I am well aware that the method I have adopted hardly corresponds with the taste of the present day; and if the public choose to find in my work nothing but an idle display of quotations, I cannot fail to be mortified. Nevertheless I prefer to encounter, if needs be, the reproach of pedantry rather than that of superficiality. With the difficulties I met with in connection with particular investigations I need not trouble the reader at greater length, as they are sufficiently familiar to everyone engaged in similar researches. I may be allowed to point out what a task was presented by the co-ordination of so considerable a number of scattered data. These I had, in the almost total absence of earlier works on the same subject, to collect mostly by my own reading from very widely separated Authors; and anything like symmetry of arrangement was made still more difficult when, as occurred more than once, the discovery of a single passage forced me to entirely re-write a substantial part of my manuscript, often within a short time of its going to Press. For the same reason the indulgent reader must excuse it, if here and there a later observation involves the supplementing and in some degree correcting of a previous statement,—a thing that would have been done much more frequently, had I not dreaded treating my material in too rambling a fashion. It would be quite easy now to subjoin in the form of appendices a multitude of additional proofs, of course only corroborating views already laid down,—proofs I owed to further reading of the Ancient authors. However absolute completeness is impossible of attainment for the individual; and I can only hope the humble request I hereby express,—a request addressed specially to professional students of Antiquity,—that others may favour me with contributions and remarks relevant to my subject, may be not entirely without result. So later on perhaps the material accumulated may be utilised more efficiently, if the interest manifested by the learned in my undertaking is of such a nature as to demand a re-modelling of the whole Investigation.