5) The following refers particularly to the complex discussion of alphabetic evolution in Ch.  XIV:  Measuring and Writing).  Ideographic references, meaning pointers to the form of representation itself rather than to its content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-. “id:”  stands for “ideograph”, and indicates that the reader should form a mental picture based on the “xxxx” following the colon. “xxxx” may represent a single symbol, a word, or an attempt at a picture composed of ASCII characters.  E. g. —­“id:Gamma gamma”—­ indicates an uppercase Greek gamma-form Followed by the form in lowercase.  Such exotic parsing is necessary to explain alphabetic development because a single symbol may have been used for a number of sounds in a number of languages, or even for a number of sounds in the same language at different times.  Thus, -"id:Gamma gamma” might very well refer to a Phoenician construct that in appearance resembles the form that eventually stabilized as an uppercase Greek “gamma” juxtaposed to another one of lowercase.  Also, a construct such as —­“id:E” indicates a symbol that in graphic form most closely resembles an ASCII uppercase “E”, but, in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.

6) The numerous subheading references, of the form “XX.  XX.  Topic” found in the appended section of endnotes are to be taken as “proximate” rather than topical indicators.  That is, the information contained in the endnote indicates primarily the location in the main text of the closest indexing “handle”, a subheading, which may or may not echo congruent subject matter.

The reason for this is that in the translation from an original paged manuscript to an unpaged “cyberscroll”, page numbers are lost.  In this edition subheadings are the only remaining indexing “handles” of sub-chapter scale.  Unfortunately, in some stretches of text these subheadings may be as sparse as merely one in three pages.  Therefore, it would seem to make best sense to save the reader time and temper by adopting a shortest path method to indicate the desired reference.

7) The attentive reader will notice occasional typographic or syntactic anomalies and errors.  In almost all cases this conscious and due to an editorial decision for the first Gutenberg edition to transmit transparently all but the most egregious flaws found in the source text Scribner edition of 1903.  Furthermore, a number of sentences may be virtually unintelligible to the English reader due to the architecture of relative clauses, prepositions, and verbs as carried over from the original German.  It is the preparer’s ambition for a second Gutenberg edition of the History of Rome to reconstruct and clarify the most turgid specimens.

8) Dr. Mommsen has given his dates in terms of Roman usage, A.U.C.; that is, from the founding of Rome, conventionally taken to be 753 B. C. To the end of each volume is appended a table of conversion between the two systems.