Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The book is a general history of the events of seventeen centuries, and I cannot suppose that it does not contain errors to be joyously detected by specialists in various fields of research. I have never seen a History which was impeccable, and though I have throughout distrusted tradi tion, and endeavoured to discover the most original and authentic sources of information, it is not to be dreamed that my researches have been exhaustive.
