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PREFACE This volume includes selections from the Iliad and the Odyssey, and from the writings of Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Demosthenes, Arrian, Plutarch, Livy, Cicero, Caesar, Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Martial. Of the twenty-three chapters into which the work is divided, two are devoted to the Oriental period Herodotus and one to the Germans Tacitus. The other chapters deal with Greek and Roman history as seen through the eyes of the classical historians themselves. The arrangement of the volume follows, in general, that of my Ancient History, published simultaneously with it. Each chapter contains the work of a single author and relates to a single definite period or personality. Sufficient editorial matter, in the shape of introductions, notes, and connections between passages, has been supplied to make the book useful to the beginner in ancient history. The translations quoted have been carefully revised with a view to uniformity and accuracy. All omissions, save those of a trivial character, have been indicated by the usual signs. Some parts of the book, for instance, the opening chapter on the Oriental peoples and the closing chapter on the Germans, lend themselves to intensive study and may serve to provide an elementary training in historical criticism. The use of the table of contents and of the full index should also suggest helpful topics for essays and reports. Thus, the student may be asked to describe the civilization of the Homeric Age as revealed in the accounts of the Shield of Achilles and the Palace of Alcinous (secs. 13, 16), to set forth the old Roman character as illustrated by the stories of Brutus, Mucius Scaevola, and Cincinnatus (secs. 68, 70, 73), to contrast Caesars statements about the Germans with the later statements by Tacitus (secs. 94, 119-124), to make a comparative study of the Egyptian, Persian, and Gallic priesthoods (secs, i, 3, 93). Similar subjects, involving some discipline of the critical faculty, some exercise of the mental powers in discrimination and judgment, should readily occur to the teacher. My book, however, is not so much a classroom manual as a volume for supplementary reading. In choosing the selections, I have been influenced maliity by the desire to provide immature pupils with a variety of extended, unified, and interesting extracts on matters which a textbook treats with necessary, though none the less de plorable, condensation. Particular emphasis, therefore, has been placed on biography and entertaining narrative. If the work shall help to arouse in the students mind an attitude of sympathetic appreciation for the great characters and the great deeds of classical antiquity, it will have fulfilled its purpose. I wish to acknowledge here with hearty thanks the permission graciously granted to me by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press and by Prof. A. W. Mair of Edinburgh University, to use the extracts from Hesiod, by Messrs. G. Bell and Sons, to reproduce certain passages from Mr. E. J. Chinnocks version of Arrian, and by the Walter Scott Publishing Company, to insert variousletters of Pliny the Younger, as rendered by Mr. J. B. Firth. The selections from Xenophon, translated by the late H. G. Dakyns, and from Caesar, translated by Mr. T. Rice Holmes, are used through an agreement with the publishers, Macmillan and Company, London.