“Your Lordship will forgive me for detaining you thus long with relation to the Work I have made bold to present you with in our own Tongue.  How well it is perform’d, I must leave entirely to my Readers.  I assume nothing to myself but an endeavour to make my Author speak intelligible English.  I shall only add what my Subject leads me to, and what for my Reader’s sake I ought to mention:  That as there are but few Authors that can present any Book to your Lordship in most other Languages, and on most of the Learned Subjects, but might wish they had been assisted by your Lordship’s Skill and Knowledge therein, as well as Patronage and Protection; so the Translator of this Greek Historian in particular must lament, that notwithstanding all his Industry and Pains, he is faln infinitely short of that great Judgment, Nicety and Criticism in the Greek Language, which your Lordship has in your Writings made appear to the World.”

* * * * *

Dio has long served as a source to writers treating topics of greater or less length in Roman history.  He is now presented entire to the casual reader:  his veracious narrative must ever continue to interest the historical student, who may correct him by others or others by him, the ecclesiastic, to whom is here offered so graphic a picture of the conditions surrounding early Christianity, and the literary man, who finds the limpid stream of Hellenic diction far from its source grow turbid and turgid in turning the mill wheels for this dealer in [Greek:  onkos].  Dio’s faults are patent, but his excellencies, fortunately, are patent, too; and the world may rejoice that in an age of lust and bloodshed this serious-minded magistrate bethought him to record with religious exactness what he believed to be the truth respecting the Kingdom, the Republic, and the Empire of Rome even to his own day.

I desire in conclusion to express especial gratitude and appreciation for assistance and suggestions to Professor C.W.E.  Miller of Johns Hopkins University, Professors J.H.  Wright and A.A.  Howard of Harvard University, and to Mr. A.T.  Robinson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Likewise I must acknowledge my obligations, in the elucidation of particularly vexed and corrupt passages, to the illuminative comments of Sturz, or Wagner, or Gros, or Boissee, or all combined.  Additional thanks are due to many others who have helped or shall yet help to make Dio in English a success.

HERBERT BALDWIN FOSTER.

BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA,
     June, 1905.

CONCERNING THE ORIGINAL.

A.—­THE WRITING.