Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/41

Book I.] Father, yourself, and your Brother, in a history of our own times, beginning where Aufidius Bassus concludes. You will ask, Where is it? It has been long completed and its accuracy confirmed ; but I have determined to commit the charge of it to my heirs, lest I should have been suspected, during my lifetime, of having been unduly influenced by ambition. By this means I confer an obligation on those who occupy the same ground with myself; and also on posterity, who, I am aware, will contend with me, as I have done with my predecessors.

You may judge of my taste from my having inserted, in the beginning of my book, the names of the authors that I have consulted. For I consider it to be courteous and to indicate an ingenuous modesty, to acknowledge the sources whence we have derived assistance, and not to act as most of those have done whom I have examined.