This principle of inconsistency which I have pursued in varying the rendering of long sentences, periodic or loose, according to external modifying conditions, may be observed also in certain other features of the book.  For I have felt obliged to allow inconsistency of letter in the hope of approaching a consistency of spirit.  I suppose that the ideal plan to follow in a translation would be to let a given English word represent a given Greek word, so that “beautiful” should occur as many times in the English version as [Greek:  kalos] in the original, and “strength” as many times as [Greek:  rhome].  Such a scheme, however, is not feasible in a passage of any length, and its impossibility simply goes to show what a makeshift translation is and always has been, after all.  Therefore single Greek words will be found reproduced by various English terms, but with that color which seems best adapted to the context.

Again, in spelling I have chosen a method not unknown to recent historians, which consists in anglicising familiar proper names that are household words, like Antony, Catiline, etc., but keeping the classical Latin form for persons less well known, as Antonius the grandfather of Mark Antony.  To the names of gods I have given a Latin dress unless a particular god happened to be named by a Greek on Greek soil.  Similarly in geographical or topographical designations the translator of Dio must needs confront a more difficult situation than did Dio himself.  Greek reduces all names to its own basis.  In English one must often select from the Latin form, Greek form, Native form, or Anglicised form.  Since Dio lived in Italy and was to all intents and purposes a Roman I decided to make the Latin form the standard, and admit rarely the Anglicised form, less often the Greek, and least often the Native.  As to the minutiae of spelling I need scarcely say that I have been tremendously aided by Boissevain’s exhaustive studies, briefly summarized in his notes.  This painstaking care, for which he feels almost obliged to apologize, will lend a permanent lustre to his invaluable work.

That many errors must have crept into an undertaking of this magnitude I have only too vivid forebodings, and this in spite of no inconsiderable efforts of mine to avoid them:  herein I can but beg the clemency of my readers and judges and hope that such faults may be found to be mostly of a minor character.  And perhaps I can do no better than to make common cause at once with Mr. Francis Manning whose book I recently mentioned; for, in his Epistle Dedicatory “To The | Right Honourable | CHARLES | Earl of Orrery”, he voices as well as possible the feelings with which I write on the dedication page the name of Professor Gildersleeve: