afford "a stroke of humor". Such, in briefest statement possible, is the author's solution of this central problem of Platonic interpretation. WALTER G. EVERETT.

Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius. By SAMUEL DILL, A.M. (New York: The Macmillan Company. 1904. Pp. xxii, 639.)

THE author of this important work is already known through his book on Roman society in the last century of the Western Empire as one of those English scholars who are doing so much to bring the ancient world, as Mr. Bryce puts it in the preface to his Studies in History and Jurisprudence, into "definite and tangible relations with the modern time." Whether we share Mr. Bryce's opinion that the results of such work may be in a high degree “practically helpful" or not, no one surely can deny the actual interest and contemporary effect of such books as Mr. Tarver's Tiberius, Mr. Henderson's Nero, Mr. Oman's Seven Roman Statesmen, Mr. Greenidge's history of the Roman revolution, and this new book by Professor Dill. "We are very near the ancients," said Mr. Bryce in his preface just mentioned, and if this contemporary effect is more noticeable in recent studies of Roman politics and society than in the field of Greek history, it is evidently because we are, at the stage now reached in the course of human events, so much nearer the Romans than the Greeks. Was it not Bishop Potter who pointed out the resemblance between the typical physiognomy of the successful man of affairs and that of a Roman emperor or proconsul? Has not Professor Munro Smith declared that no one could so well understand the state of things at Rome under the triumvirates or the principate as those who are familiar with such phenomena as the "machine" and the "boss"?

66

In explaining the scope of this book, Professor Dill, while admitting that there must always be something arbitrary in the choice and isolation of a period of social history for special study, justifies his undertaking by a comparison with the drama, in which there must be a beginning and an end, although the action can only be ideally severed from what has preceded and what is to follow in actual life". "But as in the case of the drama ", he continues, "such a period should possess a certain unity and intensity of moral interest. It should be a crisis and turning point in the life of humanity, a period pregnant with momentous issues, a period in which the old order and the new are contending for mastery, or in which the old is melting into the new. Above all, it should be one in which the great social and spiritual movements are incarnate in some striking personalities, who may give a human interest to dim forces of spiritual evolution." Such an age was that to which this book is devoted, with its strange contrasts of light and shade, its vices and its charities, its great effort for reform of conduct and its passion for a higher spiritual life, in which the author finds

its main distinction. One suspects that perhaps the Antonine age may permanently claim a deeper interest on the part of the ideal impartial observer than our own period of transition.

Professor Dill divides his work into four books. Book I., to which he has given the motto "Infesta virtutibus tempora ", consists of three chapters, one on "The Aristocracy under the Terror ", a gloomy picture, drawn from Seneca and Tacitus, of the arbitrary despotism, from which Rome was freed by the assassination of Domitian; a second, on "The World of the Satirist ", in which Juvenal and Martial are allowed to say their worst, subject to an even-handed criticism; and a third on "The Society of the Freedmen", as drawn by Petronius,-those makers of colossal fortunes, who were "entirely of Vespasian's opinion that gold, from any quarter, however unsavoury, 'never smells'" (p. 119) but who were, in Mr. Dill's opinion, the representatives of a movement that was not only inevitable but, on the whole, salutary (p. 102).

A very different set of pictures is offered in Book II., of which the motto is "Rara temporum felicitas". In Chapter I. we meet with “The Circle of the Younger Pliny ", a society "in which the people are charmingly refined, and perhaps a little too good" (p. 143). Here are to be found, contemporary with the corrupt world of Juvenal, simple, pure homes, pleasure in the charms of country life, devotion to literary pursuits, and never-failing charity. We note in passing that on the evidence of the inscriptions Mr. Dill doubts whether private benefactions under the Antonines were less frequent and generous than in our own day (p. 191). In the chapter on "Municipal Life", he expresses the opinion that "there probably never was a time when the duties of wealth were so powerfully enforced by opinion, or so cheerfully, and even recklessly, performed" (p. 211). It is another feature of Roman life which our countrymen can understand better, perhaps, than the Europeans. The Antonine Carnegie was Herodes Atticus, who distributed aqueducts, race-courses, theatres, and baths, and who used to say that hoarded riches were only a "dead wealth" (p. 232). This chapter of Mr. Dill's on the municipalities is surely the best presentation, in English at least, of the results of the study of the inscriptions in this field; and the like may be said of the following chapter on "The Colleges and Plebeian Life", in which we get a glimpse of the life of the masses, again with the help of the inscriptions almost alone. "Probably no age, not even our own, ever felt a greater craving for some form of social life, wider than the family, and narrower than the state" (p. 267).

Book III. is devoted to the apostles of "the Gospel of Philosophy ". Chapter I., on "The Philosophic Director ", is chiefly a sympathetic study of Seneca's personality and ethical teachings. Seneca is for Mr. Dill a pagan monk, an idealist who, in spite of his vast fortune and splendid palace, would have been at home with St. Jerome or Thomas a Kempis, whose "apparent inconsistency has condemned him in the eyes of an age which professes to believe in the teaching of the Mount,

and idolises grandiose wealth and power" (p. 295). Chapter II. of this book, on "The Philosophic Missionary ", is devoted, in large part, to Dion Chrysostom, Chapter III., on "The Philosophic Theologian ", to Plutarch.

Book IV. deals with "The Revival of Paganism". Its first chapter, on "Superstition", is concerned with the influence of astrology, clairvoyance, dreams, and beliefs akin to those which we connect with the name of "Christian Science". Poor Aristides, who believed himself "to have been disordered in every organ, dropsical, asthmatical, dyspeptical, with a tumour of portentous size, and agonising pains which reduced him to the extremity of weakness" (p. 463), spent thirteen years in visiting the seats of sacred healing and following their sensible or their marvellous prescriptions, until he was cured. The Dowie of the age was Alexander of Abonoteichos, who set up a medical oracle, the income of which amounted to the then enormous sum of nearly thirty-five thousand dollars a year. The next chapter, on "Belief in Immortality", begins with Virgil and closes with Plutarch. A third, on "The Old Roman Religion", justifies incidentally the beautiful picture of traditional piety presented by Walter Pater in Marius the Epicurean. The concluding chapters of the book are concerned with three of the cults in which the religious needs of the age found satisfaction,the worship of the Great Mother, the worship of Isis and Serapis, and the religion of Mithra. To explain how far these eastern systems, each with its hope of immortality and its sacramental system, succeeded, and where they failed, is one of the chief purposes which the author has had in view.

It is in this second half of his book, which is devoted to the philosophical and religious tendencies of the age, apart from Christianity, that Mr. Dill's lines run most nearly parallel with the work with which his will most naturally be compared, Friedländer's well known Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms, but here as everywhere he walks on his own feet and goes his own way. His references throughout to the literary and epigraphical sources are well-nigh exhaustive and his notes refer constantly to many of the best secondary authorities and monographs. One misses, however, any mention of Liebenam's studies of the municipalities and the gilds, or of Hans von Arnim's very remarkable book on Dion Chrysostom, perhaps the most masterly piece of biographical criticism recently produced in Germany.

It would be undesirable to leave the impression that the book is designed, to any considerable extent, to display the analogies between its period and our own. They do not bulk so large in the book as in this review. It is generally left to the reader to make his own analogies. In one very impressive passage, however, at the close of the chapter on municipal life, the author gives expression to a foreboding which must have come upon every student of Roman life under the emperors. "In looking back", he observes, "we cannot help feeling that over all this scene of kindliness and generosity and social goodwill, there broods a

shadow. . . . It is the swiftly stealing shadow of that mysterious eclipse which was to rest on intellect and literature till the end of the Western Empire. It is the burden of all religious philosophy from Seneca to Epictetus, which was one long warning against the perils of a materialised civilisation. The warning of the pagan preacher was little heeded; the lesson was not learnt in time. Is it possible that a loftier spiritual force may find itself equally helpless to avert a strangely similar decline?" How to make such conclusions "practically helpful" might tax all the resources which Mr. Bryce has at his command.

The Early Institutional Life of Japan, a Study in the Reform of 645 A. D. By K. ASAKAWA, Ph.D. (Tokyo: Shueisha; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1903. Pp. 355.)

THIS monograph, prepared in the first instance for the Graduate School of Yale University "as a partial fulfillment of the requirement for a degree", is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the history of early Japan. Indeed, next to Mr. Chamberlain's translation of the Kojiki with its invaluable introduction and notes, this volume by Dr. Asakawa is first in importance of works in English upon the period of which it treats.

The history of Japan has two great epochs, for which stand the dates 645 A.D. and 1868 A. D., the first representing the adoption of the Chinese civilization and the second the introduction of modern enlightenment. So alike are the epochs that the first reading of this account of the earlier reformation produces a curious sense of strangeness and acquaintance—as if one saw familiar scenes on a tiny scale, far away through a telescope reversed. Great differences, indeed, there are. In the earlier period there was no feudal system and in the second it was far gone to decay; moreover, in the first the movement while based on Chinese ideas, religious and political, was not hastened by the presence of aggressive and masterful foreigners; in the first, finally, all appears relatively simple and spontaneous, and the end is readily attained while in the second the struggle is complicated and prolonged.

Both centred in the restoration of the emperor to power, and our author clearly sets forth the source of his authority. He was the head of a conquering tribe which won the land by spear and sword, incorporated slowly the conquered people with itself and maintained warfare. with the surrounding tribes. The isolated situation of the country and its sparse population permitted the process to go on for generations while there grew up the tradition of a divine commission for the family of the sovereign.

We cannot follow the story as Dr. Asakawa unfolds it, nor can we recommend his account to the merely curious reader. It is a book by a scholar and for scholars. Much of the work is here done for the first time and we are given the processes of history-making, with "textual

criticism and documentary analysis", instead of the smooth flow of a finished narrative. The work is the more valuable, for it is by no means the last word on the important topics of which it treats; in its own words it "is intended primarily for criticism and discussion, and only secondarily for direct information". Yet we are convinced that most of the positions taken will be maintained after the fullest criticism and discussion, while we are given information as direct and trustworthy as the sources at present available permit.

The emperor's power with the theory of the source of his authority, the nature of Shinto, the institutions of ancient Japan (say 500-645 A. D.), the struggle itself, and its results, are the chief topics treated. A long and deeply instructive chapter has to do with the political doctrine of China, a theme strictly pertinent to the main discussion, since the Reform of 645 A. D. was based upon it.

In conclusion we can but express our appreciation of the book by wishing its author a long life in which to give his high powers to the cultivation of this field of research, a field second to none in importance and in difficulty.

GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX.

BOOKS OF MEDIEVAL AND MODERN EUROPEAN

HISTORY

Essentials in English History. By ALBERT PERRY WALKER, A.M., Master in the English High School, Boston, in consultation with ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, LL.D., Professor of History, Harvard University. (New York: American Book Company. 1905. Pp. xlii, 550.)

most

THIS new volume in the "Essentials in History" series under the editorship of Professor Hart is in many respects a model text-book of English history. Limiting himself to the presentation of only the more salient facts and features of national development, Mr. Walker has produced a most usable and teachable manual in line with the recommendations of the Committee of Seven's Report and abreast of the recent scholarship. His practical experience as a high-school teacher has enabled him to arrange his material to the best advantage and to include only such pedagogical helps as will be of, direct benefit to the teacher and pupil alike. The book has the further merit of conciseness combined with clearness, and pupils should find no difficulty in covering the five hundred and fifty pages of text in the course of one year. In fact, as the author suggests in his foreword to the teacher, more rapid survey might be made and be then followed up by

an even

review-work of a topical character.

Mr. Walker's arrangement of his material in the form of thirtyeight brief chapters, classified in groups under topical headings, and with continuously numbered marginal sectional headings, which avoid

AM.

HIST. REV., VOL. XI.-9.