From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Cover slightly scuffed. Otherwise good and clean. - Einband leicht berieben. Sonst gut und sauber. - Foreword: Anyone who has travelled down the Danube to Hungary by steamer will probably remember the romantic beauty of the country above Budapest and the picturesque ruined castle of Visegr� The river, flowing from west to east, here takes a sudden, sharp turn to the south. Behind this abrupt turn of the mighty river, which was once the boundary of the Roman world, the high ridge of the mountain of Dobog�commands the whole district. The climber sees at his feet towards the south the great city with its millions. To the north-east he has a clear view of the Ipoly flowing into the Danube, like the Roman watchmen in old days who, from this point of vantage, observed the unruly Sarmatians on the farther bank and the mustering of the raiding-parties of the German Quadi. On the very top of the mountain the foundations of a Roman watchtower have been found, and the paved road which led up to it can still be used. And farther up on the fruitful plain of the Ipoly were once massed those German peoples who won deliverance from the yoke of the Huns at the fateful battle for the lordship of the Danube lands. Somewhat farther to the west the Danube receives the waters of the Garam, on the banks of which the philosopher Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, with the roar of the battle with wild barbarians raging round him, wrote down his Meditations. And, to the north of Dobo- g� one can see the dome of the Basilica of Esztergom gleaming ; whilst behind this sanctuary, where Western Christianity has been at home for a thousand years, the outlines of the Carpathians appear, in fine weather, in the far distance. . . . But the eye of the historian, I believe, can cover even longer distances from this viewpoint. At the place where East and West part, set, too, between north and south, he gains from this mountain a survey of the whole of the lost Roman Empire. It was in the healthful loneliness of this mountain, with its girdle of woods, that this book was written in the last years of the Second World War. Every evening, along the path by our house, that they knew from of old, strings of stags would run past to drink at the pool hard by. During the day we saw the great English and American aeroplanes passing in their hundreds : we looked to them for deliverance, although they were bombarding our city. Even before the German General Staff had commandeered our house, before the mountain, my favourite place of pilgrimage in childhood, had changed hands, time and time again, between the armies of Hitler and Stalin, before we had begun to drag out our precarious existence in the cellars of the University of Budapest during the endless months of the siege, this book had been completed.1 But, under the distressful circumstances, under the strain, the fearful strain of my certainty of the coming catastrophe, I could never have got through my task but for the moral support and physical care that my wife lavished on me. In the hour of supreme danger, released by that very danger, amazing energies and moral qualities blossomed in this wife of mine, at the very moment when I myself was most broken down. I decided at the time to dedicate this little book, the making of which is so largely due to her, as a small token to her of the thirty years in which we have shared our joys and sorrows. The next volume will append to the trials for magic under Valentinian the tale of the strange paths that the ancient world followed in the mists of magic. Now that I have found a second home in free Switzerland I hope, in no long time, to be able to produce it ; the other links of this chain of studies shall follow�if God will. My honoured friend, Harold Mattingly, has helped me during publication�to him I owe the fine style and clear formulation of the English text ; I owe much also to the skilled staff of the Clarendon Press. With thanks to them in my heart, I send my book on its way with the words of Ovid : vade liber, verbisque meis loca grata saluta! contingam certe, quo licet, ilia pede.
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