of events. Even the ordinary evidence in documents and the like had perished before critical skill had been developed to make use of them. In the place of true history had sprung up fables, legends, and falsified traditions, sometimes the natural outgrowth of popular imagination, and sometimes of family pride or political partisanship. The most important events in the history of the Roman constitution were enveloped in a cloud of inconsistent traditions, wild guesses of ancient writers, and deliberate lies. 3. To ascertain the exact truth amid all this falsehood by careful investigation, Livy had neither the ability nor perhaps the desire. If a fable was not too absurd on its face for his contemporaries to credit, it might stand, sometimes with a word of doubt not too strongly expressed, or an attempt at explanation. (See the founding of Lavinium, I. 1. 11; the miraculous parentage of Romulus, I. 4. 2 ; the story of Acca Larentia, I. 4. 7; and Livy's own words, V. 21. 9, 'sed in rebus tam antiquis si quae similia veri sint pro veris accipiantur, satis habeam'). If contradictions and inconsistencies were not too glaring, they could be lightly glossed over, or avoided by omission (see the story of Ascanius, I. 3), so as not to be apparent in the continuous narrative. EARLY HISTORY OF ROME. 4. No doubt, as in all traditions, there is a germ of truth somewhere in these stories relating to the founding and earliest history of Rome. But what it is and where it is, is as difficult to find as the woman's leaven in the three measures of meal after the whole was leavened. The site of the city appears to have been the home of shepherds that pastured their flocks on the Campagna. The Romans thought these shepherds came from Alba, and referred their Latin customs to that city as their origin. They clearly were of Latin stock, and may have come from Alba as well as anywhere. But that they as such founded any Rome, with or without a Romulus, seems |