Excerpt from A Short History of Mediaeval Peoples: From the Dawn of the Christian Era to the Fall of Constantinople WE concluded our former volume with a sketch of the reign of Augustus, thinking that the history of the Roman Republic must be imperfect without his reign. But if the reign of Augustus is necessary for the true understanding of the his tory of the republic, it is even more necessary for the true understanding of the history of the empire. We deem it better, therefore, to return to the history of this great man in the beginning of the present volume. Thus that which follows will be more intelligible, and each volume will be complete in itself. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.