Chapter II: Part 2

With reference to Fabius, there is great and insurmountable difficulty belonging to literary history in the manner in which Cicero de Divinat. I, 21 speaks of him, where he mentions _somnium Æneæ ex Numerii Fabii Pictoris græcis annalibus_. This Numerius Fabius Pictor reappears in no other place. The prænomen of Quintus Fabius Pictor is a point quite settled, as it occurs in too many authors; but at that period several wrote in Greek, so that there may possibly have been also a Numerius Fabius Pictor. Cn. Aufidius, whom Cicero speaks of, is likewise quite unknown. As it happens, the books _De Divinatione_ have only come down to us in bad manuscripts, which are all derived from one single copy now lost, yet we should certainly not be warranted in supposing this prænomen in particular to be falsified. Yet in his treatise De Orat. II, 12 and in the beginning of the first book De Legibus, Cicero speaks of a certain Pictor as of a Latin author of Annals, and places him between Cato and Piso. This person is also quoted by no one else; but Gellius V, 4, cites _Annales Fabii_ without any cognomen. A writer of the name of Pictor,[9] _de Jure Pontificio_, is met with in Macrobius; but these books are foreign to history. Perhaps Cicero made a mistake. There was another annalist, Fabius Maximus Servilianus, who was an author of note according to Dionysius, who mentions him after Cato. Servius also cites him. He lived just in the period between Cato and Piso. His book was entitled _Q. Fabii Annales_. Cicero had an extreme dislike to the old annalists, he had in all probability hardly read any besides Cato, at least not since his youth. Now in all likelihood he calls that Fabius erroneously Pictor. In dictating especially, such a mistake may occur. That Cicero was little versed in Roman history is proved by the delusion to which he recurs more than once, that Decius the grandson had sacrificed himself like his grandfather and his father.[10] Cicero is particularly incorrect sometimes with regard to the prænomens, as for instance, contrary to every other writer, he calls the father of Virginia Decimus Virginius. The prænomen Numerius was moreover very common in the Fabian family, so that it might have been more familiar to Cicero. Lastly, Diodorus mentions the same dream of Æneas, which Cicero treats of in other places, as being taken from Q. Fabius (Diod. fragm. ap. Syncell.). In Korte’s edition of Sallust, the fragments of Fabius Pictor are thrown together with those of Fabius Servilianus.

Contemporary with Fabius was the other Roman, of whom we know from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that he wrote the Roman history in Greek; and it is a very instructive fact, in forming an idea of these accounts, that without Dionysius we should not have known that Cincius had written the Roman history in Greek. From Livy we should only have been able to gather that he had written about the war of Hannibal. He was a senator and prætor in the second Punic war, and was made a prisoner in the beginning of the struggle. We see on this occasion, that he must have been a very distinguished personage; as the Roman laws were very strict in that war against those who allowed themselves to be made prisoners, and he nevertheless attained to high and honourable offices. He relates, that Hannibal had entered into conversation with him, and given him an account of his passage over the Alps; a proof as well of his personal consequence, as of the circumstance that he could speak Greek, since Hannibal in the beginning of the war did not yet speak Latin. He is called by Livy _Maximus Auctor_, and his statement cited by the latter as decisive. His works _De Potestate Consulum_, and on the Roman Calendar, he wrote in Latin; as to his identity there cannot be the least doubt. From Dionysius we see that he had peculiar views with regard to Roman antiquities. He made researches concerning the monuments of ancient times, even in Etruria, thereby forming an exception to the most of the Romans. What Dionysius has taken from him, cannot be known for certain. A fragment of his in Festus, throws especial light on the relations between the Romans and Latins.

Likewise in Greek, only a little later (after 570), C. Acilius writes Roman annals down to the war with Antiochus. He is quoted for the Myth of Romulus; and by Dionysius with reference to the restoration of the sewers. His work was translated into Latin by a certain Claudius; he too seems to have been a very estimable writer.

Some more Romans afterwards wrote in Greek; it is, however, uncertain, whether the whole of the history, or merely memoirs of their time. There are mentioned A. Postumius Albinus, a contemporary of the elder Cato (about 600); and Cn. Aufidius, a contemporary of Cicero in his youth.

It was soon afterwards, towards the beginning of the war with Perseus, that Q. Ennius composed his Annals. The denomination of annals is a strange one, quite ill suited to a poem. Ennius was by far too poetical to write down history year by year. His poem was the first real imitation of the Greek model: the earlier ones of Nævius were still in the old lyric style. We are able to gain a general view of the work in the fragments; if the older quotations were only somewhat more trustworthy in the numbers, the whole of its argument might be restored. So much is certain, that the oldest times of the Trojan arrival and of the kings were contained in the three first books; and the quotation may also be pretty sure, that the war of Pyrrhus had been the subject of the fifth book.[11] He occupied himself little with the domestic struggles; and would probably speak of the wars only, according to the notions of epic poetry which were then entertained. The 225 years between were therefore contained in one book; the wars against the Samnites perhaps only in a slight sketch. The first Punic war, as Cicero tells us, he altogether left out, because Nævius had sung it; that of Hannibal he treated with the utmost prolixity, so that it must have begun already in the seventh book, and have been still continuing in the twelfth. In the thirteenth book, the subject was the war with Antiochus; in the fifteenth, the Istrian; so that the last six books only extended over twenty-four years. There were in all eighteen books. Of Scipio, and of M. Fulvius Nobilior, he sung the praises with peculiar richness of detail. The latter he accompanies into the Ætolian war. He was born in 513, according to Cato’s chronology, and died 583, continuing his poem almost to the time of his death.

The sources of Ennius for the earliest times were the _Annales Maximi_; for the times of the kings, the old lays, and the _Commentarii Pontificum_; in the middle times, Timæus, Hieronymus, Fabius; in the last years, he was a cotemporary. He is to be blamed for his vanity, since he placed himself on a level with Homer; and for his bad hexameters. One cannot but be annoyed at his speaking in a disparaging tone of the old poems. On the other hand, however, there are fragments extant of his, which bespeak a true poetical spirit. He had some similarity to Klopstock, who like him despised the ancient forms, without knowing the Greek ones sufficiently to distinguish himself in them. It may be presumed that it was he from whom Livy took his noble description of the time of the kings.

As to the assertion, that the division of his books had originated with Q. Vargunteius, a positive denial may be given to it. Suetonius only states, that Vargunteius had critically reviewed the books of Ennius, as Lampadio did Nævius.

The fragments of Ennius have been collected by several; with much minuteness by Hieronymus Columna, at the end of the sixteenth century, accompanied by a commentary which, although prolix, is very instructive. Some verses in it are taken from Claudius Sacerdos, who is still lying in manuscript at Vienna.[12] Soon after him, a Netherlander, Paul Merula, edited them anew in a different order, and with many additions. Among the latter there are some verses which Columna had overlooked. But Merula says that he had a great number of verses from L. Calpurnius Piso _De Continentia Veterum Poetarum_, in which the older poets were compared with those of his own time (that of Pliny), and the latter also among themselves; that the manuscript was in the library of S. Victor in Paris; that he was however afraid of its not being safe there. This is altogether strange. Another statement is that the manuscript had been bound together with a copy of Lucan, and had afterwards been cut out. Indeed such a copy of Lucan exists still in Paris, where Bekker has seen it; yet this proves very little after all. It is possible that in this Merula has committed a fraud, which is quite in the manner of his time. The detached verses which he quotes from Nævius and Ennius, are to my belief suspicious without exception. Those from Nævius are decidedly spurious; for in their case, he was ignorant of the rhythm. The verses of Ennius are hexameters; but they nowhere bear the stamp of genuineness, like his other fragments. Why has not Merula copied and edited that MS., if indeed he entertained any misgivings that it might be purloined?

Not long after the time of Ennius, whom we rightly reckon among the Roman historians, Roman history began to be written in Latin prose; and the first work of this kind was the most important which has ever been composed on the history of ancient Italy, viz. the Origines of the elder Cato. They show that Cato had indeed found out the only right way of treating Roman history. He wrote not the history of the Romans only, but also that of Italy. As he described the widening the Roman sway in Italy, he seems to have told the history of each Italic people separately. We know from Nepos the plan of his seven books. In the first, there was the history of the kings; in the second and third, the subjugation of Italy; in the fourth book, the first, and in the fifth, the second Punic war; in the sixth and seventh, the later wars down to the time with which he concluded. Cato was a great man in every respect, he rose far above his age. Of his work we have many detached quotations; but of real extracts we have only one in Gellius, viz. the passage of the Tribune Q. Cædicius, which is from the second Punic war, and consequently belongs to the fourth book. It shows Cato’s peculiar manner of writing; and we understand from it why Cicero, who on the whole vacillates between praise and censure with regard to Cato, distinguishes him above all his contemporaries. He wrote about the year 600. In Livy there is a strange anachronism in the discussions about the _lex Oppia_, when, in the year 561, the tribune cites against Cato his Origines. But so slavish was formerly the belief in Livy, that the most positive information was less considered than that passage. Gerh. Jo. Vossius is the first who points out that Livy was here most likely rather speaking himself. What we have from the work of Cato is unfortunately very little, but all of it excellent. This book and that of Fabius are by far the most important accounts which we might wish for Roman history. His work stands alone in the whole collection of Roman annals.

A short time after Cato, about the time of the destruction of Carthage, the history of Rome was written by L. Cassius Hemina, of whose work we have historical quotations in the Grammarians. Several writers call him _antiquissimus auctor_, which is not said of Piso and others. He had concerning Alba still the old native chronology: the earlier times of Rome he made to synchronize with Grecian history. He began from the very earliest times; and, what was indeed quite different from all the annalists, from before the foundation of the city. One finds of him several things concerning the Sicilian towns in Latium; from whence it would appear that the archæology of the towns was his principal object. As to his style we may form an idea of it from a single larger fragment: it is worse than that of Cato. The fourth book, according to Priscian, had for its title _Bellum Punicum Posterior_; consequently at the time when he wrote the third war had not yet begun. The secular festival, 607 according to Varro, he has indeed mentioned; yet it may have been quite at the end of his work. We must not, however, believe that his history consisted of four books only; as the whole of the fourth was taken up by the second Punic war, and thus there must have been at the very least five or six of them.

From that time, history was written repeatedly, and therefore no original way of treating the subject is any more to be thought of. The _Rhetores Latini_ have surely made use of the books which then existed, and have besides consulted the ancient annals. How far this may have been the case with each of them in particular is indeed no more to be decided; but on the whole we shall not be mistaken in this supposition. It is in this time that the Fabius Pictor is to be placed, whom Cicero mentions in his work--de Oratore. He was a learned writer: his work entitled _Res Gestæ_, seems to have been very diffuse, as it mentions the burning of the city by the Gauls in the fourth book; yet the number of the books is unknown. No fragment of any import has been preserved of it. His name was Servius, or perhaps Sextus; for in the Brutus of Cicero Ser. Fulvius, and then Ser. Fabius is spoken of, whom he terms _juris pontificii peritissimus_. Yet the books de Oratore and Brutus, which seem to have such an excellent text, are corrupted in many little passages, which a clever copyist of the sixteenth century furbished up. Of the books de Oratore, only one old manuscript has been found in Milan, which is particularly indistinct. The Brutus does not fare better: none of the manuscripts date higher than 1430. There is therefore much doubt about the names in these books. A MS. at Heidelberg has Serius Fabius, and it is probable that it ought to be Sextus, as the prænomen Servius is unheard of in the family of the Fabii. Perhaps this Pictor is the same as he who in a fragment quoted is called Fabius Maximus Servilianus, since he at least belonged to that time. The fragment refers to the arrival of Æneas.

Here I also mention the tedious Cn. Gellius, a credulous, uncritical, and second-rate writer. The time when he lived is uncertain. Vossius conjectures that he is the very same against whom Cato the Censor made a speech; but we have fragments of his which do not seem to tally with such an early period. Much rather should he be placed in the second half of the seventh century; partly on account of his style, and partly because he already criticizes, and tries to make the improbabilities of the old tradition more credible by small but dishonest alterations. The numbers of his books, as they were quoted, betoken an immense prolixity. Charisius cites the ninety-seventh book, and that distinctly written in full letters in the Neapolitan original Codex. Other citations do not go beyond the thirtieth book.

Cicero mentions after Pictor an annalist, Vennonius, of whom we have only one passage in Dionysius, referring to the history of the kings. He therefore most likely wrote annals from the building of the city. In that fragment, he shows himself to be a man without judgment; which also corresponds with Cicero’s unfavourable opinion of his manner of writing.

An author whose period we cannot fix with certainty, is L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi Censorius, an opponent of C. Gracchus, a supporter of the aristocratical party, but an honest one. The time of his censorship occurs between the tribunates of the two Gracchi, and he may have written his history not long afterwards. He has quite a peculiar character. He wished to bring the old historical matter, which his predecessors unconcernedly rendered just as they found it in ancient poems and Fasti, into the consistency of an actual possibility, and thus to fashion out a true history by cutting off the improbabilities. He finds, for instance, that Tarquinius Superbus could not possibly have been the son of Tarquinius Priscus; and so without any further ado, he makes him at once his grandson. He is also startled at the fact of Tarpeia’s having had a tomb on the Capitol; not considering that she was a Sabine heroine to whom such a tomb had been erected on the Capitol,[13] as Tatius had a monument on another hill. He is therefore the original author of all those falsifications,--a sad prosy undertaking which Cn. Gellius also has entered into. That magnificent story of Curtius he explains thus, that a warrior with his charger had been swallowed up in a gulf on the same spot, which could only have happened when Romulus and Tatius were waging war against each other; and that Curtius must therefore have been a Sabine general. It does not occur to him, that a whole army cannot find a footing in a place where the general sinks down. In the same spirit, it has once been attempted to change the northern Sagas into history; and there were people who affected to see in the struggle of the Nibelungen an historical war of the Burgundians. A similar course was adopted forty or fifty years ago with regard to the interpretation of the New Testament. The title of Piso’s book was _Annales_. He was a plodding man; for it is to be seen that he has made use of sources like the Fasti and such like. The number of his books is undecided. In his third book, he treats of Cn. Flavius (450); in the seventh, of the year 516. He came down to his own times, since he mentions the Secular Games of the year 607.

In the course of the same century, several historical books were written. I do not, however, mean to speak here of those who merely composed a history of their own time, but of such only who wrote the entire Roman history. Among these, there were in Cicero’s youth, about the period when the books _ad Herennium_ were written, 680, or rather about the date of Cicero’s consulship, two who wrote a general Roman history, Q. Claudius Quadrigarius, and Q. Valerius Antias. Both of them, according to Velleius, are later than Cœlius Antipater and than the older contemporaries of Sisenna. They wrote after the time of Sylla. Quadrigarius belongs to those authors who, in later times, after the restoration of the older literature, were frequently read. He forms, as did Cassius Hemina, an exception to the general rule, according to which the annalists commenced from the building of the city. Whilst the latter went yet much farther back than this, Claudius began his history with the destruction of the city by the Gauls. We have of him some considerable fragments from which this is evident. For, in the numerous fragments of his first book, much is told of the Gallic war; likewise the beginning of the war against the Samnites,--we have even the battle near Caudium; one of them alludes to the end of the third Samnite war; and all this not cursorily. As therefore he comprehended in it a period so ample and rich in incidents, he could not have had room for the older history. Another argument for our assertion, is a statement of Plutarch, that a certain Clodius (Kλώδιος) said that nothing whatever could be grounded upon the older Roman accounts; as owing to the calamitous invasion, the old documents had been destroyed, and all that remained was merely the production of family vanity. In the second, or third book, he speaks of Pyrrhus; in the fifth and sixth, of Hannibal; in the eighth, of Tiberius Gracchus the father; in the thirteenth, of Metellus; in the nineteenth, of Marius: there are quotations from him as far as the twenty-third book. His history was brought down to about the time of Cicero’s consulship. Fragments, in which we may clearly recognise the unwieldiness of language of these old annalists in general, in whose writings regularly constructed periods[14] are not yet at all to be thought of, are found in Gellius; and they fully justify Cicero’s opinion with regard to the old writers. The Chronicles of Cologne and Limburg are for the most part much better written. Little was therefore read of Roman prose writers before Sallust and Livy. Gellius finds the old writers pleasant; which may be accounted for by the fact that the taste of his time was completely palled, so that it now betook itself to highly spiced dishes, and then to ice. Let only the fragment of Claudius in Gellius[15] be consulted. The golden age of Roman literature was certainly under Augustus, as that of the French was in the days of Louis XIV.; but precisely because this was its first blossom, the thoughts and ideas were more simple, the language more calm, and in some respects having greater breadth and fulness. Afterwards spirit rather, and wit, were called forth into existence; every thing was required to be expressed, and was expressed, in more terse, polished, and pointed language. Thus the time down to Tacitus was like the age of Louis XV. in France. But now, when the Romans carried every thing to the highest pitch, this manner of thinking and writing was also overstrained: it was still to be made more and more pointed, more polished, and more witty; and then they reached that extreme which borders very closely upon what is absolutely spiritless and insipid. At this period lived Gellius, a very clever man, who was so tired of this tendency of his age, that he had no more feeling for the better literature preceding it, and turned to the earliest times, in which he found a relish.

Valerius Antias is of all the Roman historians certainly the most untrue, the only one who can be directly taxed with falsehood. Livy says of him, _adeo mentiendi nullus modus est_, and _si Valerio Antiati credere libet_. He knows the most circumstantial details of the old times, and is always inclined to exaggerate without bounds, especially with regard to numbers. His fictions have a character quite different from the older ones. The numbers of the latter are not at all meant to deceive any one; they merely mention a number (e. g. sexcenti, μύριοι, _ter centum tonat ore deus_ in Virgil,) in order to denote an indefinite quantity. This poetical mingling of what is definite with what is seemingly indefinite, every where pervades the Roman legends. Thus the thirty Sabine maidens are in fact no definite number, but an equivalent to _many_. Valerius Antias, for his part, has five hundred and forty-seven. Thus he has written an immense huge work, in the latter portion of which especially he becomes quite prolix; nevertheless he has not been able to compose a circumstantial and lively narrative, but has drily recorded the detached incidents. He is cited as far as the seventy-fifth book. In the second, he mentions Numa; and in the twelfth, the tribune Tib. Gracchus. Fragments, from which we might judge of his style, are not extant.

One might be inclined to take this Valerius for a _gentilis_ of the Maximi and Poplicolæ. He might have been so in the widest sense; but he did not belong to the gens of the patrician Valerii. In the war of Hannibal, one meets with a L. Valerius Antias, who probably was a citizen of Antium. From him our annalist may have descended.

It is strange, that although Livy himself repeatedly acknowledges the untrustworthiness of Valerius Antias, there are nevertheless in his own first book some passages which he can only have taken from him.

All these authors had still something old-fashioned in their manner, and stood in the same relation to the later ones as the German writers in the beginning of the eighteenth century did to those who came out at the time of the seven years’ war.

Towards the end of the seventh century, after all these authors, who were very much of the same cast, there appeared C. Licinius Macer,--the father of the orator and poet Calvus, who flourished at the same period as Catullus, about the year 700,--a distinguished and original writer. His tribunate dates about 680, before Pompey’s first consulate. Of the character of his works, we may form a sufficient estimate from the quotations in Livy and Dionysius. He did what only two before him had done; he wrote history from documents, and may have retained much belonging to those times, which the later writers have left out, because it did not agree with the idea which they had formed, and with the generally received statements in the Fasti and elsewhere. Pliny frequently mentions him among his sources; and certainly the treaty of Porsena with the Romans, which we read in Pliny, was taken from him. In the introduction to the books _de Legibus_, Cicero speaks unfavourably of him; and he may have partly been justified in asserting that as an author he had by no means deserved the praise which is due to him as a critic. When we Germans praise Mascov[16] as the first who has written a history of Germany, we do not mean by it to assert that his work was a perfect history. Yet Cicero perhaps gave an unfavourable judgment for this reason also, that Macer and he belonged to different political parties; Macer having had a considerable share in the restoration of the tribunician power. The State had at that time lost its soundness, and was in that condition, in which people see the lesser evil to be on one of the two sides, very much as is now the case in France (1828). The loss of the history of Macer is very highly to be regretted. A speech in the fragments of Sallust’s History shows an accurate knowledge of the old constitution, which Sallust cannot be given credit for. He is quoted to the sixteenth book. How many books he has written is undecided: he may have begun from the earliest times, and he probably went on as far as his own.

An historian of the old constitution is Junius Gracchanus, a friend of C. Gracchus, which accounts for his cognomen. Gracchus exercised a marked influence upon many, and especially on younger men. Both of the brothers were men of a deeply earnest heart. Gracchanus has written the history of the constitution; and, quoting the yearly dates, has given a description of the changes which it had undergone. He is often cited in the law books, in Ulpian, in Censorinus, in Tacitus, and elsewhere. The era of the beginning of the consulship, which is particularly used by Lydus _de Magistratibus_, who has derived it from Gaius’ commentary on the twelve tables, originates undeniably with Gracchanus.[17] He has drawn from the most authentic sources, and is deserving of unlimited confidence, as I can assert with the firmest conviction.

Of Fenestella nothing is quoted that refers to the earlier ages: it seems therefore that he did not treat of Roman history in its full extent.

Among the _Scriptores Minores Rerum Romanarum_, there is a book, _Origo Gentis Romanæ_, attributed to Victor. In this most of the earlier annalists are quoted; also the _Annales Maximi_ (even for the settling of Æneas), Sextus Gellius, Domitius, Egnatius, M. Octavius; and authors besides, who occur nowhere else. Andreas Schottus has first edited it. From the similarity of the book to the writings of Fulgentius, of the Scholiast on Ibis, and other commentators of the time, who likewise cite known and unknown writers, one might be induced to place the author in the same period, namely, the fifth or sixth century. But the whole of the book is a fabrication of more modern times; not by Schottus himself, but by a forger, of whom indeed there were so many towards the end of the fifteenth century. Messala also, Fenestella _De Magistratibus_, and others in that collection, date from the same period. Octavius may have been got at second hand by the author from the Scholiast of Horace; and Sextus Gellius from Dionysius, who says, “I write, what the Gellii and others have written.” The quotations from Cato in this book are in direct contradiction to the most positive evidence which we have with regard to Cato in Servius and others.

This was the state of Roman history in the time of Cicero. During Cæsar’s stay in Gaul, Q. Ælius Tubero, a friend of Cicero, wrote the Roman annals anew. He was with Q. Cicero as legate in Asia; he belonged to the party of the Optimates, and was a very honest man. Livy cites his history from the earliest times. What is quoted of him, gives an impression of his respectability as a historian; though it is evident from it, that he no longer knew the old style of language, and that he did not see the difference between the institutions of his own day and those of primitive times. He too made use of documents; but he was not to be compared with Macer in importance, unless he has been wronged by those who are our authorities.

Atticus’ annals seem to have been only tables; but a very valuable work. Quotations, however, from them we read nowhere; so that we may infer, that in all likelihood there were many such books of which we know nothing.[18]

In that introduction of wondrous beauty to his books _De Legibus_, Cicero speaks of having been asked to write the Roman history, as a duty the fulfilment of which his country expected from him. He expresses himself on the subject in such a manner, as clearly to show that he would certainly have liked the work, but that indeed he had never thought of it in right earnest. Had he done so, we may, without losing sight of the reverence due to so great a man, assert, that he would have taken upon himself a task for which he was quite unsuited. From the books _De Republica_, we see with how incredibly little previous reading he set about the description of the constitution. He seems not to have made any use of Gracchanus; but to have derived his knowledge chiefly from Polybius, and perhaps from Atticus. His proper calling was that of a statesman, and not of a scholar.

Many authors are yet to be mentioned; Antipater, Fannius, Polybius, Posidonius, Rutilius, Lucullus, Scaurus, and others, part of whom have written in Greek.[19]

Sallust found the Roman history in a neglected state; he expresses himself to that effect in his Catiline, and says, that it would be a task for a man, who had the capacity for writing it. And he would have had the capacity; but the Romans had no more a Roman history than we have a German one. Sallust was a busy practical man, who would not, and could not devote his life to the immense preparatory studies, which were required for it. He therefore wisely chose to write detached parts of Roman history, which were perhaps intended at a future period to form a whole. Thus he wrote the history of Jugurtha, in which it was his main object to point out to his readers the reaction in favour of the crushed popular party against the aristocrats, who had so shamefully abused their victory. He therefore is careful to show how Rome then in every respect was full of rottenness within. His histories began from the time after Sylla’s death, and described the revolution against Sylla’s ill-judged counter-revolution, and the struggle of Sertorius. Catiline’s conspiracy is to prove, what consummate ruffians, after all, those partisans of Sylla were, who called themselves the _optimates_, the _boni_.

Between the time of Jugurtha and the consulate of Lepidus, the historical work of Sisenna formed the connecting link. With this Sallust no doubt was satisfied; otherwise he would have treated also of that period.

The great change in the Roman world under Augustus had taken place; the history of the republic was brought to a close. It was believed that nothing more was to be hoped from constitutional forms and their development, but that the great mass of the state was to be kept together by outward force. After such a catastrophe, history appears altogether in a different light, and is written in a different spirit. In these times, just as in Greece after the downfall of the Athenian state, many historians come forth before the public. After Cæsar’s death, Diodorus Siculus wrote, to whom the Roman history is merely a secondary affair. It is probable, that Timæus also in his history of Italy and Sicily had interwoven the Roman one; though not beyond a very early period. Diodorus had the idea, which none but a prosaic mind could have conceived, of writing the whole of ancient history in synchronistical order; first in large periods, and then year by year, down to the consulate of Cæsar, when the latter commenced the Gallic war. He concludes before the civil war, in order to avoid the offence, which he might have given by his narration to one or the other of the two parties. And it was besides a very convenient break; as in all probability he wrote his work before the conclusion of the troubles. That he composed his history after the death of Cæsar, is evident from the introduction, in which he mentions that event, and calls Cæsar _Divus_. Scaliger had the unfortunate idea of arguing from the passage I, 68 that Diodorus had written as late as 746, that therefore he had left off fifty years before his own time. This opinion passed from Scaliger into the work of Vossius _De Historicis Græcis et Latinis_, and from the latter into the _Bibliotheca Græca_ of Fabricius. That passage states concerning the Olympiads, that these were a period of four years which the Romans called _bissextum_; and from this Scaliger infers, that he could not have written before 746, because at that time Augustus had fixed the _intercalatio_ at four years. This interpretation is most ingenious; but the passage is an interpolation, as some of the earlier and all the later commentators have remarked, so that Wesseling entirely expunges it from the text. The term χρόνος for year, which occurs there, is modern Greek; just as _tempus_ instead of _annus_ is met with after the fifth century. Diodorus is an author whose writings have been falsified. These forgeries were made in the age of the restoration of literature, when manuscripts were much sought after, and dearly paid for. There are for the most part omissions; and from the eleventh to the twentieth book he now and then gives fasti, which do not in the least agree with those which we have. The names in them are often not to be recognised at all. All his accounts of the earliest times he probably had from Fabius. Where Polybius begins, he may have made use of him down to the year 608; and he may also have had Posidonius, Rutilius, Sylla and Lucullus.

We now come to the two great authors, who were contemporary writers of Roman history. Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his introduction gives a full account of his circumstances and his works. He came to Rome after the conclusion of the civil wars, and published his history, 743 according to Cato, (745 according to Varro). He calls himself the son of Alexander of Halicarnassus, and was a rhetorician. His rhetorical writings belong to the earlier time of his life. These are of all the Greek rhetorical works the most excellent, those of Aristotle alone excepted. They are full of fine remarks, and are the produce of an amiable mind and an exquisite taste: it is only a pity that they should have been handed down in such a corrupt state. He is very likely to be the same person whom Strabo[20] mentions under the name of Cæcilius. We cannot wonder at this; for if he obtained the Roman citizenship, he was obliged to assume the name of a Roman _gens_. It can hardly mean Atticus, who indeed, but extremely seldom, is called by the name of Cæcilius. In the lives also of the ten orators, which are found among Plutarch’s Biographies, the name of Cæcilius occurs, which some took to be that of the quæstor Cæcilius, who was in Sicily under Verres, but which seems likewise to mean Dionysius; for all that is quoted of him we find in Dionysius. It is true, that the facts, which we now read in Dionysius, may also have been contained in others; yet the supposition, which we have put forth, is a very probable one, as indeed Josephus also is frequently called Flavius.

His history comprises, in twenty books, the period from the earliest times to the beginning of the first Punic war. It does not go further, either because Polybius,--for whom he has, however, no particular liking,--begins with that period, or because the much-read history of Fabius rises here into greater importance. The first ten books are complete; the eleventh is in a very corrupt state. Extracts from the others are found in the collections of Constantinus Porphyrogenitus _De Virtutibus et Vitiis_, and _De Legationibus_; and also in a collection ἐκλογαὶ Διονυσίου τοῦ Ἁλικαρνασσέως, which is met with in several libraries, but is dreadfully mutilated. Mai has published them from a Milanese manuscript; Montfaucon had already directed attention to them. I respect and acknowledge the merits of Mai; but he has an unfortunate vanity, and thus I believe, that he has intentionally foreborn to mention, that here he has been led into the right path by Montfaucon, conduct for which he has been taken to task by Ciampi. Yet this is merely a secondary question. The collection itself mostly consists of unconnected sentences, remnants perhaps of books of Const. Porphyrogenitus, which have not come down to us. The advantage gained from this discovery is at all events very considerable. Dionysius himself had made an abridgment of his work in five books, to which Mai quite wrongly wants to have those extracts referred. As to the first ten books, there are more very old manuscripts of them extant than of any other ancient author. The Chigi manuscript is of the tenth, that of the Vatican of the eleventh century; the former is kept by Fea locked up from all visitors,--it has been imperfectly collated by Amati, but the result has never been published, nor would he sell it to me; the Vatican codex has been made use of by Hudson. The eleventh book is only to be found in copies which are quite modern. Ever since the old books were no more written on rolls, those which were voluminous had stated divisions. Thus the Pandects, the Theodosian Code, Livy also, were originally divided into decades; and in all likelihood Dionysius too. Of these, the first volume has been preserved entire. Of the second, a copy very probably long existed;--Photius was acquainted with it still;--yet only a few leaves of it have come into the hands of the first Greek copyists. The text is much more corrupt than that of the first half.

Dionysius was first printed by Robert Stephens, and indeed from a very bad manuscript. He had already before that been generally read in a Latin translation. A Florentine, Lapus[21] Biragus, translated him from a very good manuscript, probably a Roman one, in the time of Pope Sextus IV., who has done very great services to ancient literature. But Lapus was a bungling translator, with a very scanty knowledge of Greek; as also were Petrus Candidus, Raphael Volaterranus, Leonardus Aretinus. But the works of these men were much read; and to us they are of importance, because they represent the manuscripts which they made use of.[22] Sylburg has very judiciously used the translation of Lapus. It agrees almost throughout with the Vatican manuscript. H. Glareanus revised again the version of Lapus, and, as he states, corrected it in six thousand places. He likewise availed himself of a manuscript. S. Gelenius of Cologne made a new translation, and one far better than those of his predecessors. He too may serve as a manuscript. Now was the text itself first published. The second edition is that of Sylburg, 1586, one of the most excellent elucidations of an ancient author any where to be found. He had, as it seems, an incomplete collation of the Venetian manuscript; but beside that the translations only. It is a pity that Sylburg should not have restored the text, with the means which he possessed in his apparatus, and in his eminent talent for conjecturing. The annotations are done in a masterly style; and added to this moreover was the double work of a matchless philological index, and of an historical one almost as perfect. No editor has done as much for his author as Sylburg did for Dionysius. Sylburg is not yet sufficiently appreciated. This work, his Etymologicum Magnum, his Pausanias, his Clement of Alexandria, bear evidence that in the faculty of conjecturing, and in profound knowledge of the language, he was not inferior to any one philologian of the first renown, not even to J. Fr. Gronovius himself. He has contributed much to the Thesaurus of Henry Stephens. Particularly important, besides, is his edition and translation of the Syntaxis of Apollonius. His edition of Dionysius, which was published by Wechel at Frankfort, is rare. A reprint of it was made at Leipsic 1691. After Sylburg follows Hudson’s edition, 1704. Hudson was a friend of Dodwell, and passed in England for an eminent philologian. Bentley was at that time run down, as being a Whig; and therefore the whole University of Oxford had conspired against him, and opposed to him Hudson, whom they lauded as a great classical scholar. But Hudson was a sad bungler. He has not done the least thing for his _Geographi Græci Minores_, just as Reiz did nothing for Lucian. Hudson had a collation of the excellent Vatican Codex of Dionysius, which is in the notes, but of which he made no use at all. The edition is beautifully printed. Sylburg’s annotations are for the most part not given, or else mutilated. But the book enjoyed some fame in Germany, and a bookseller of Leipsic had it reprinted. When the first volume was nearly finished, the publisher applied for the correction of the proof sheets to Reiske. The latter was a friend of my father, and I have a high regard for him; but I am not blind to his defects for all that. His mind was extremely versatile, he had an admirable talent for conjecture; but he was too hasty. He had previously only read Dionysius once; whilst correcting, he inserted into the text readings from the Vatican manuscript, sometimes also his own emendations, of which he gives an account at the conclusion. Yet they are often very unhappy, although now and then very spirited. In Grimme’s Synopsis nothing has been done for criticism. If I could get a collation of the Chigi manuscript, I might perhaps undertake some day to make a critical edition of Dionysius.

It prepossesses us in favour of Dionysius, who shows himself in his rhetorical writings to have been a man of fine judgment, that, as he tells us, he had devoted twenty-two years to that work; that he had learned the Latin language, and made researches into the annals. His history, which now reaches down only a little beyond the time of the decemvirs, extended, as already observed, to the beginning of the first Punic war; at which period Timæus also left off, and Polybius began. He was befriended by many distinguished Romans, and wrote with a true veneration for the greatness of the Roman people. The name of Archæology appears new in him. When we see that his history does not give in eleven books more than Livy’s does in three; that he takes up a whole book with what happened before the building of the city, and treats of the earliest times so much at length; this prolixity excites our mistrust not only of the credibility, but also of the judgment of the author. As far as regards this point, it is not to be denied that Dionysius has chosen a plan of which we cannot approve. Not to mention that he looks upon the time of the kings as historical, he made a mistake when he undertook to treat history pragmatically from the very earliest times. Yet the more carefully we examine the work, the more worthy of respect Dionysius appears to us, and the more we find his book to be a treasury of the most sterling information. As such it has been first acknowledged by genuine criticism only; before that, it was cried down as a tissue of absurdities. Setting his imperfections aside, we cannot indeed assign too high a rank to Dionysius, as a treasure of ancient history providentially preserved to us. He has borrowed, if not directly, at least indirectly, from the old law books and annalists; and without him we should not know any thing of the most important changes, to which, however, too often he only lends personifications. The careful use which he made of his sources renders him invaluable. Even the matter of his speeches he took from the old annalists; many circumstances at least, which were contained in them, and which he could not receive into the context of his history, he has introduced in his harangues, so that the latter, in which elsewhere the arbitrary fancy of the historian seems to prevail, often retain the traces of tradition. Thus, when there is a rising of the people, these words occur in the speech of a patrician, “If there is no more help for it, why should we not, rather than humble ourselves before these plebeians, grant Isopolity to the Latins?” Now this Isopolity, as we must take it for granted, is in the subsequent peace imparted to the Latins, which is, however, not mentioned in Dionysius. This is one of the passages in which he introduced a notice found in the annalists, on the occasion of the conclusion of the peace, as subject matter into a speech. Only we must discriminate between his mistakes, and the substance of the valuable information which he gives. If he had succeeded in comprehending the language of Fabius, all would have been correct; but he understood the Greek language as it was current in his own time, and thence all his mistakes arose. He has lost the clue in the history of the development of the Roman constitution: he is not aware of the difference between δῆμος and ὅμιλος, but he gives all, though it appears to him a riddle, and tries to find a solution. That he is a rhetorician and not a statesman, we indeed see only too clearly. In his criticism he is faulty, but, for all that, not bad: he was a very clear-headed man. With very little exception his language is correct and well suited to its purpose. What we may object to in him, are the harangues, in which the distinctness of individual character is entirely lost; an ill-timed imitation of those of Thucydides. I have worked through this author from my early youth, as no one perhaps has done since he has written, and I may say that I entertain infinite respect and veneration for him; and I am convinced that except in the speeches and pragmatical reflections, he has not by any means invented or intentionally omitted anything. He worked out his sources, it is true, without selection, and cared only for the abundance of the materials which were offered to him. Nothing is more unjust than the opinion formerly entertained, that all that Dionysius had more than Livy was merely the invention of his brain.

About the same time, 743 according to Cato, and 745 according to Varro, Livy began to write. That he commenced so late seems authenticated. He was born 693 according to Cato, in the consulship of the great Cæsar, at Patavium, and lived during the reign of Tiberius, until 772 according to Cato (774 according to Varro), A.D. 20. Livy commenced his career as a rhetorician. Of his early life nothing is known. He has written on rhetoric also. There are several grounds for fixing the period in which he began to compose his history at so late a date. His first decade has been called the work of his youth, but the following proofs are against it. Mentioning Numa, he speaks of Augustus as the restorer of all the temples, consequently after 730; moreover he talks of the closing of the temple of Janus, of the building of the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, and he names Cæsar Augustus in relating the war of Cossus. Dodwell very seldom hits upon the right conclusion, but in this point we must agree with him. In his _Annales Velleiani_ he remarks, that from the manner in which Livy wrote about Spain, it is evident that that country had already then been conquered by Augustus. The ninth book is of later date than the campaign of Drusus; for he says in it concerning the _Silva Ciminia_, that it had been just as impassable _quam nuper fuere Germanici saltus_, and the latter were first entered by Domitius Ahenobarbus and Drusus after 740 only. It might be attempted to make this out to be a later revision; but it is easy to tell what books are written in one flow of the pen, and which are revised, and those of Livy undoubtedly belong to the former sort.--It is in accordance with our supposition, that Dionysius did not know him; for if a book written in such a masterly style as that of Livy had existed, Dionysius could not have been ignorant of it; and it would then have been impossible also for him to complain of the utter want of any thing like the working out of the materials of Roman history. In the last books of the first decade, on the other hand, we find several traces that Livy had known Dionysius. From the _Excerpta de Legationibus_ we learn, in what manner Dionysius treated the second Samnite war; the relation of it by Livy cannot possibly have been taken from Roman Annals, but from Greek sources, especially the account how Naples fell into the power of the Romans, which Dionysius seems to have got from a Neapolitan Chronicle. Livy could not know the latter himself, and yet he gives a circumstantial description of the event. He must therefore have had a Greek source, and this is certainly no other than Dionysius. The comparison also of the might of Alexander with that of Rome leads to the same conclusion. And certainly the histories of Pyrrhus king of Epirus, and of the plundering expedition of Cleonymus, are likewise from the Greek; so much the rather, as Livy here calls the Sallentines Messapians,[23] probably because he did not know that this was the Greek name for the Sallentines. Already from the eighth book, Livy must have made use of Dionysius.--Let no one say that his history has too much freshness for it to be deemed the work of an old man: this depends entirely upon the character of the individual. He had yet, even with his mode of working, nearly thirty years’ time for the accomplishment of his immense undertaking. That he did not cut it off where it finishes, but that he died before he had reached his goal, is evident from several circumstances. His history consisted of a hundred and forty-two books, and ended with the death of Drusus without any marked close. The feeling against disproportion in a division by numbers was among the ancients quite decided and developed, and therefore the number itself bears witness to the books not having been completed. There can be no question, but that the division into decades is an original one, and we might see it yet more clearly if we had the second decade left. Even the Greek word _decas_ would not have been invented in later times. The twentieth book must have been double the size of the rest, in order that the war with Hannibal might not begin with the twenty-second book. At the end of the war with Hannibal, the books are extremely short, in order that it might finish with the thirtieth book. He cannot therefore have intended to close the work in the middle of a decade. At least the epitome reaches only as far as book 142, so that at all events we should be obliged to assume, that as two books in the middle, thus also at the conclusion some are still wanting.