A GENERAL HISTORY OF ROME FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY "Historia scribitur ad narrandum non ad probandum." QUINTILIAN, Inst. Orat. x. i. 31. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. Any of the above books scut by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States or Canada on receipt of the price. 10.9-1935° add. Ed. PREFACE. THE Breviary or Compendium of Roman affairs by Eu tropius extends from the foundation of Rome to the reign of Jovian, in the year of the city 1117, as commonly reckoned, or A.D. 364. The summary which is now offered to the reader reaches more than a century further, and terminates A.U.c. 1229, a.d. 476. This, it will be allowed, is a long period to embrace within the limits of a single volume, to which it seems convenient to confine it. It will be well to preface the work with a few words in explanation of its object and its method. The title of a General History is given to this book, first, because it is addressed to no special class of readers, but rather to the reading public in general, who may desire to be informed of the most noted incidents in the Roman annals, the most remarkable characters which play their part upon the Roman stage, and the main course of events, together with their causes and consequences. With this object directly in view the writer has no occasion to load his pages with references, or justify his statements by notes and critical discussions, for which his prescribed limits would allow him no room. It is for the orator, says the great critic of antiquity, to argue and persuade; the historian may confine himself to narration. But in cutting myself off from the resource of notes and references, I must at the same time refrain from disquisitions and speculations which cannot be conducted safely or fairly without them. These I must leave to the critical inquirer and the professed student; my pages are addressed, as I have said, to the general reader. who will be content to accept the conclusions which I present to him. In former works, which cover a large part of the course now before us, I have gone fully into the critical analysis of our historical authorities. In this shorter compendium I take the liberty of adopting the results at which I then arrived, and often of merely abridging my earlier narrative.* But this little work may also claim the title of General, inasmuch as it traverses the whole career of Roman history from the reputed foundation of the city to its capture by the Vandals, and the extinction of the Western Empire a few years later. Roman history travels through three principal stages, which it may be interesting to define more particularly. 1. The first of these may be designated as the "antiquarian." The reputed history of the great conquering people presents this striking peculiarity, that while it continues for several centuries to be merely legendary both in its main features and its details, it is found on examination. to be curiously adjusted to the existence of many actual institutions. The institutions survived; it is certain that they must have had an historical origin; their origin appears to be accounted for by the narrative before us. It is the function of the antiquarian to trace these institutions to their real foundation, to distinguish between the accounts we can accept as historical and those we are bound to reject as fictitious or imaginary; he must collect, compare, and sift the authorities, full as they are of inconsistency and contradiction; he must analyze and criticise them at every step; and while he is obliged to advance many conjectures, he must explain the grounds on which he forms them, and show the means by which they may be defended. After all the critical labors of * I beg to acknowledge my obligation to the proprietors of the Encyclopa dia Britannica for the use they have allowed me to make of my article on "Roman History" in that publication, and especially of the chapter on the history of The City." |