Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/469

 1922 SHORT NOTICES 461 of space, as opposed to that of time, his subject is too narrowly restricted. Under whatever dispensation, the city of Antioch has never been a self- contained unit of society, and an attempt to treat it as such is almost bound to produce something of a patchwork with rather ragged edges, though Mr. Bouchier labours, with considerable ability, to counteract this inherent disadvantage. His work will probably be interesting chiefly to the student of historical form, and the conclusion to which it seems to point is that local treatment, while applicable to topography and archaeo- logical remains, is not suitable for those more important aspects of human activity which are predominantly mental, and which are not intimately associated with stones or contours. A. J. T. Dr. Eugen Taubler, whose work on the sources of Roman history is well known, concentrates on the single problem of the decemvirate in his Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Decemvirats und der Zwolftafeln (Berlin : Ebering, 1921). The first half of the book is devoted to a study of the literary sources, beginning with the bald statements of Diodorus, who is commonly taken to follow the earliest authorities, and ending with the picturesque narrative of Livy. The story certainly developed in the 200 years which separate Fabius Pictor from Livy, and it seems hardly likely that it underwent no change in the 250 years which elapsed between the traditional date of the Twelve Tables and that of the earliest historian. In the second part of the book an attempt is made to explain the character of these early modifications. A very careful analysis of the traditional names of the decemvirs, based largely on the researches of Miinzer, leads Dr. Taubler to conclude that the list for 451 was compiled at the end of the fourth century B. c. in the interests of Appius Claudius the censor and his plebeian contemporaries, who wished to claim patrician origin for their gentes, while the list for 450 was drawn up at an even later date. Thore is indeed no doubt and Cicero and Livy admit the fact that the early Roman records were deliberately falsified. In spite of these con- siderations Dr. Taubler condemns the extreme scepticism with which Signor Pais and others treat the traditional accounts of fifth-century history, and holds that the Twelve Tables were really compiled about 450 B. c., but that they merely codified the existing rules of law, and were less closely connected with the struggle between the orders than later Roman historians supposed. Though scholars may not be able to accept all of Dr. Taubler's points, his book is a sane and learned contribution to the, discussion of a difficult subject. G. H. S. The volume edited by Professor Hearnshaw with the title Mediaeval Contributions to Modern Civilisation (London : Harrap, 1921) consists of lectures delivered in 1920 at King's College, London, by various scholars. Regarded as lectures, most of the papers 'are admirable, but whether it was wise to publish all of them in their present form without more editorial supervision is open to question. The "book lacks unity and, in spite of the range of subjects, comprehensiveness. A clear, if rather perfunctory, sketch of medieval history by the editor is followed by a series of addresses written in various styles and with very different ideas of the demands of