and days of evil omen to be noted on the calendar: the prodigies and freaks of nature which in stirring times excited the fancy of a superstitious peoplethese were set down with an exceeding fulness of detail- -as facts which deserved careful study in the present, and were likely to be of interest to after generations.

8. The early writers in their history of the past freely used the outlines which were thus ready to their hand, and adopted a like order in the narrative of their own times. Here and there indeed complaints were made of such meagre chronicles of petty and disjointed facts, and it was urged that there could be no national order or historical perspective in a continuous diary where no attempt was made to trace the connection between causes and effects, but the memory was overloaded with ill-digested food. A narrative so written, said Sempronius Asellio, can hardly rise above the dignity of nursery tales (Aul. Gell. v. 18). But still from first to last the prevailing practice with the historians of Rome was to set down year by year the order of events, mentioning first the results of the elections, the division of the Provinces and Legions, the prodigies which stirred the public mind, the starting of the Generals for the scenes of war, and the doings of the armies on the field of battle. In these respects the difference between the earlier and later writers consisted chiefly in the qualities of style and

literary treatment, for which the first chroniclers cared little, but which seemed of paramount importance as the taste for rhetoric increased. Thus Cicero speaks contemptuously of the meagre and graceless annals, rough hewn, as he implies, by prentice hands which had as yet no experience or skill of literary craft (De Orat. 11. 12).

The earlier chroniclers, he adds, seem to have chiefly aimed at brevity, and to have told their story simply, without a thought of grace or diction (non exornatores sed narratores). Of those included in this sweeping criticism the first (recorded were contemporaries of the First Punic war. Fabius Pictor and Cincius Alimentus both bore a part in the great struggle, and are referred to as authorities by Livy, as men who helped to make history as well as write it. Of those who followed some like M. Porcius Cato and L. Calpurnius Piso took a high rank in the world of politics, but are included in Cicero's sweeping censure as historians without a style. The first who aimed at dignity of language was Cælius Antipater, who lived in the period of the Gracchi, a century later than the first chroniclers just mentioned. There was little elegance indeed, adds Cicero (de leg. 1. 2), in the rough vigour of his style, but at least we may see in him the first beginning of something like literary care (paulo inflavit vehementius habuitque vires agrestes ille quidem atque horridas, sine nitore ac palæstra: sed tamen admonere reliquos potuit, ut accuratius scri

mentioned by

berent). In later times indeed the caprice of fashion fondly recurred to the old models of archaic diction, and the accomplished Emperor Hadrian, who set up for a literary critic, avowed his preference of Cælius Antipater to Sallust (Spartian. Hadr. 16). His writings were evidently in good repute at the end of the Republic, for Brutus took the trouble to compress them into shorter form, and Cicero asks Atticus to send him the Epitome of which he had just heard (Epitomen Bruti Cælianorum, Cic. ad Att. XIII. 8). His history of the Punic war was singled out for special mention (in proemio belli Punici, Cic. Or. 69), and in this we are told that he followed Silenus very closely (Cic. de divin. 1. 24). In the third decade Livy mentions him more often than any other writer, and in terms which show that his evidence ranked very high, and should be weighed in any conflict of authorities. There is reason to believe that he was often used when not explicitly referred to. The dream of Hannibal at Onusa, as found in Livy XXI. 22. 5, agrees with the description, somewhat more fully given, in a fragment of Cælius which Cicero has preserved for us (de divin. 1. 24), and which as we are told was first drawn from Silenus. So too of the omens before the disaster at Lake Trasimene (Liv. XXII. 3), which Cicero (de div. 1. 35) quotes to like effect from Cælius, as also in the account of the earthquake which passed unnoticed by the combatants in the same battle. There are a few words quoted from

him by Priscian (XIII. 96), antequam Barca perierat, alii rei causa in Africam missus est, which seem to point to the recall of Hannibal to Africa after some years of stay in Carthage, to which he had returned in early life, a residence required to reconcile the expressions used by Livy, though he has neglected explicitly to state it. There are also verbal similarities which point in the same direction, as in the passage of Cælius preserved by A. Gellius (x. 24. 6), si vis mihi equitatum dare, et ipse cum cetero exercitu me sequi, die quinti Romæ in Capitolium curabo tibi cena sit cocta, compared with that of Livy xxII. 51. 2: as also another which we find in Priscian III. 607, dextimos in dextris, scuta jubet habere, to which we may trace a likeness in Livy xx11. 50. 11. It is not unlikely therefore that a writer in good repute like Cælius, whose style had more force and colour in it than the bare and rugged annalists' of earlier days, should have been freely used by Livy with little effort to hunt up his authorities, or to compare the various sources fused into the current narrative. Occasional discrepancies noted by the former were probably reported also by the latter, who sometimes exercised his judgment on them, but did not always, as we may suppose, carry the criticism further, or look for fresh evidence to decide the question. The manual effort of collating many authors, of unfolding the long rolls in which their histories were written, and poring over their archaic style, was sure to be distasteful to a man of

C. L.

d

observed?

Livy's tastes; the critical standard of the age did not require such labour at his hands; the reading public had not such severe historic canons, and much preferred a piece of fine writing to proof of antiquarian research, and Livy naturally enough catered for the literary appetites which he found around him. The work which he had set himself to do seemed great enough, and left him little leisure to sift and to compare; the history of seven centuries stretched out before him, and he hurried on to rear his noble monument to the memory of the Great Republic.

The

In this way may be probably explained both the features of agreement and of difference between Polybius and Livy, by supposing that some of the same sources may be traced in both, from which the former drew directly, while the latter used them as he found them worked up already in the narrative of one who was almost a contemporary of the Greek writer. theory itself is worthy of acceptance, even if we do not lay much stress upon the evidence which seems to point to Silenus as the common authority of both alike, and to Cælius as the compiler of the Roman version of the story. It is chiefly in the earlier books that the probability of this is strongest; later in the decade other influences seem to have come prominently forward, among which may be mentioned memoirs current in the Scipionic circle, native traditions or chronicles of Africa, such as those consulted by King Juba, and works of a later and diffuser style like those of Valerius Antias.