introduced traits from Roman life. Still, as a rule they adhered to Greek, or, rather, Attic manners, upon which the original comedies were based. Among prose writers we must chiefly consider the historians and orators. The former are of comparatively little use. They deal with great political and military events; the daily life going on around them gave them no subjects for description; apart from the fact that it probably never occurred to them that anyone in later ages would ever care to hear about the social conditions of that time. A writer like Herodotus, who introduces not only political history, but also geographical, ethnological, and social information, directs his attention for this very reason chiefly to foreign nations, and gives his countrymen a great deal of information about the life and customs of the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Persians; concerning the Greeks themselves he is absolutely silent. It is quite natural that historians should only mention by the way facts which we could use with advantage in a description of Greek life. The orators, on the other hand, supply richer material, not so much in political speeches as in private orations dealing with law-suits, of which a considerable number have come down to us. Here side-lights fall on many events of daily life, and we obtain an insight into private affairs such as we seldom gain elsewhere. Philosophical writings supply some material, though comparatively little; especially those that take actual life as their basis and deal with philosophical problems in connection with existing circumstances. Among these may be included such writings as the “Characters” of Theophrastus, and here we can but regret that we possess only mutilated fragments of these admirable descriptions of character, based on much accurate observation, and taken direct from real life. The Greek literature of the Roman period can only be utilised in selections and with care, to illustrate the period with which we have to deal. After Greece came under Roman dominion, new manners and customs took root there, unknown during the period of Greek freedom and the Hellenistic epoch. This diminishes the value for our purpose of the writings of Plutarch, and even more of Lucian, that excellent delineator of the customs of the second century A.D. But even in this later literature there is a good deal which we have a right to use in our description, for some of its habits and customs obtained through the whole of antiquity; besides which, the later writers often turned to past centuries for descriptions, and sought their material in older sources or old historians and other authors, on whose accuracy we cannot, however, always depend. The same was the case with the materials which we are able to use in Roman literature.