accordance with the chronological limits which we have set to our description; for they almost all belong to the centuries mentioned above, and only a few that would be suitable for our purpose are of greater antiquity. The nature of our authorities not only sets a limit of time, but also one of space. When we speak of Greek life we ought to include in it not only life in actual Greece or Hellas, but also that in the numerous colonies on the Aegean and Black Seas, in Southern Italy, Northern Africa, etc. But we know very little of the conditions in those Greek settlements outside Greece, and even in Greece itself, where, in consequence of the political and racial differences, these circumstances are by no means everywhere identical, our knowledge is limited in many ways. Even though the difference in manners and customs was greater in early times than afterwards, when increase in trade and greater facility of travel produced more equal conditions, yet certain local and national peculiarities always prevailed. Life at Sparta differed in many respects from that at Athens. The other large towns of Greece--Corinth, Sicyon, Thebes, not to speak of the colonies of Miletus, Syracuse, and Cyrene--doubtless showed many local peculiarities which are entirely hidden from our knowledge. Our literary sources are for the greater part Athenian. The majority of our monuments, too, are of Attic origin, or, at any rate, influenced by it, though Southern Italy supplies some of the vases, and in many cases the customs of Magna Graecia are represented in these pictures. Most of our knowledge of Greek life, then, refers to Athens, and to be quite accurate we ought to call our description “Life in Ancient Athens.” Every now and then we are enabled to enlarge our pictures by details from other parts of Greece. Still, we must beg our readers to remember that most of the traits here introduced relate to Athens between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C. We have scarcely the remotest conception of the mode of life at that time in any small Greek city or in the country. Here the third class of our sources comes in to help us, viz., the inscriptions. These not only give us most of our material for a knowledge of political conditions, legal and religious antiquities, etc., but they also supply interesting details of private life; and as they are found not only in Attica, but all over Greece, the islands, and the colonies, they supply much very valuable information about matters which our literary sources entirely ignore. As in most cases the period of the inscription can be ascertained by the character of the writing or by other peculiarities, we are not so liable here to make chronological mistakes and refer customs of a later period to earlier times. Compared with our literary sources, the inscriptions are also far safer material; for the accuracy of a writer may be sometimes called in question, especially when his information is supplied at second-hand.