sorders into which men fall, recourse is always had to the decisions
and remedies, pronounced or prescribed by the ancients.

For the civil law is no more than the opinions delivered by the ancient
jurisconsults, which, being reduced to a system, teach the jurisconsults
of our own times how to determine; while the healing art is simply
the recorded experience of the old physicians, on which our modern
physicians found their practice. And yet, in giving laws to a
commonwealth, in maintaining States and governing kingdoms, in
organizing armies and conducting wars, in dealing with subject nations,
and in extending a State's dominions, we find no prince, no republic, no
captain, and no citizen who resorts to the example of the ancients.

This I persuade myself is due, not so much to the feebleness to which
the present methods of education have brought the world, or to the
injury which a pervading apathy has wrought in many provinces and cities
of Christendom, as to the want of a right intelligence of History, which
renders men incapable in reading it to extract its true meaning or to
relish its flavour. Whence it happens that by far the greater number
of those who read History, take pleasure in following the variety of
incidents which it presents, without a thought to imitate them; judging
such imitation to be not only difficult but impossible; as though the
heavens, the sun, the elements, and man himself were no longer the same
as they formerly were as regards motion, order, and power.

Desiring to rescue men from this error, I have thought fit to note down
with respect to all those books of Titus Livius which have escaped
the malignity of Time, whatever seems to me essential to a right
understanding of ancient and modern affairs; so that any who shall read
these remarks of mine, may reap from them that profit for the sake of
which a knowledge of History is to be sought. And although the task be
arduous, still, with the help of those at whose instance I assumed the
burthen, I hope to carry it forward so far, that another shall have no
long way to go to bring it to its destination.

CHAPTER I.--_Of the Beginnings of Cities in general, and in particular
of that of Rome._

No one who reads how the city of Rome had its beginning, who were its
founders, and what its ordinances and laws, will marvel that so much
excellence was maintained in it through many ages, or that it grew
afterwards to be so great an Empire.

And