Diodorus Siculus

“ He that rests barely on the matter of fact related in history, pleases his fancy for a moment while he is reading, but never improves his judgment to make it useful in conversation, or in the management of public affairs. ”

“ To observe the causes, progress, and end of this or that accident, this war, that revolution, this success, and that miserable disaster, are the ­main and chief ends and designs of reading of history; whereby the understanding and memory are not only furnished with notions of things done, and long since past, but the judgment is improved with that moral prudence (and sometimes religious too) as to be careful to avoid the rocks others have before split upon; and to imitate the virtue and honourable actions of others (at least for the sake of repu­tation that attends upon them in this world) . ”

“ To give, therefore, satisfaction in that particular, we can truly and sincerely say, it was not undertaken without some regret, not willing to seem a captious censurer of other men's labours; there­fore, to obviate that suspicion, we are willing to be an advocate to excuse what was before done in this kind, as to those five books; for the errors and defects that appear in the former translation are chiefly occasioned by an old Latin edition of Diodorus, whereunto the translator wholly applied himself, having at that time (without doubt) no better an edition to direct him. ”