E-text prepared by David Ceponis
Note: A compilation of all five volumes of this work is also available individually in the Project Gutenberg library. See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10706
The original German version of this work, Roemische Geschichte, Erstes Buch: bis zur Abschaffung des roemischen Koenigtums, is in the Project Gutenberg E-Library as E-book #3060. See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3060
The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy
by
Translated with the Sanction of the Author
by
William Purdie Dickson, D.D., LL.D.
Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow
A New Edition Revised throughout and Embodying Recent Additions
Preparer's Note
This work contains many literal citations of and references to foreignwords, sounds, and alphabetic symbols drawn from many languages,including Gothic and Phoenician, but chiefly Latin and Greek. ThisEnglish Gutenberg edition, constrained to the characters of 7-bitASCII code, adopts the following orthographic conventions:
1) Except for Greek, all literally cited non-English words thatdo not refer to texts cited as academic references, words that inthe source manuscript appear italicized, are rendered with a singlepreceding, and a single following dash; thus, -xxxx-.
2) Greek words, first transliterated into Roman alphabetic equivalents,are rendered with a preceding and a following double-dash; thus,—xxxx—. Note that in some cases the root word itself is a compoundform such as xxx-xxxx, and is rendered as —xxx-xxx—
3) Simple unideographic references to vocalic sounds, singleletters, or alphabeic dipthongs; and prefixes, suffixes, and syllabicreferences are represented by a single preceding dash; thus, -x,or -xxx.
4) (Especially for the complex discussion of alphabetic evolutionin Ch. XIV: Measuring And Writing). Ideographic references,meaning pointers to the form of representation itself rather thanto its content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-. "id:" stands for"ideograph", and indicates that the reader should form a picturebased on the following "xxxx"; which may be a single symbol, aword, or an attempt at a picture composed of ASCII characters. E.g. —"id:GAMMA gamma"— indicates an uppercase Greek gamma-formfollowed by the form in lowercase. Some such exotic parsing asthis is necessary to explain alphabetic development because a singlesymbol may have been used for a number of sounds in a number oflanguages, or even for a number of sounds in the same language atdifferent times. Thus, -"id:GAMMA gamma" might very well refer toa Phoenician construct that in appearance resembles the form thateventually stabilized as an uppercase Greek "gamma" juxtaposed toone of lowercase. Also, a construct such as —"id:E" indicatesa symbol that with ASCII resembles most closely a Roman uppercase"E", but, in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.
5) Dr. Mommsen has given his dates in terms of Roman usage, A.U.C.;that is, from the founding of Rome, conventionally taken to be 753B. C. The preparer of this document, has appended to the end ofeach volume a table of conversion between the two systems.
When the first portion of this translation appeared in 1861, it wasaccompanied by a Preface, for which