ed, and every topic will be dealt with,
as far as possible, in the plainest of English.

Nevertheless, while aiming at entire lucidity, the following chapters
will aim even more scrupulously at telling the truth. There are
doubtless a number of matters--though generally of relatively small
moment--about which we are, and probably always shall be, uncertain.
The best way to deal with these, in a work which is descriptive rather
than argumentative, is to omit them. For the rest it must be expected
of any one whose professional concern it has been to saturate himself
for many years in the literature of the times, and to study carefully
their monumental remains, that he should occasionally make some
statement, drop some passing remark or judgment, which may appear to
be in conflict with assertions made in other quarters. If a few
examples are met with in the present book, they may be taken as made
with all deference, but with deliberation.

It is perhaps well to say this with some emphasis, in view of the
blunders often innocently committed by those who happen to be speaking
of this period. There are those who know it almost only through the
medium of the _Acts of the Apostles_, and who entertain the most
erroneous notions concerning Gallio or Festus, concerning Roman
justice, Roman taxation, or Roman moral and religious attitudes. There
are those, again, who know it almost only through the manuals of
history; that is to say, they know the dates and facts of the reigns
of the emperors, but have never realised, not to say visualised, the
contemporary Roman as a human being. There exist denunciations of the
morals of the Roman world of this date which would lead one to believe
that every man was a Nero and every woman a Messalina: denunciations
so lurid that, if they were a third part true, the continuance of the
Roman Empire, or even of the Roman race, for a single century would be
simply incomprehensible. On the other hand there have been accounts of
the material glory of Rome which have conjured up visions of splendour
worthy only of the _Arabian Nights_; and sometimes the comment is
added that it was all won from the blood and sweat heartlessly wrung
from a world of miserable slaves. It is not too much to say that none
of these descriptions could come from a writer or speaker who knew the
period at first hand.

The most dangerous form of falsehood is that which contains some
portion of truth. The life of many a Roman w