Page:Roman Britain (Collingwood, First Ed., 1924, b29827590).pdf/9



book represents a set of lectures given at the Oxford Summer Meeting in 1921. The lectures were intended to give a rapid and rather fully illustrated survey of the subject to an audience of persons who were not familiar with it beforehand; and the intention of the book is the same. For this reason, though the book contains little that has not been said before, no references have been given by which its statements might be checked in detail: such references would have been necessary in a work addressed to regular students of the subject, but in a book like this would be a useless encumbrance. For the same reason it has often been found necessary to take sides in controversial matters without pausing to argue the point.

The specialist student of Roman Britain will find here nothing that is not familiar to him; but the field covered is one which has been so intensively cultivated in detail and so seldom reviewed in broad outline that even he may have uses for a work like this, if only as a butt for criticism.

My debts are too numerous to mention in detail, but there is one which I must acknowledge because it cannot now be repaid. It was the example and advice of F. Haverfield that first led me into the serious study of Roman Britain, his friendship that encouraged more than anything else to pursue it, and his writings and conversation that most formed my point of view towards the problems involved. If I could claim for this book any merit, I should wish it to be dedicated to his memory.

R. G. C.

July 1922.