Kitap 17
21
I WISHED to have a kind of survey of ancient times, and also of the famous men who were born in those days, lest I might in conversation chance to make some careless remark about the date and life of celebrated men, as that ignorant sophist did who lately, in a public lecture, said that Carneades the philosopher Carneades, who was one of the envoys sent from Athens to Rome in 155 B.C., lived more than a hundred years after the death of Alexander. was presented with a sum of money by king Alexander, son of Philip, and that Panaetius the Stoic was intimate with the elder Africanus. Panaetius, born about 185 B.C., was the teacher and personal friend of the younger Africanus. In order, I say, to guard against such errors in dates and periods of time, I made notes from the books known as Chroicles Chronic (xronika/) were chronological lists of historical events. The Chronica of Nepos seem to have given the important dates in foreign, as well as in Roman, history, including mythology. of the times when those Greeks and Romans flourished who were famous and conspicuous either for talent or for political power, between the founding of Rome and the second Punic war. 218–202 B.C. And these excerpts of mine, made in various and sundry places, I have now put hastily together. For it was not my endeavour with keen and subtle care to compile a catalogue of the eminent men of both nations who lived at the same time, but merely to strew these Nights of mine lightly here and there with a few of these flowers of history. After his usual fashion, Gellius tries to present his material in an entertaining form by introducing the anecdote of the ignorant sophist, by freedom of treatment, and by condensation; also by the arrangement of his matter. Moreover, it seemed sufficient in this survey to speak of the dates of a few men, from which it would not be difficult to infer the periods also of many more whom I did not name.
