Page:Cothvrnvlvs three short Latin historical plays for the use of beginners.djvu/9

 =PREFACE= For the earlier years of the school course simple Latin is an educational necessity. Since the classical authors are not simple, resort is commonly had either to short extracts or to simplified texts: occasionally original composition has been ventured upon. All such experiments are welcome to the classical teacher. The little plays now published stand somewhere between simplified texts and original composition. They make no claim to literary merit; such a claim could not easily be reconciled with their educational aim. But it is hoped that they retain in a very unpretending shape something of the interest of the great themes which they handle, and that they may give beginners a real, though necessarily a restricted, view of the great impulses which contributed to make the history of Rome in its different epochs. The substance is drawn as directly as possible from the Latin authors.

E. VERNON ARNOLD.

Bangor, September 15, 1907.