Edward Augustus Freeman 269 



From 1850 to 1863 Freeman's published writ- 

 ings were chiefly concerned with Mediterranean 

 history viewed on the broadest scale in relation to 

 all those movements of progressive humanity which 

 have had that great inland sea for a common centre. 

 Here came those brilliant essays on "Ancient 

 Greece and Mediaeval Italy," "Homer and the 

 Homeric Age," " The Athenian Democracy," 

 " Alexander the Great," " Greece during the Mace- 

 donian Period," "Mommsen's History of Rome," 

 " The Flavian Caasars," and others since collected 

 in the second series of his " Historical Essays." To 

 this period also belongs the little book on the " His- 

 tory of the Saracens," based upon lectures given 

 at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh. 



From these Mediterranean studies may be said 

 to have grown two of Freeman's three great 

 works, both of them, unfortunately, left incom- 

 plete at his death, the " History of Federal Gov- 

 ernment " and the " History of Sicily." Freeman 

 was remarkably free from the common habit 

 common even among eminent historians of con- 

 centrating his attention upon some exceptionally 

 brilliant period or so-called " classical age," to the 

 exclusion of other ages that went before and came 

 after. Such a habit is fatal to all correct under- 

 standing of history, even that of the ages upon 



