F353 ADVERTISEMENT ΤΟ THE SIXTH VOLUME. WE have now accomplished two successive stages in the long career I ventured to anticipate at the commencement of my labours. Three volumes carried us through the struggles for the establishment of the Empire: three more, including the one now offered to the public, have brought the narrative to the fall of the founder's dynasty; to the overthrow of the Julian and the elevation of the Flavian family. The period we have traversed comprehends about 120 years; nearly 250 still lie before us. But the readers who have accompanied me thus far will learn with satisfaction, that my work, if I may still hope to complete it, will be conducted from henceforth on a scale comparatively limited. From this point our materials fail us. We lose the exuberance of detail we have so long enjoyed with Tacitus: even Suetonius, who will not much longer attend us, becomes more sparing of his tales and guesses, as he approaches nearer to the vapid realities of his own times. Dion Cassius has already dwindled to the meagre epitome of Xiphilinus. The compendious sketches of Herodian and the Augustan History will supply us with little more than a bare outline of events, relieved and interpreted by no vivid impersonation of individual character. The period of Roman history between Cæsar and Vespasian has presented us with an ample gallery of whole-length portraits. Of the warriors and statesmen, the princes, poets, and philosophers, whose true and living effigies glow before us, we can form a complete and just idea from the breadth, and yet the finish, with which they are delineated. But beyond these limits no such portraiture exists. We can arrive at no full and consistent conception even of Marius and Sulla on the one side, or of Trajan and Hadrian on the other. These are but magni nominis umbra; their vivi vultus have irrecoverably perished. So narrow are the limits of what may be designated as the Biographical History of Rome, which I have executed from its commencement to its close. In this point of view the portion of my work now finished is complete in itself. It is my wish, and it is still my hope, to break ground again; and though the political annals of Rome creep, from this period, like a shrunken torrent, from pool to pool along their thirsty channel, the interest of the general history will continue, and even increase, when we examine the social organization of the Empire, that is, of the ancient world, in its |