cero praises as the most erudite in history of all writers up to
his time, most copious in facts and various in comment, not unpolished
in style, eloquent, and distinguished by terse and charming expression.
Ninety years he lived in the Greek world, devoted himself to history,
and produced many works, now lost. The ancient writers read him, and
from their criticism it is clear that he was marked by a talent for
invective, was given to sharp censure, and loved the bitter part of
truth. He introduced precision and detail into his art, and is credited
with being the first to realize the importance of chronology and to seek
exactness in it. He never saw again his lovely birthplace, and I easily
forgive to the exile and the son of Andromachus the vigour with which he
depicted the crimes of Agathocles and others of the tyrants. In our
city, meanwhile, the Greek genius waning to its extinction, Tyndarion
ruled; and in his time Pyrrhus came hither to repulse the ever invading
power of Carthage. But he was little more than a shedder of blood; he
accomplished nothing, and I name him only as one of the figures of our
beach.

The day of Greece was gone; but those two clouds of war still hung on
the horizon, north and south, with ever darker tempest. Instead of
Syracuse and Messina, Carthage and the new name of Rome now sent them
forth, and over this island they encountered. Our city, true to its
ancient tradition, became Rome's ever faithful ally, as you may read in
the poem of Silius Italicus, and was dignified by treaty with the title
of a confederate city; and of this fact Cicero reminded the judges when
in that famous trial he thundered against Verres, the spoiler of our
Sicilian province, and with the other cities defended this of ours,
whose people had signalized their hatred of the Roman praetor by
overthrowing his statue in the market-place and sparing the pedestal, as
they said, to be an eternal memorial of his infamy. From the Roman age,
however, I take but two episodes, for I find that to write this town's
history were to write the history of half the Mediterranean world. When
the slaves rose in the Servile War, they intrenched themselves on this
hill, and in their hands the city bore its siege by the Roman consul as
hardily as was ever its custom. Cruel they were, no doubt, and
vindictive. With horror Monsignore relates that they were so resolved
not to yield that, starving, they ate their children, their wives, and
one