Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/10

vi said of that of Rome. Though our knowledge of the administration of the Empire is constantly increasing, Mr. Heitland's three careful and scholarly volumes on the Roman Republic show that in the main our ideas of the development of the Roman political system have not been revolutionised. Thus the political biography of the City-State, as sketched in these chapters, is not, I think, misleading in its general features, though here and there statements may be found which are now open to question.

As the book is still called for, both in the British Empire and in the United States, the question has arisen whether it should now be thoroughly revised. On consideration I have decided to leave it as it is, i.e. complete in itself and free from the patchwork of addition and correction. I think that the teachers who use it will be better able to make their own comments on it if I abstain from attempting to anticipate them. But I hope that some day an entirely new "survey" of classical history may be written for the use of students; for I still believe, as I did when I was giving the lectures on which this book was based, that the true aim of the scholar should be to bring a knowledge of the, whole of classical antiquity to bear on the interpretation of any part of it.

W. W. F.

., 6th February 1913.