
barbarians, in order to beg aids of money from them: how shamefully the
great deliverers of Greece renounced the glory of all their past labours
and exploits, by stooping and making their court to haughty and insolent
satrapae, and by going successively, with a kind of emulation, to implore
the protection of the common enemy, whom they had so often conquered; and
in what manner they employed the succours they obtained from them, in
oppres