The present version, begun while I was serving as Acting Professor of
Greek at St. Stephen's College, Annandale, N.Y., has been carried
forward during such intervals of leisure as I could snatch from an
overflowing schedule at the University of South Dakota. It has been my
companion on many journeys and six states have witnessed its progress
toward completion. In spite of the time consumed it seems in
retrospect not far short of presumptuous to have tried in three or
four years to put into acceptable English what Dio spent twelve in
writing down. Yet the task was not quite the same, for half of this
historian's books have been caught up and whirled away in the cyclone
of time; and who knows whether they still possess any resting-place
above or beneath the earth?

The text originally chosen as the basis for the translation was that
of Melber, the idea of the translator being that the Teubner edition
would be the most convenient and readily obtainable standard of
reference for any one who wished to compare the Greek and the English.
Hence the numbering of the Fragments is that of Melber (subdivisions
are distinguished by a notation simpler than that of the original
"sections"). Since no Teubner volumes beyond the second proved to be
forthcoming, the rest of the work followed the stereotyped Tauchnitz
edition, which also enjoys a large circulation. This text, however,
contained so many cases of corruption and clumsiness that it seemed
best to work over carefully nearly all of the latter portion of the
English and to embody as many as possible of the improvements of
Boissevain. Incidentally Boissevain's interior arrangement of all the
later books was adopted, though it was deemed preferable (for mere
readiness of reference) to adhere to the old external division of
books established by Leunclavius. (Boissevain's changes are, however,