he vanquished he caused the walls of
some of the cities to be taken down and declared them all to be free
and independent except the Corinthians. The dwellers in Corinth he
sold, and confiscated their land and demolished their walls and all
their houses besides, out of fear that some states might again unite
with them, since they constituted the greatest state. To prevent any
of them from remaining hidden and any of the other Greeks from being
sold as Corinthians he assembled everybody present before he had
disclosed his determination, and after having his soldiers surround
them in such a way as not to attract notice he proclaimed the
enslavement of the Corinthians and the liberation of the remainder.
Then he instructed them all to take hold of any Corinthians standing
beside them. In this way he arrived at an accurate distinction.

Thus was Corinth overthrown. The rest of the Greek world suffered
temporarily from murders and levies of money, but afterward came to
enjoy such immunity and prosperity that it used to be said: "If they
had not been taken captive as early as they were, they could not have
been preserved."

So this end simultaneously befell Carthage and Corinth, famous,
ancient cities: but at a much later date they received colonies of
Romans, became again flourishing, and regained their original
position.

The exploits of the Romans up to this point, found by me in ancient
books that record these matters, written by men of old time, I have
drawn thence in a condensed form and have embodied in the present
history. As for what comes next in order,--the transactions of the
consuls and dictators, so long as the government of Rome was still
conducted by these officials,--let no one censure me as having passed
this by through contempt or indolence or antipathy and having left the
history as it were incomplete. The gap has not been overlooked by me
through sloth, nor have I of my own free will left my task half
finished, but through lack of books to describe the events. I have
frequently instituted a search for them, yet I have not found them,
and I do not know whether the cause is that the passage of time has
destroyed them, and so they are not preserved, or whether the persons
to whom I entrusted the errand perhaps did not search for them with
sufficient diligence; for I was living abroad and passing my life on
an islet far from the city. And because it has not been my lot to gain
access to these books in thi