Before his own day, he says, (12) the events of the world were
unconnected and separate and the histories confined to particular
countries. Now, for the first time the universal empire of the
Romans rendered a universal history possible. (13) This, then, is
the august motive of his work: to trace the gradual rise of this
Italian city from the day when the first legion crossed the narrow
strait of Messina and landed on the fertile fields of Sicily to the
time when Corinth in the East and Carthage in the West fell before
the resistless wave of empire and the eagles of Rome passed on the
wings of universal victory from Calpe and the Pillars of Hercules
to Syria and the Nile. At the same time he recognised that the
scheme of Rome's empire was worked out under the aegis of God's
will. (14) For, as one of the Middle Age scribes most truly says,
the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] of Polybius is that
power which we Christians call God; the second aim, as one may call
it, of his history is to point out the rational and human and
natural causes which brought this result, distinguishing, as we
should say, between God's mediate and immediate government of the
world.
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