1You urge me to write history, and you are not alone in urging it: many have often advised me to do so and I am willing, not because I am confident that I shall do it well — for you would be rash to believe that without trying — but because it seems to me a particularly fine thing not to let those die to whom eternity is owed, and to extend the fame of others along with one's own. 2Nothing stirs me so much as the love and desire of lasting fame, a thing most worthy of a man, especially of one who, conscious of no fault in himself, does not dread the memory of posterity.
3And so day and night I think whether 'I too may somehow rise from the ground'; 3for that is enough for my prayer; beyond my prayer is 'to fly victorious on the lips of men'; 3'and yet, oh—': but this is enough, which history alone seems almost to promise. 4For oratory and poetry win little favour unless their eloquence is of the highest: history, however it is written, gives pleasure. 4For men are inquisitive by nature, and are captivated by knowledge of facts, however bare, as people who are drawn even by gossip and little tales. 4I am also driven to this pursuit by an example in my own family.
5My uncle, who was also my father by adoption, wrote histories, and most scrupulously. 5And I find in the wise that it is most honourable to follow in the footsteps of one's forebears, provided they have gone ahead on the right path. 5Why then do I hesitate? 6I have pleaded great and weighty cases. 6These, even though I have slender hopes from them, I intend to revise, so that all that labour of mine may not perish together with me, unless I add this remaining effort to it. 7For if you take posterity into account, whatever has not been completed counts as not begun. 7You will say: 'You can both rewrite your speeches and compose a history at the same time.' 7If only I could!
7but each is so great a task that it is more than enough to accomplish one. 8I began to speak in the forum in my nineteenth year, and only now do I see, though still as if through a mist, what an orator ought to achieve. 9What if a new burden were added to this one? 9Oratory and history certainly have much in common, but more differences in the very things that seem common. 9Both narrate, but differently: to oratory belong for the most part humble and mean things taken from everyday life, to history everything recondite, splendid and lofty; 10oratory is more often suited by bones, muscles and sinews, history by a certain brawn and, as it were, a mane; 10oratory pleases above all by force, bitterness and urgency, history by its flow and charm and even sweetness; 10finally, the vocabulary is different, the rhythm different, the construction different.
11For it makes a great difference, as Thucydides says, whether a thing is a possession for ever or a showpiece for the moment; 11of these, the latter is oratory, the former history. 11For these reasons I am not induced to confuse and mix two dissimilar things, different precisely in that each is of the greatest importance, for fear that, confused by such a mixture, as it were, I may do in the one what I ought to do in the other; 11and therefore, for the time being, I ask leave — not to depart from my own idiom — to adjourn. 12But you, even now, think about which period I should best tackle.
12Ancient times, already written about by others? 12The research is ready to hand, but the comparison is burdensome. 12Untouched and recent times? 12Heavy offence and light thanks. 13For besides the fact that, given men's great vices, more things are to be blamed than praised, if you praise you will be called stingy, if you blame, excessive, even though you have done the former most fully and the latter most sparingly. 14But these things do not hold me back; 14for I have courage enough for honesty: what I ask is that you prepare the ground for what you urge, and choose the subject, so that, when I am ready to write, no other just reason for hesitation and delay may arise again.
14Farewell.