The account of the manner in which Roman history was handled affords us an image of the progress of philology itself. In the fifteenth century it had scarcely awakened, and it was still uncritical; in the sixteenth, men penetrated quickly and deeply into the study of antiquity, without, however, fully securing the results; but the golden age of philology vanished in the beginning of the seventeenth, and in Germany, where it had blossomed only late, it was blighted by the thirty years’ war. It was now combined with other studies, and works were produced, which were laboriously and diligently executed, but of inferior philological merit, and devoid of genius. The Strasburg school of philologists especially, still maintained a certain pre-eminence. At the end of the thirty years’ war, John Freinsheim of that town wrote his supplements to the books of Livy. Of particular facts, he has left few unnoticed; yet he has but imperfectly succeeded in arranging the events of the obscure ages, and in entering more deeply into the spirit of the times. He had no idea of the Roman state either in relations of peace or of war, though he prided himself not a little on his _prudentia civilis_. For the second decade, especially books 11-15, and perhaps also four books 46-60, he had more complete materials, and made an energetic use of them; afterwards, he becomes more and more careless, and from the period of the Social War decidedly bad. Notwithstanding which, no one who works at Roman history can do without his book. Unfortunately, the quotations are very inaccurate, even in the original edition; and in that of Drakenborch, they are either made worse, or at least not corrected. Freinsheim, like his fellow citizens Boecler and Obrecht, is to be reckoned among the ornaments of Germany of that time. That he did not continue his immense work with equal care is very pardonable, and the preposterousness of the undertaking itself is to be charged to the taste of the age in which he lived.