One star out of necessity. Mommsen never would have wanted this material to see the light of day. This book is abstracted and redacted from class notes of students taking a course of his on the the History of the Roman Empire!! Mommsen specifically declined to write a book on the Roman Empire. He wrote vols. 1-3 and vol. 5 of what he called "Roman History." That a vol. 4 was so manufactured and Mommsen's name attached to it is an insult to one of the greatest if not the greatest historian of his time. It also provides the reader with absolutely no information that is not far better covered elsewhere.