says, he aims at accuracy,33 and he makes considerable use of other reputable ancient historians (particularly Strabo and Nicholas of Damascus) and of state documents, by which his account could at the time be checked. For exactness of inquiry he deserves to be ranked above Livy, who was content with secondary sources, though he is not to be put on the level of Thucydides. It is thought that the idea of his Antiquities was suggested by the Antiquitates Romanae of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, but