Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/40

16 the next moment all is again in darkness. The ancient historians are often blind guides, and did not regard truth and fact with the same reverence which science has taught our own generation. The monuments and inscriptions which have come down to us, invaluable as they often are, are mostly fragmentary or isolated, and themselves need skilful interpretation before they can be brought to bear on the interpretation of history. Again, the avidity with which every newly discovered scrap of an ancient author is seized upon and made the most of, — often, indeed, made more of than it will bear, — is itself a melancholy proof of the hunger for facts from which all students of antiquity must suffer. The recent discovery of the Aristotelian treatise on the Athenian constitution has, it may be said, only reminded us of our own ignorance of the subject. And in Roman history what would we not give to recover the lost books of Livy, or the Histories of Sallust, or the original works from which Plutarch drew his Roman Lives, or — better in some ways than all these — the complete texts of any dozen of the great laws passed during the last century of the Republic? As it is, we are climbing after knowledge in a misty region where endless tracks cross each other, which often come to an end suddenly, or lead us out of our true direction.

All this is indeed unfortunately true. But let us remember certain facts, which may too easily be forgotten.

First, we have an outline knowledge of the whole