HISTORICAL ESSAYS

BY

Augustus

EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A., HON. D.C.L. & LL.D.

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REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

PREFACE

THE present collection of Essays, though all may, I think, fairly come under the head of 'historical,' is somewhat more varied in character than the three volumes which have gone before it. The pieces now reprinted do not illustrate any one great portion of history in the way that each of those volumes did. Some, chiefly those put early in the volume, are essentially of the same class as those essays in the former volumes in which I took some particular place, and tried to point out at once its own local character and its position in the history of the world. But there is one only which is written exactly on the same pattern. The paper headed Augustodunum' belongs to the same group as those in the third volume which dealt with Trier, Ravenna, Spalato, and Palermo. Autun can hardly pretend to an equal interest with those cities; but the interest which it has is exactly the same in kind. That essay ought to have gone along with its fellows; only it was not written till after the Third Series was collected. And it is likely to be the last, as I am sorry to say that the British Quarterly Review, in which the series appeared, has gone the way of the National and North British Reviews. The other pieces of the same general kind, as those on Orange, Aix, Périgueux and Cahors, and Carthage itself, were written for periodicals where they could not be treated quite on the same scale. They therefore do not represent so much actual research as the series which ends with