Gizo.66 1874, April 28. HARVARD BOOK XIV. CONTAINING AN INTERVAL OF 32 YEARS. [From the death of Queen Alexandra to the death of Antigonus.] CHAP. I. The war between Aristobulus and Hyrcanus about the kingdom; and how they made an agreement that Aristobulus should be king, and Hyrcanus live a private life; as also how Hyrcanus, a little afterward, was persuaded by Antipater to fly to Aretas. 1. We have related the affairs of queen Alexandra, and her death, in the foregoing book, and will now speak of what followed, and was connected with those histories; declaring, before we proceed, that we have nothing so much at heart as this, that we may * omit no facts either through ignorance or laziness, for we are upon the history and explication of such things as the greatest part are unacquainted withall, because of their distance from our times; and we aim to do it with a proper beauty of style, so far as that is derived from proper words harmonically disposed, and from such ornaments of speech also as may contribute to the pleasure of our readers, that they may entertain the knowledge of what we write with some agreeable satisfaction and pleasure. But the principal scope that authors ought to aim at above all the rest, is to speak accurately, and to speak truly, for the satisfaction of those that are otherwise unacquainted with such transactions, and obliged to believe what these writers. inform them of. * Reland takes notice here, very justly, how Josephus's declaration, that it was his great concern, not only to write an agreeable, an accurate, and a true history, but also distinctly not to omit any thing [of consequence,] either through ignorance or laziness, implies, that he could not, consistently with that resolution, omit the mention of [so famous a person as] Jesus Christ. |