of the text.  It is a wonderful monument of learning and labor, and certainly no Englishman has yet done anything like it.  At the end of his preface the editor says that he wrote it at Rotherhithe near London, in a severe winter, when he was in the seventy-eighth year of his age, 1651—­a time when Milton, Selden, and other great men of the Commonwealth time were living; and the great French scholar Saumaise (Salmasius), with whom Gataker corresponded and received help from him for his edition of Antoninus.  The Greek test has also been edited by J. M. Schultz, Leipzig, 1802, 8vo; and by the learned Greek Adamantinus Corais, Paris, 1816, 8vo.  The text of Schultz was republished by Tauchnitz, 1821.

There are English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish translations of M. Antoninus, and there may be others.  I have not seen all the English translations.  There is one by Jeremy Collier, 1702, 8vo, a most coarse and vulgar copy of the original.  The latest French translation by Alexis Pierron in the collection of Charpentier is better than Dacier’s, which has been honored with an Italian version (Udine, 1772).  There is an Italian version (1675), which I have not seen.  It is by a cardinal.  “A man illustrious in the church, the Cardinal Francis Barberini the elder, nephew of Pope Urban viii., occupied the last years of his life in translating into his native language the thoughts of the Roman emperor, in order to diffuse among the faithful the fertilizing and vivifying seeds.  He dedicated this translation to his soul, to make it, as he says in his energetic style, redder than his purple at the sight of the virtues of this Gentile” (Pierron, Preface).

I have made this translation at intervals after having used the book for many years.  It is made from the Greek, but I have not always followed one text; and I have occasionally compared other versions with my own.  I made this translation for my own use, because I found that it was worth the labor; but it may be useful to others also; and therefore I determined to print it.  As the original is sometimes very difficult to understand and still more difficult to translate, it is not possible that I have always avoided error.  But I believe that I have not often missed the meaning, and those who will take the trouble to compare the translation with the original should not hastily conclude that I am wrong, if they do not agree with me.  Some passages do give the meaning, though at first sight they may not appear to do so; and when I differ from the translators, I think that in some places they are wrong, and in other places I am sure that they are.  I have placed in some passages a +, which indicates corruption in the text or great uncertainty in the meaning.  I could have made the language more easy and flowing, but I have preferred a ruder style as being better suited to express the character of the original; and sometimes the obscurity which may appear in the version is a fair copy of the obscurity of the Greek.  If I should ever revise this version, I would gladly make use of any corrections which may be suggested.  I have added an index of some of the Greek terms with the corresponding English.  If I have not given the best words for the Greek, I have done the best that I could; and in the text I have always given the same translation of the same word.