ἱστορίαι Historiai
Plb. 39.18 The Histories, Polybius; served verbatim
Ptolemy, king of Syria, died from a wound received in the war: a man who, according to some, deserved great praise and abiding remembrance, and according to others the reverse. If any king before him ever was, he was mild and benevolent; a very strong proof of which is that he never put any of his own friends to death on any charge whatever; and I believe that not a single man at Alexandria either owed his death to him. Again, though he was notoriously ejected from his throne by his brother, in the first place, when he got a clear opportunity against him in Alexandria, he granted him a complete amnesty; and afterwards, when his brother once more made a plot against him to seize Cyprus, though he got him body and soul into his hands at Lapethus, he was so far from punishing him as an enemy, that he even made him grants in addition to those which formerly belonged to him in virtue of the treaty made between them, and moreover promised him his daughter. However, in the course of a series of successes and prosperity, his mind became corrupted; and he fell a prey to the dissoluteness and effeminacy characteristic of the Egyptians: and these vices brought him into serious disasters....

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

← Plb. 39.17 contents Plb. 39.19 →

Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass
siege of Alexandria — a candidate entry

The Histories, Polybius — translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh, 1889
Apparatus shelf — Polybius, The Histories (Evelyn S. Shuckburgh translation; Musaicum ebook) · Evelyn S. Shuckburgh, The Histories of Polybius, 2 vols (Macmillan, 1889); Musaicum Books ebook, 2018
license: public-domain (US: the translation is pre-1890 by the epub's own front matter — its preface opens 'This is the first English translation of the complete works of Polybius', carries the dedication 'TO F. M. S.', and cites nothing later than the 1880s; identified as Shuckburgh 1889, this lane's bibliographic judgment, since the ebook nowhere names its translator; the Musaicum 2018 packaging is not extracted and not served)