The Antiquities of Greece, Volume II: The State (English Edition)

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G.F. Schomann’s The Antiquities of Greece, Volume II is a comprehensive examination of various aspects of Ancient Greek history, as explained in the preface:
“This work belongs to a series of manuals the object of which is to spread among a wider circle of readers a vivid understanding of classical antiquity. It is therefore primarily destined for those educated readers and scholars who, without having made any special investigation into the ancient world, nevertheless feel the need of making themselves better acquainted with its spirit and character.
In undertaking to deal, for such readers, with the department of Greek antiquities, I was unable to shut my eyes to the fact that among the multitude of subjects traditionally comprehended under that name there are a considerable number the knowledge of which, however important and necessary it may be to the scholar, may yet seem unimportant and unnecessary to readers who are not classical scholars. If I mistake not, a general interest can be claimed only by that portion of the antiquities of Greece which is adapted to promote an acquaintance with the social, political, and religious life of the Greeks in the classical period. To this alone, therefore, I have felt compelled to confine myself. I shall, accordingly, after having treated in the present volume of Greece as seen in the light of the Homeric epos, and of the political organisation of the Greek State, have in the second volume to deal only with the international relations and institutions, and with the religious system; while as regards the antiquities of private life, of the military system, and the like, these subjects, in the second volume as in the first, will come into question only so far as they seem to me to be of importance for the knowledge of the political and religious life. I hope that I have thus not passed over, and shall not pass over, anything that is really worthy of being known; indeed, it may even be that I shall be thought to have mentioned certain points which might without loss have been omitted. It is to be hoped, however, that no one will make any objection because I have regarded myself as bound never to leave my readers uncertain which of the matters brought under their notice I regard as the assured result of the research whether of myself or of others, and which of them I give merely as matter of opinion and conjecture still admitting of dispute. For there are assuredly not a few points which have by no means yet been cleared up, and which can hardly ever be so; and upon such points it was unavoidable that some investigation and some criticism should be allowed to find its way into the text. This further circumstance may perhaps meet with approval, viz., that I have taken pains to put my readers in a position to secure certainty for themselves, or to gain more particular information either from the original authorities or from modern treatises, wherever they are disposed to do so. But I have, as far as possible, limited myself in my citations, referring among modern treatises only to such as I was entitled to regard as most easily accessible, while from the original authorities I have only cited some passages of primary importance, without aiming at fulness, or even at completeness. I now cherish the hope that a work upon the antiquities of Greece, constructed on this scale and according to this plan, will be found at least in some degree to attain its aim.”