PREFACE. WHILE writing my Short Historical Latin Grammar, I often wished that there was a suitable collection of specimens of Latin, chronologically arranged, to which the student might be referred. The proposal of Messrs. Allyn and Bacon, that a Handbook of Latin Inscriptions illustrative of the history of the language should be compiled for their educational series, was therefore very welcome. From merely turning over the pages of a book of this kind one will sometimes learn more than from the most elaborate array of rules, just as the successive pictures of a panorama are often more instructive than the showman's lecture. In a few cases, where it seemed advisable, documents which cannot strictly be called 'Inscriptions' have been included (Nos. 4, 65, 67, 78, 83, 84). The expression of long i by i with an apex, instead of by the tall form of the letter, in Chap. III., is a concession to typographical convenience. OXFORD, ENGLAND, August, 1897. iii W. M. LINDSAY. |