英文原文：
The task of writing a history of our nation from Rome's earliest days fills me, I confess, with some misgiving, and even were I confident in the value of my work, I should hesitate to say so. I am aware that for historians to make extravagant claims is, and always has been, all too common: every writer on history tends to look down his nose at his less cultivated predecessors, happily persuaded that he will better them in points of style, or bring new facts to light. Countless others have written on this theme and it may be that I shall pass unnoticed amongst them; if so, I must comfort myself with the greatness and splendor of my rivals.

My task, moreover, is an immensely laborious one. I shall have to go back more than seven hundred years, and trace my story from its small beginnings up to these recent times when its ramifications are so vast that any adequate treatment is hardly possible. I shall find antiquity a rewarding study, if only because, while I am absorbed in it, I shall be able to turn my eyes from the troubles which for so long have tormented the modern world, and to write without any of that over-anxious consideration which may well plague a writer on contemporary life, even if it does not lead him to conceal the truth.

中文譯文：

我承認，要編寫我們國家的歷史，追溯到羅馬建立伊始，這一任務讓我顧慮重重。即使我對這項工作的價值充滿信心，要這么說還是猶豫再三。我很明白史學家們愛唱高調，這向來司空見慣。每一位史學編寫者往往對前人的工作嗤之以鼻，認為他們缺乏素養，心里暗自得意自己會在風格上有所突破，或取得新的歷史發現。關于國家歷史這一主題的作品不勝枚舉，而我的作品可能湮沒其中，不為人知。果真如此，前人巨著的偉大和精彩也會令我倍感欣慰。

此外，這項任務異常繁重。我要回顧到700多年前，從最初開始，一直追溯到近代，而這部分盤根錯節，幾乎無法詳盡描述。現代社會問題重重，如果今世的作家對此過于心焦，即便不對真相有所掩蓋，也難免受困于此。而如果我在潛心于古代研究時，能夠不受這些問題的困擾，那恰恰體現了古代研究的價值所在。