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inductively from so many different sources in Mommsen's Staatsrecht, should be applied sometimes, so to speak, deductively to illustrate particular authors. It was with this view that I selected Pliny's correspondence with Trajan, as offering a most suitable and at the same time. hitherto unworked material for this purpose. To illustrate the various points, all the side-lights possible have been thrown from other authors, from Inscriptions, and not least from the Digest. For a very large number of these I am indebted to Mommsen's and Marquadt's Handbücher der Römischen Alterthümer; for a few, as I have acknowledged elsewhere, to Döring's edition of the Letters. It is hoped that the text, based on a comparison of the original editions, with the additional help afforded by the Bodleian MS., will in some passages be found an improvement on Keil's. The book is not primarily intended for school use. Pliny is indeed far too little read in schools generally, and perhaps the 'literae inliteratissimae' of this correspondence would be considered less suitable as an introduction to that author than some one of the other books of the collection. At the same time, if it is not to remain a law of the Medes and Persians that for school purposes Roman history should end with Augustus, I should venture to express the opinion that the portion of a school term which would be necessary for the mastering of these Letters with all their details by a sixth form, would be time not uselessly spent. I hope shortly to submit to a similar treatment, though in a manner and within a range more directly suitable for school use, Plutarch's lives of Galba and Otho.

E. G. H.

OXFORD, Nov. 5, 1888.

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