THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

IV. The Revolution

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter XIII - Literature and Art

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Page 46

Unhappily beyond the employment of the mother-tongue there is hardly anything else deserving of commendation in the chronicles of this epoch composed in Latin. They were numerous and detailed enough--there are mentioned, for example, those of Lucius Cassius Hemina (about 608), of Lucius Calpurnius Piso (consul in 621), of Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus (consul in 625), of Gaius Fannius (consul in 632).

To these falls to be added the digest of the official annals of the city in eighty books, which Publius Mucius Scaevola (consul in 621), a man esteemed also as a jurist, prepared and published as -pontifex maximus-, thereby closing the city-chronicle in so far as thenceforth the pontifical records, although not exactly discontinued, were no longer at any rate, amidst the increasing diligence of private chroniclers, taken account of in literature.

All these annals, whether they gave themselves forth as private or as official works, were substantially similar compilations of the extant historical and quasi-historical materials; and the value of their authorities as well as their formal value declined beyond doubt in the same proportion as their amplitude increased.

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