[Footnote:  From Homer’s Iliad, XI, verses 163-4.]

* * * * *

PRESERVED FROM BOOKS
PRECEDING No. 36.

* * * * *

(The “Fragments” of Dio.)

[Frag.  I]

1.  Dio says:  “I am anxious to write a history of all (that is worth remembering) done by the Romans both at peace and in war, so as to have nothing essential lacking, either of those matters or of others.  (Valesius, p. 569.)

2[lacuna] everything about them, so to speak, that has been written by any persons, and I have put in my history not everything but what I have selected.  However, let no one entertain any suspicions (as has happened in the case of some other writers), regarding the truth of it merely because I have used elaborate diction to whatever extent the subject matter permitted; for I have been anxious to be equally perfect in both respects so far as was possible.  I will begin at the point where I have obtained the clearest accounts of what is reported to have taken place in this land which we inhabit.

This territory in which the city of Rome has been built” [Lacuna] (Mai, p. 135.)

[Frag.  II]

1.  Ausonia, as Dio Cocceianus writes, is properly the land of the Aurunci only, lying between the Campanians and Volsci along the sea-coast.  Many persons, however, thought that Ausonia extended even as far as Latium, so that all of Italy was called from it Ausonia. (Isaac Tzetzes on Lycophron, 44. and 615, 702.)

2.  Where now Chone is there was formerly a district called Oenotria, in which Philoctetes settled after the sack of Troy as Dionysius and Dio Cocceianus and all those who write the story of Rome relate. (Idem, v. 912.)

3. ¶ About the Etruscans Dio says:  “These facts about them required to be written at this point in the narrative, and elsewhere something else and later some still different fact will be told as occasion demands, in whatever way the course of the history may chance to prepare the point temporarily under discussion.  Let this same explanation be sufficient [Footnote:  The MS. here has [Greek:  ekontes] = “being (plural) sufficient.”  I have adopted the reading [Greek:  eketo], suggested by Melber.] to cover also the remaining matters of importance.  For I shall recount to the best of my ability all the exploits of the Romans, but as to the rest only what has a bearing on the Romans will be written.”  (Mai, p. 136.)

[Frag.  III]

1.  Dio and Dionysius give the story of Cacus (Tzetzes, History, 5, 21).