Status Updates From The Histories, Vol 1: Books...

For it is history, and history alone, which, without involving us in actual danger, will mature our judgment and prepare us to take right views, whatever may be the crisis or the posture of affairs.

One should never therefore voluntarily choose the former, for it makes reformation a matter of great difficulty and danger; but we should always look out for the latter, for thereby we can without hurt to ourselves gain a clear view of the best course to pursue. It is this which forces us to consider that the knowledge gained from the study of true history is the best of all educations for practical life.

For it is history, and history alone, which, without involving us in actual danger, will mature our judgment and prepare us to take right views, whatever may be the crisis or the posture of affairs.

One should never therefore voluntarily choose the former, for it makes reformation a matter of great difficulty and danger; but we should always look out for the latter, for thereby we can without hurt to ourselves gain a clear view of the best course to pursue. It is this which forces us to consider that the knowledge gained from the study of true history is the best of all educations for practical life.

There are two roads to reformation for mankind—one through misfortunes of their own, the other through those of others: the former is the most unmistakable, the latter the less painful.

Readers know, but authors may forget, that stories can serve more than one purpose. As I more or less said before, this particular book works well to clear my mind of other stories and other styles, and that’s useful.

Though this is important as a historical source, I’m reading it mainly as a palate cleanser: a verbal diversion that occupies me but won’t clutter my mind with much in the way of content or style. My version of an airport read, in other words.

Well, I certainly could have done without this recount of the Cleomenic War. It had too many not-properly-introduced names in it, and was (I guess) only included because Polybius father was involved, and/or because he as a Greek thought Greek matters are of everyone's interest). Anyhow, that part I found hard to follow as to many names and places were thrown at me as if i read about them in the papers every day.

Fascinating. The Romans won the first Punic War with a host of hostile Celts and many un-submitted and untrustworthy tribes of Italy in their back yard. Fascinating to see how military prowess, technique and resiliance had such other and more immediate meaning in that era.

A feminist he was not, Polybius: "As, with a woman's natural shortness of view, she could see nothing but the recent success and had no eyes for what was going on elsewhere."