Our wants have all been felt, our errors made before."

It is only when we perceive in "classical antiquity" a human nature
similar to our own in its mingling of weakness and strength, vice
and virtue, sorrow and joy, defeats and victories that we shall find
in its noblest literature an intimate rather than a formal
inspiration, and in its history either comfort or warning.

A secondary purpose is to suggest Roman conditions as they may have
affected or appeared to men of letters in successive epochs, from
the last years of the Republic to the Antonine period. Three of the
six sketches are concerned with the long and brilliant "Age of
Augustus." One is laid in the years immediately preceding the death
of Julius Caesar, and one in the time of Trajan and Pliny. The last
sketch deals with the period when Hadrian attempted a renaissance
of Greek art in Athens and creative Roman literature had come to an
end. Its renaissance was to be Italian in a new world.

In all the sketches the essential facts are drawn directly from the
writings of the men who appear in them. These facts have been merely
cast into an imaginative form which, it is hoped, may help rather
to reveal than cloak their significance for those who believe that
the roads from Rome lead into the highway of human life.

In choosing between ancient and modern proper names I have thought
it best in each case to decide which would give the keener impression
of verisimilitude. Consistency has, therefore, been abandoned.
Horace, Virgil and Ovid exist side by side with such original Latin
names as Julius Paulus. While Como has been preferred to Comum, the
"Larian Lake" has been retained. Perugia (instead of Perusia) and