Among the eleven articles in this volume, dedicated to Mason Hammond, are â?oThe Emergence of Mediaeval Towns: Independence or Continuity?â? by Professor Hammond; â?oExistimatio, Fama, and the Ides of March,â? by Zvi Yavetz; and â?oSophocles: Ajax 815â?"824,â? by Cedric H. Whitman.

Mediaeval scholars have long discussed whether or not something of the municipal institutions and civic spirit of the classical city and city-state survived in western Europe from the Late Roman Empire through the Dark Ages and Carolingian period to fructify the emergence of what they call towns, which began in the eleventh century.