PREFACE
This book tries to describe what an intelligent person would have witnessed in Ancient Rome if by some legerdemain he had been translated to the Second Christian Century, and conducted about the imperial city under competent guidance. Rare and untypical happenings have been omitted, and sometimes to avoid long explanations probable matters have been stated as if they were ascertained facts: but these instances it is hoped are so few that no reader can be led into serious error.
The year 134 after Christ has been chosen as the hypothetical time of this visit, not from any special virtue in that date, but because Rome was then architecturally nearly completed, the Empire seemed in its most prosperous state, although many of the old usages and traditions of the Republic still survived, and the evil days of decadence were as yet hardly visible in the background. The time of the absence of Hadrian from his capital was selected particularly, in order that interest could be concentrated upon the life and doings of the great city itself, and upon its vast populace of slaves, plebeians, and nobles, not upon the splendid despot and his court, matters too often the center for attention by students of the Roman past.
To acknowledge all the modern books upon which the writer has drawn heavily would be to present a list of almost all the important handbooks or discussions of Roman life and antiquities. It is proper to say, however, that such secondary sources have been mainly useful so far as they reënforced a fairly exhaustive study of the Latin writers themselves, especially of Horace, Seneca, Petronius, Juvenal, Martial, and, last but nowise least, of Pliny the Younger. Inevitably this volume follows the lines of its companion “A Day in Old Athens,” published several years ago, a book which has enjoyed such public favor as to prove the usefulness of this method of presentation; but life in the Roman Imperial Age has seemed so much more complex than that in the Athens of Demosthenes, and our fund of information is so much greater, that the present volume is perforce considerably longer than its companion. The “day” devoted to Rome will probably seem therefore a somewhat lengthy one.
To my colleague and friend Dr. Richard C. Cram, Professor of Latin in the University of Minnesota, I am deeply grateful for a careful reading of the manuscript and for many helpful and incisive suggestions; and for a careful checking over of every feature of the work I must once again gladly acknowledge the gracious and untiring services of my wife.
The illustrations, which, it is hoped, add considerably to the interest of the book, have been collected from many sources. Many of the highly informational “restorations” included are from the monumental work of Jakob von Falke, Hellas und Rom, the English version whereof has long ceased to be available to American readers.
W. S. D.
The University of Minnesota
Minneapolis