I am not indeed unaware that several other writers make the same boast as myself, that they write general history and have undertaken a vaster task than any predecessor.
Now, while paying all due deference to Ephorus, the first and only writer who really undertook a general history, I will avoid criticizing at length or mentioning by name any of the others, and will simply say this much, that certain writers of history in my own times after giving an account of the war between <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a> and <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Carthage&groupId=441&placeId=820">Carthage</a> in three or four pages, maintain that they write universal history.
Yet no one is so ignorant as not to know that many actions of the highest importance were accomplished then in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Spain&groupId=983&placeId=1735">Spain</a>, <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Africa&groupId=300&placeId=294">Africa</a>, <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Italy&groupId=656&placeId=1199">Italy</a>, and <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sicily&groupId=973&placeId=1724">Sicily</a>, that the war with Hannibal was the most celebrated and longest of wars if we except that for <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Sicily&groupId=973&placeId=1724">Sicily</a>, and that we in Greece were all obliged to fix our eyes on it, dreading the results that would follow.
But some of those who treat of it, after giving a slighter sketch of it even than those worthy citizens who jot down occasional memoranda of events on the walls of their houses, claim to have comprised in their work all events in Greece and abroad.
This depends on the fact that it is a very simple matter to engage by words in the greatest undertakings, but by no means easy to attain actual excellence in anything.
Promise therefore is open to anyone and the common property of all, one may say, who have nothing beyond a little audacity, while performance is rare and falls to few in this life.
I have been led into making these remarks by the arrogance of those authors who extol themselves and their own writings, and I will now return to the subject I proposed to deal with.
Walbank Commentary