I was aware from the first, however, of the great difficulties with which I had to contend. To paint the manners, and exhibit the life, of the Middle Ages, required the hand of a master genius; yet, perhaps, that task was slight and easy in comparison with the attempt to portray a far earlier and more unfamiliar period. With the men and customs of the feudal time we have a natural sympathy and bond of alliance; those men were our own ancestors—from those customs we received our own—the creed of our chivalric fathers is still ours—their tombs yet consecrate our churches—the ruins of their castles yet frown over our valleys. We trace in their struggles for liberty and for justice our present institutions; and in the elements of their social state we behold the origin of our own.
But with the classical age we have no household and familiar associations. The creed of that departed religion, the customs of that past civilization, present little that is sacred or attractive to our northern imaginations; they are rendered yet more trite to us by the scholastic pedantries which first acquainted us with their nature, and are linked with the recollection of studies which were imposed as a labor, and not cultivated as a delight.
Yet the enterprize, though arduous, seemed to me worth attempting; and in the time and the scene I have chosen, much may be found to arouse the curiosity of the reader, and enlist his interest in the descriptions of the author. It was the first century of our religion; it was the most civilized period of Rome; the conduct of the story lies amidst places whose relics we yet trace; the catastrophe is among the most awful which the tragedies of Ancient History present to our survey.
