Kitap 17
21
Then, about the four hundredth year after the founding of the city, Philip, son of Amyntas and father of Alexander, became king of Macedonia. At that time Alexander was born, 356 B.C. and a few years later the philosopher Plato went to the court of the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily; then some little time afterwards Philip defeated the Athenians in the great battle at Chaeronea. 338 B.C. At that time the orator Demosthenes sought safety in flight from the battlefield, and when he was bitterly taunted with his flight he jestingly replied in the well-known verse: Menander, Monost. 45. The man who runs away will fight again. Later Philip fell victim to a conspiracy; but Alexander, who succeeded him, 336 B.C. Quint. xi. 2. 50 crossed over into Asia and the Orient, to subdue the Persians. But another Alexander, surnamed Molossus, came into Italy intending to make war on the Roman people —for already the fame of Roman valour and success was beginning to be conspicuous among foreign nations—but he died before beginning the war. We have learned that on his way to Italy that Molossus said that he was going against the Romans as a nation of men, but the Macedonian was going against the Persians as one of women. Later, the Macedonian Alexander, having subdued the greater part of the east, died 323 B.C. after a reign of eleven years. Not long after this the philosopher Aristotle ended his life, 322 B.C. and a little later, Demosthenes; 322 B.C. at about that same time the Roman people engaged in a dangerous and protracted war with the Samites and the consuls Tiberius Veturius and Spurius Postumius were surrounded by the Samites in a perilous position near Caudium and being sent under the yoke were allowed to depart only when they had made a shameful treaty; 321 B.C. and when for that reason the consuls by vote of the people were surrendered to the Samites through the fetial priests, they were not accepted.
