Historical divisions are arbitrary, and beginnings and endings necessary but misleading. The present volume has for its main theme the process commonly known as the ‘Fall of the Roman Republic’, and there are good reasons for beginning the narrative of that process with the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 B.C. But the traumas of the Republic that then began had an intelligible background, and we have explored it, as was foreshadowed in the preface to Vol. vin, by beginning our analysis at 146 B.C., the year of the destruction of Carthage and Corinth, which the Romans regarded as the apogee of their fortunes. Indeed, especially in the chapter on Roman private law, which, beyond the Twelve Tables, has not been dealt with in any earlier volume, we have harked back unashamedly as far as seemed needful. As for an endpoint, the death of Cicero on 7 December 43 B.C. was chosen in preference to the Ides of March 44, partly because symbols are as important as events, and Cicero’s death symbolizes, now as it did then, the demise of the Republic, and partly because the greatest of all the pieces of luck that launched the young C. Iulius Caesar (’Octavian’) on his course to domination was the death of both the consuls of 43 B.C. in the action against Antony: Octavian’s usurping entry into the consulship on 19 August 43 is the second most symbolic date in the funeral annals of the Republic.

In accordance with a trend that it is now well-nigh banal to cite, somewhat less space and weight are devoted in this volume than in Vol. ix of the original CAH to close narrative of political and military events, and somewhat more to ‘synchronic’ analyses of society, institutions and ideas; but we have not banished ‘Phistoire evenementielle’, for it would have been absurd to do so. In the first place, narrative is an entirely valid historical genre in its own right, giving its own particular satisfaction to the reader, and, in the second, a work of this character will be expected to furnish a reliable account of public events.