and whose works are lost, as are also those of all later Latin historians who wrote in the century and a half between Fabius Pictor and Julius Cæsar.

It is wonderful that in the century of Plato, Aristotle, and Demosthenes; and in the next century of Epicurus, Zeno, Archimedes, and Ptolemy Philadelphus; and in the following century, that produced Polybius, Hipparchus and Ptolemy;—it is wonderful that in these three centuries, made illustrious by so many glorious achievements in literature and science by the Greeks, not one historical book worthy of preservation was written in a large city not far from Syracuse, in a city possessing a constitutional government, a steadfast foreign policy, a great army, a proud aristocracy, and the energy required to conquer and to rule all the nations fronting on the Mediterranean. Ancient Rome is scarcely less remarkable for the unparalleled preponderance which she held in culture through six centuries than for the unexampled poverty of her historical records.

The only comprehensive history of the legendary period of the republic, written by a Roman and preserved to our time, is that of Livy. He was an admirer of republican institutions and a patriotic citizen, and, therefore, in love with his subject. He had much literary talent and was a great master of Latin style. Enjoying the favor of the Emperor Augustus, and dwelling in the capital, we may presume that he had access to all the state documents and family records of known value. But he was primarily a story teller. His purpose was to amuse rather than to instruct; to please the fancy rather than to educate the judgment. He had little critical acumen. He neither discussed nor cited authorities. He did not see improbabilities. He had the work of Thucydides

before him, but did not profit by its lessons. He had no distinct conception of the development of Rome's constitutional or civil law, or of the condition of either in his own time. While covering us with darkness, he wrote as if he were leading us into light. He had so little sense of historical propriety or of literary integrity that he appropriated considerable portions of the work of Polybius, without acknowledgment.

Our other chief authority for the history of legendary Rome is Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a contemporary of Livy, far inferior to him in literary talent, and equally deficient in historical acumen and in comprehension of constitutional law. So incompetent were these men for their task that the exposure of their blunders is a large part of the work of those historians who in this century have examined the first period of republican Rome, covering two hundred and thirty years.

In the story of the legendary republic we find a traceable thread of credible facts, mixed, however, with so many impossibilities that we must reconstruct the narrative in accordance with the rules of historical analogy. This process is beset with many difficulties, but we must adopt it as the only middle course open to us, between a disgraceful credulity and an unsatisfactory rejection of every historical idea for this important period.

Not only did Rome lack a good history of her growth before 280 B. C., and also the materials from which such a complete history might have been compiled at a later time, but she never had an author who gave a comprehensive description of her republican government in any stage of its growth. Nor did she leave materials from which such a description can now be compiled with confidence in its accuracy. No author described the con

stitution of Rome as Aristotle described that of Athens. As it was to her polity that she was mainly indebted for her pre-eminent influence in culture, so the defect of our knowledge on this point deserves mention as a subject of special regret.

Livy and Dionysius, our chief, and, indeed, our only authorities in regard to most of the history of the legendary republic, disagree as to many of the events; and this disagreement considered in connection with their equal lack of historical judgment and of trustworthy historical material, weakens what little faith we otherwise might have had in them. One must be false, and we have no reasonable assurance that either is true. They not only contradict each other, but on many points they are contradicted by other ancient authors who are quite as trustworthy as either.

A remarkable feature in the story of the legendary republic is the frequency with which events are duplicated. Thus there were two secessions of plebeians to the Sacred Mount; two instances in which the senate violated the promises made by a dictator or consul, that if the plebeians would defeat the alien enemy, the oppressed debtors should be relieved from their burdens; two cases in which the plebeian army, composed of men suffering under patrician oppression, showed their resentment, not by overthrowing their domestic tyrants, but by permitting themselves to be defeated in battle by alien enemies, a partisan trick never practised in any other state; two mobs caused by peculiar wrongs done to enslaved debtors; two riots in which nine persons were burned for opposition to the interests of the multitude; two acts of treason to injure Siccius Dentatus; and three instances in which Decius Mus, first the father and afterwards the

son, and finally the grandson, devoted himself to death in battle to secure victory for his country. Before reaching the historical period, these legends had become so vague that their dates and the names of the principal actors in the events to which they referred, were lost, and there was no test for distinguishing the false from the true version, if either was true.

The doubt as to many of the important events as told by Livy and Dionysius is accompanied, in both authors, by much fullness of trivial detail about unimportant occurrences, and even verbatim reports of speeches. It is evident that the deficiencies in the research of the historian are counterbalanced in many passages by the fancy of the romancer.

Dr. Thomas Arnold remarks that "in the life of Camillus there meet two kinds of fiction, equally remote from historical truth, but in all other respects most opposite to one another; the one imaginative but honest, playing, it is true, with the facts of history, and converting them into a wholly different form, but addressing itself also to a different part of the mind, not professing to impart exact knowledge, but to delight, to quicken, and to raise the perception of what is beautiful and noble; the other lame and fraudulent, deliberately corrupting truth in order to minister to a national or individual vanity, pretending to describe actual events, but substituting in the place of reality the representations of interested or servile falsehood."

In reference to the mutiny which broke out in 341 B. C., towards the close of the legendary period of the republic, the same author says: "Had we any history of these times, events so important and notorious as the great disturbances of the year 413 [341 B. C.], must have

been related in their main points clearly and faithfully. But because we have merely a collection of stories recording the great acts of particular families and individuals, and in each of these the glory of its own hero, and not truth, was the object, even matters the most public and easy to be ascertained are so disguised that nothing beyond the bare fact that there was a disturbance and that it was at length appeased, is common to the various narratives."

SEC. 425. Roman Aristocracy.-The monarchy was overthrown in 510 B. C., to give place to an aristocracy. This change occurred in the regular course of political evolution. Two centuries had elapsed since it was made by many of the Greek cities. In the early aristocracy of Rome, the commoners were not only excluded from office but also from the privilege of intermarrying with nobles. Livy says that they were admitted into the army and into the popular assembly; but political analogies indicate that these privileges were not granted until some time after the establishment of an aristrocratic government.

The state was an aristocratic republic, and was officially designated as "The Senate and People of Rome;" in Latin, Senatus Populusque Romanus; and in initials, S. P. Q. R. The word people, or populus, in the official title meant the nobility; the commoners were the vulgus or rabble, who had no share in the political power. The nobles met in the clan assembly (comitia curiata) to elect consuls, and to vote for or against proposed laws, treaties, alliances, and declarations of war, submitted to them by order of the senate. In the three hundred clans there were thirty clan groups (curia), each of which had one vote for a consul or for any proposition submitted, that