Roman History (Historia Romana)

From where, then, Velleius began his history, since the small work is mutilated at the beginning, we can conjecture both from those things that still exist at the beginning and from the custom of Roman historians of beginning the narration of events from the destruction of Troy and the arrival of Aeneas and the Trojans in Italy. For those things which are read at the front of the first book concerning the wanderings, fates, and cities founded here and there by the Greek leaders returning from the Trojan War followed naturally the memory of Ilium destroyed. Nor is it probable that our author abandoned the common custom of authors to trace Roman origins back to Aeneas and his cohort, especially since, as we shall see in another place, he is very studious in courting the favor of the Augustan house, which boasted Anchises and Venus as the authors of the Julian clan. Finally, from the time of Troy’s capture, the memory of antiquity began to become more certain, clearer, broader, and more filled with magnificent things.

But when the beginning of the historical narration perished, the author’s own preface also perished: for which reason it is necessary for us to grasp the author’s plan both from individual places where he calls attention to it in passing, and from the form of the work itself. For he calls his historical work 'constrained' (II. 86) and 'cut short' (II. 89); 'admonished by the promise of brevity' (II. 55), he keeps himself within the proposed boundaries; by his 'haste,' which does not allow the writer—who has undertaken a concise work—to stand and linger on matters most worthy of memory, he excuses why he does not follow events in a manner worthy of their magnitude. See II. 29, 52, 86, 99, 124. This 'form,' 'rule,' or 'measure' (for he varies the terms) of the 'constrained work' that he had proposed for himself, he violates when he goes beyond it, either by digressing or by lingering too long.