Ab urbe condita

Or was there any danger of that happening which the most frivolous of the Greeks, who actually extol the Parthians at the expense of the Romans, are so constantly harping upon, namely, that the Roman people must have bowed before the greatness of Alexander's name — though I do not think they had even beard of him —and

that not one out of all the Roman chiefs would have uttered his true sentiments about him, though men dared to attack him in Athens, the very city which had been shattered by Macedonian arms and almost well in sight of the smoking ruins of `Thebes, and the speeches of his assailants are still extant to prove this? However lofty our ideas of this man's greatness, still it is the greatness of one individual, attained in a successful career of little more than ten years.