Fifth Printing

The Chautauqua Print Shop

Chautauqua, N.Y.



PREFACE


In the spring of 1906, the Collège de France invited me to deliver,
during November of that year, a course of lectures on Roman history.
I accepted, giving a résumé, in eight lectures, of the history of the
government of Augustus from the end of the civil wars to his death;
that is, a résumé of the matter contained in the fourth and fifth
volumes of the English edition of my work, _The Greatness and Decline
of Rome_.

Following these lectures came a request from M. Emilio Mitre, Editor
of the chief newspaper of the Argentine Republic, the _Nacion_, and
one from the _Academia Brazileira de Lettras_ of Rio de Janeiro, to
deliver a course of lectures in the Argentine and Brazilian capitals.
I gave to the South American course a more general character than
that delivered in Paris, introducing arguments which would interest a
public having a less specialized knowledge of history than the public
I had addressed in Paris.

When President Roosevelt did me the honour to invite me to visit the
United States and Prof. Abbott Lawrence Lowell asked me to deliver a