And in the first place, in pursuit of my original design, I will attempt to give a clear description of the war between Antiochus and Ptolemy for <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Coele-Syria&groupId=484&placeId=908">Coele-Syria</a>.
I am perfectly aware that at the date I chose for breaking off my narrative of events in Greece this war was on the point of being decided and coming to an end, but I deliberately resolved to make a break here in this history and open a fresh chapter for the following reasons.
I am confident that I have provided my readers with sufficient information to prevent them from going wrong about the dates of particular events by my parallel recapitulations of general history, in which I state in what year of this Olympiad and contemporaneously with what events in Greece each episode elsewhere began and ended.
But in order that my narrative may be easy to follow and lucid, I think it most essential as regards this Olympiad not to interweave the histories of different countries, but to keep them as separate and distinct as possible until upon reaching the next and following Olympiads I can begin to narrate the events of each year in the chronological order.
For since my design is to write the history not of certain particular matters but of what happened all over the world, and indeed, as I previously stated, I have undertaken, I may say, a vaster task than any of my predecessors, it is my duty to pay particular attention to the matter of arrangement and treatment, so that both as a whole and in all its details my work may have the quality of clearness.
I will therefore on the present occasion also go back a little and try in treating of the reigns of Antiochus and Ptolemy to take some generally recognized and accepted starting-point for my narrative: the most necessary thing to provide for.
Walbank Commentary