The expenses of this investigation were to a great extent defrayed by grants of money which the University of Oxford and the Principal and Fellows of Brazenose College were kind enough to vote me for the purpose.
I am greatly indebted to the advocacy of my friends Professor Pelham and Mr. Macan in obtaining these grants.
In the winter of 1892–3 I did some topographical work in Southern Boeotia. The results of that work were, to myself at any rate, satisfactory in the sense that I felt when the work was finished that I had done something towards clearing up my own ideas with regard to important parts of the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, and that I might possibly, if I stated my views with sufficient clearness, help to free the minds of others from difficulties to which the study of those portions of the histories must inevitably give rise.