Such historians have therein shown themselves to be, as it were, ministers of divine providence (ὑπουργοὶ τη̂ς θείας προνοίας), for just as providence, having brought the orderly arrangement of the visible stars and the natures of men together into one common relationship, continually directs their courses through all eternity, apportioning to each that which falls to it by the direction of fate (ἐκ τη̂ς πεπρωμένης μερίζουσα), so likewise the historians … have made of their treatises a single reckoning of past events and a common clearing-house of knowledge concerning them.

when we turned our attention to the historians before our time, although we approved their purpose without reservation, yet we were far from feeling that their treatises had been composed so as to contribute to human welfare as much as might have been the case. For although the profit which history affords its readers lies in its embracing a vast number and variety of circumstances, yet most writers have recorded no more than isolated wars waged by a single nation or a single state, and but few have undertaken … to record the events connected with all peoples.