this fourth volume. Yet it did not appear in Mommsen's lifetime. Consequently, this missing fourth volume has caused numerous scholars to speculate about the reasons 'why not'. Concurrently, such musings served to suggest where Theodore Mommsen was to be situated amid the portrait gallery of historians of the 19th century and the modern era. As to the matter of why "Mommsen failed to continue his history beyond the fall of the republic", Carr wrote: "During his active career, the problem of what happened once the strong man had taken over was not yet actual. Nothing inspired Mommsen to project this problem back on to the Roman scene; and the history of the empire remained unwritten." Discernment Because of Mommsen's expert knowledge across many field of study, he "knows as an eyewitness because... such a perfect comprehension [places him] in the position of a contemporary. [Thus he feels] a certainty he cannot explain, like the judgment of a statesman or a shrewd man of business who forms his opinions by processes he does not attempt to analyse." While not following Niebuhr's 'divination', Mommsen's manner goes to question of whether one may use discrete and controlled 'intersticial projection', safeguarded by monitoring the results closely after the fact. Does its use necessarily sacrifice claims to 'objectivity'? Termed intuition based on scholarship, practitioners of such techniques are vulnerable to caustic challenges to the integrity of their science. Acknowledgement of such infirmities may also include an assessment of the skill involved and the quality of the result. Praise Mommsen's work continues to attract a refined and popular readership. In their introduction Saunders and Collins express their admiration for Mommsen and his contribution to the study of ancient Roman history: "Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) was the greatest classical historian of his century or of ours. His only rival in any century was Edward Gibbon, whose monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire complements rather than competes with Mommsen's superb description of the Roman republic." One encyclopaedic reference summarizes: "Equally great as antiquary, jurist, political and social historian, Mommsen [had] no rivals. He combined the power of minute investigation with a singular faculty for bold generalization... ." About the History of Rome the universal historian Arnold J. Toynbee writes, "Mommsen wrote a great book, which certainly will always be reckoned among the masterpieces of Western historical literature." G. P. Gooch gives us these comments