scattered that it was thought advisable to gather them together in order that those interested in municipal institutions might be able to gain a first-hand comprehensive survey of the problems involved in their study. No collection of this kind exists and the information which such a corpus provides is definite and accurate. The lower limit of time for this collection has been set at the end of the third century, for the reason that most constitutions antedate the fourth century and the influences which determined the course of events are clearly discernible in the earlier period. Moreover, it would be impossible to deal fully with the Byzantine period without doubling the compass of the book.
It has been the aim of the editors to include all inscriptions which furnish information of importance bearing upon the relations of Rome to her municipalities. Very fragmentary inscriptions and those which gave no information, known from documents already included, have been omitted. In the case of the documents from Egypt our choice has been limited more especially to the more important and representative papyri dealing with the towns and villages from the Roman occupation to the beginning of the Byzantine period.
In general it should be stated for the purpose of defining the work of the two collaborators, that Mr Abbott directed his attention to conditions in the West, and the present writer to those in the East. This means, practically, that the former is primarily responsible for the Latin inscriptions and for the commentaries on them, and the latter for the Greek and bilingual inscriptions, the papyri, and the commentaries on the documents of these three classes. The authorship of each chapter in the Introduction is indicated in the Table of Contents. The manuscript of Mr Abbott’s portion was fortunately in final form, and is here published with slight editorial revision.
In view of the cost of printing, critical notes have been reduced to a minimum, typographical devices in the texts
