Prefaces

Summary

As circumstances have made it impossible for me, cut off from libraries, to prepare a full revision of the text of this book, and as a simple reprint would have been unfair to readers, I have added some notes (Addenda 1950) to the reprint, in order, as far as I could, to indicate the advance of knowledge; some are really revisions of the text. They represent, not what I would, but what I could; and in two subjects at least, the peoples of the nomad invasion of Bactria and new coin-finds, my knowledge is sadly deficient. To friends who have helped me I am most grateful. One new book has recently appeared which covers the whole field and a good deal more, Professor Franz Altheim's Weltgeschichte Asiens im griechischen Zeitalter (2 vols., 1947, 1948), a book of vast learning that is not always matched by the use made of it; for my preliminary chapters on the Seleucid Empire Professor M. Rostovtzeff's great work The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (3 vols., 1941) is now indispensable. My best thanks are due to the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press for reprinting this book and permitting me to include the 1950 Addenda, and to the Staff of the Press for the way in which it has been carried out.