The History of Rome Author:Thomas Arnold Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XXXV. i STATE OF THE EAST—KINGDOMS OF ALEXANDER'S SUCCESSORS— SICILY-GREECE—KINGDOM OF EPIRUS, AND EARLY FORTUNES OF PYRRHUS. " When he was stro... more »ng the great horn was broken ; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven."—Daniel, VIII. 8. The hundred and twenty-fourth Olympiad witnessed, says Poly- The ish olympiad bins,i the first revival of the Achaean league, and ia a remarkable period .t j i f-n. i i / r ct in Grecian history. the deaths of Ptolemy the son of Lagus, of Lysima- chus, of Seleucns Nicator, and of Ptolemy Ceraunus. The same period was also marked by the Italian expedition of Pyrrhus, and immediately afterwards followed the great inroad of the Gauls into Greece and Asia, their celebrated attack upon Delphi, and their establishment in the heart of Asia Minor, in the country which afterwards was called from them Galatia. This coincidence of remarkable events is enough of itself to attract attention ; and the names which I have just mentioned, contain, in a manner, the germ of the whole history of the eastern world; all its interests and all its most striking points may be fully comprehended, when these names have been rendered significant, and we have formed a distinct notion of the persons and people which they designate. i Polybius, II. 41. Some explanation may perhaps be required of the length of this chapter, devoted as it is to matters not directly connected with the Roman history of the fifth century of Rome. But it is impossible to forget that all the countries here spoken of will successively become parts of the Roman empire; the wars in which they were engaged with Rome will hereafter claim our attention, and therefore their condition immediately before those wars cannot be considered foreign to my subjec...« less