ک خرا A NEW CLARENDON PRESS SERIES OF CLASSICAL AUTHORS FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS GENERAL EDITOR REV. A. E. HILLARD, D.D. HIGH MASTER OF ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL 1069 9 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY DE BELLO GALLICO COMMENTARIUS QUINTUS EDITED BY T. RICE HOLMES OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS NOTE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR NEW editions of the Classics for school use are apt to be received with some impatience, and there is doubtless good reason for this if they are mere conflations' of other books and add no point of excellence to their predecessors. But, apart from the fact that our knowledge of some Classical authors and their subjects improves from time to time, changes in the method of teaching them, which come over the scholastic world almost imperceptibly, make it impossible ever to speak of a definitive school edition. For instance, the average schoolmaster of to-day has a much greater interest in English literature than his predecessors of the last generation, and it is a great point gained if he applies this in his teaching of the Classics. Even in editing Caesar and Ovid he says it last who says it best'. The series of which the ten volumes now issued are meant to be a first instalment was designed by the Oxford University Press four years ago. I may explain briefly that one condition of the series was that no volume should be included in it which was not edited by a schoolmaster with practical and lengthy experience in teaching the author on whom he wrote; and further, to avoid the danger of mere 'book making', that every author must be dealt with by some editor with a real enthusiasm for his subject. It was for these reasons that Dr. T. Rice Holmes was asked to edit Caesar's De Bello Gallico and Mr. J. W. E. Pearce such portions of Ovid's Elegiac poems as it |