This feat marks an epoch in Roman historiography. Where Gellius found all his material we are not told, but we may surmise with some degree of accuracy. He seems not to have added much to the legends of the regal period, for even the earlier annalists had, with due warning to the reader, repeated the household tales of that epoch. Most of the padding appears in the section devoted to the first two centuries of the Republic. In this portion the older statesmen-historians had shown their restraint by excluding oral tradition and confining themselves practically to the bare statements found in the priestly annals and in the archives. Piso, for instance, gave only two books to the two hundred years from 500 to 300 B.C., an average of about twelve lines a year. He apparently adhered closely to archival material. Gellius devoted about twenty books to this period. To do so he must have consulted heads of old families and gathered up all the colorful stories they had to tell of their ancestors for the period before the Third Samnite War. After him Sempronius Asellio and Claudius Quadrigarius, although both were popularizers, nevertheless reverted to a conservative treatment of the semi-historical period, but Valerius Antias of the Sullan age, the most successful of the romancing historians, followed the dangerous example of Gellius. It seems to have been his ambition to retell in a more persuasive form all the more interesting tales collected by Gellius. Thereafter it was quite impossible to satisfy the general taste in history without including the legendary stories of the middle period. It was this group, writing for a large semi-educated public, and providing patriotic, dramatic, and attractive volumes—in which vivid pen-pictures served the purpose of modern colored illustrations—that destroyed the taste for the sober old annals.
During the same period and catering to the same taste, many histories of special periods and propagandizing biographies appeared. Caelius Antipater, a professional writer, produced a history of the Second Punic War in which dramatic composition and stylistic values counted for more than accuracy. He wrote not for the information of statesmen but rather for the delectation of the young and the leisured dilettanti. Some of the autobiographies and histories of the time were produced by important statesmen, but their value was in many cases marred by a willingness to cater to the lower critical standards of the day and no less by a desire to excuse their political behavior at a time when factional strife had raised dangerous animosities. Fannius, indeed, seems to have written with some sobriety regarding his part in the Gracchan struggle, but Aemilius Scaurus, Sulla, Marius, and Catulus pleaded their cases with more or less open partisanship. Of similar tendency, though more restrained, were men like Licinius Macer, Cornelius Sisenna, and Sallust, who, having engaged in the factional struggles of their day, wrote history with a political bias, and furthermore, heeded the new demand for stylistic attractiveness to the extent of disregarding now and then the requirements of accuracy.
The third group of writers, the professional researchers, appears during the Ciceronian period. As the first extension of a superficial culture had created a demand for easy and interesting general histories, so the spread of a more thorough education produced a class of readers who became suspicious of popular accounts and demanded solider works on special topics. Furthermore, the increasing number of writers desired reference books that presented details in more compendious and reliable form than did the voluminous histories of the Sullan age. It was in response to such demands that dry antiquarians now wrote their crabbed commentaries and encyclopaedias. Aelius Stilo, best known for his grammatical work, also delved in the sources of political history. Varro, his pupil, compiled reference books on Roman law, on religious institutions, on the Roman tribus, and on geography. The great jurist Sulpicius wrote commentaries on the Twelve Tables and a history of the praetorian edicts. Licinius Macer[3] and Aelius Tubero attempted to find new archival materials in the priestly offices and financial bureaus, various men made up convenient libri magistratuum, and even Cicero so far entered the field of the specialist as to write a history of Roman oratory, in the preparation of which he read hundreds of orations. Such special studies naturally did not supplant the popular accounts—in fact a score of less serious writers were busy at the same time—but their influence upon historiography was abiding. Livy, for example, not only used their digests of material but learned from them to be skeptical of the Sullan romancers and to respect the data provided by the early annalists whose books were no longer in general circulation. Hence, while endeavoring to create a great work of art that might supplant the most fascinating of his predecessors, he also attained to a higher standard of accuracy than his rivals.
In this brief sketch of Republican historiography it becomes apparent that it is in the second period, the time of popularization and of Hellenistic influence, that the historical conscience weakened. We must now revert to the earlier annalists to see how they worked and to understand how it was that they succeeded in preserving the essential basis of facts that modern discoveries are verifying. The field covered by these annalists may be divided into three parts: (a) the regal period (largely legendary); (b) the first two centuries of the Republic (500-280 B.C.), for which some archival materials existed; and (c) the period after 280 B.C., in which archival material could safely be supplemented by reports of eyewitnesses, partly Greek, and later by the native written records. Critics of the nineteenth century popularized the view that Fabius Pictor must have worked with unsafe conceptions of history because he told several of the early legends in full. This criticism misses a vital distinction which the Romans themselves recognized. The early annalists knew that the regal period provided no reliable sources, but, with due warning to the reader, they reported the legends for what they might be worth. Fabius[4] seems to have been rather meticulous in giving these exactly as he had heard them without any attempt to rationalize them, for Dionysius enjoys pointing out their unplausible elements. Where we must test the scientific attitude of the early annalists is in their treatment of the second and third periods.
As regards the second period, we have seen that Piso, the last of the group—whose statements are as full as any—has in this portion an average of only about twelve lines per year. There is for this second period no trace of legendary material in the fragments of any of the earliest historians, and we can well understand why Cicero constantly compares the oldest accounts with the wiry Annales Maximi, why Dionysius says that in this portion they touched only upon outstanding facts, and why Asellio complains that no annalists before him had adequately discussed the causes of the events which they recorded.
The archives had some material of value for the whole of these two centuries. The high priests’ tablets of the Regia, though originally intended only as a record of sacrifices to be performed, contained many noteworthy items because the pontifex was usually one of the most distinguished statesmen and accordingly interpreted political events as of sacred importance. Each year’s tablet included the names of the consuls, and contained references to the declarations of war, to victories, defeats, famines, pestilences, destructive fires, earthquakes, and eclipses, or other events that had called for expiations or thank-offerings. We are told that when the contents of the Annales Maximi were published about the Gracchan time they filled eighty volumes. Since the period covered was nearly four centuries we may assume on the average a volume, presumably of about a thousand lines, for every five years, or about two hundred lines a year. If only a tenth of the material was of interest to an historian these annals would still contain enough to fill the earlier books of a writer like Piso. In the Capitoline temple were stored almost all of Rome’s treaties, engraved upon bronze or stone. Since Rome’s fetial customs were carefully observed during the long period of expansion, these treaties provided a dependable record of her external history. Before Vespasian’s reign, as we happen to hear, three thousand of these documents had accumulated. In Fabius’ day, judging from the extent of Rome’s federation, we may safely assume at least a hundred. In the temple of Saturn were kept the laws passed by the centuriate assembly, in the temple of Ceres the important decrees of the senate. There were also temple records, inscriptions upon public buildings and, furthermore, independent local records in Rome’s various colonies, which in some measure provided a check for those at Rome. And finally the existence of the old walls and temples up to the time of these historians furnished visible evidence of what Rome’s ancient culture was like.
We are, of course, constantly told that the Gallic fire of 387 B.C. probably destroyed the old temples together with their records. This is one of the assumptions that archaeology has disproved.[5] We now possess a fairly complete analysis of Rome’s building materials and we have discovered that in almost every instance the old walls of the ancient temples remained standing into the late Republic and their materials—being consecrated—were used again in the reconstruction of those temples after the use of concrete had been discovered (about 150 B.C.). The original Capitoline temple with all its treaties survived till Sulla’s day; the Regia, in which the pontifical tablets were stored, remained intact till after the tablets were published; the original temple of Saturn with its valuable archives stood till it was rebuilt after Caesar’s death; the temple of Castor survived till it was rebuilt in 117 B.C., and we know from Pliny that Ceres’ temple, where the senate’s decrees were kept, remained intact till the Augustan period. If the Gauls spared the temples in fear of divine vengeance—the Celts and early Romans were equally religious—they would probably spare the consecrated contents. There is no longer any excuse for repeating the unfounded conjecture that all of the early Republican archives were destroyed in the Gallic fire. The places in which they were kept certainly survived and the fact that the early annalists to a remarkable extent stand the test of modern investigation indicates that some of the archives also survived.
Whether or not such material existed in the temples would, however, be a futile question, if, as Mommsen held, the Roman historians neglected to consult their archives. It is certainly true that after the Sullan period we hear little of research among original documents. But quite apart from the decay of historical standards, it is obvious that the desired materials were then largely accessible in published form. After the Sullan day every few years brought out new biographies and contemporary histories which incorporated from daily observation the facts of interest. Such sources became very numerous and men no longer needed to go to the archives for the kind of material that was wanted in popular histories. Hence it became customary to turn to books rather than to stored documents.
The situation had been wholly different during the century before the Gracchi. Then published source-books were just beginning to be made, and there were no convenient libraries of extensive histories. There may have been an anonymous digest of the priestly tablets before Fabius, but of this we are not sure. A complete edition was not made till the Gracchan period. An old code of sacred rules existed under the name of Jus Papirianum, and Sextus Aelius (consul in 198) had put out an edition of the Twelve Tables with a commentary and a list of the legis actiones. That was all. And yet senators were expected to know all the important documents that might be involved in senatorial debate. As Cicero[6] puts the matter in his De Legibus (III, 41), “It is necessary for a senator to know the commonwealth—completely I mean—to know its military and financial resources, what allies, “friends,” and subjects it has, and the laws, terms, and treaties by which each attained to its position, and he must also know the parliamentary rules of the senate and the history of Rome.” To attain to such command of the archival material in the early days necessitated much first-hand study and doubtless the making of individual digests. We are reminded of the medieval law-men of Iceland who conducted the “thing” in the period when no written codes existed and when they were compelled to keep all the laws and precedents at the command of their memories. Such senatorial practice was a preparation for historical composition which was very different from that attained by the professional writers of a later period. To assume that Fabius did not know the source-material because Livy seldom refers to original documents is to misunderstand the diverse methods that obtained in each man’s day.
Roman historians of course knew the worth of Fabius Pictor. Livy went to him to check up extravagant statements; Dionysius refers to his conciseness and accuracy; Cicero, whose historical material in the De Republica and the De Legibus was based upon Fabius, vouched for his lack of rhetorical adornment, and Polybius followed him closely in the story of early Rome, in the first ten and last two years of the First Punic War, and in the Roman sections of the period from 241 to the end of the Second Punic War. The most meticulous of historians, Polybius, criticized Fabius only on the score of patriotic bias when giving generalized judgments on recent events. Polybius was of course a foreigner who could readily detect the nationalistic flavor, and after observing the aberrations of history during the world war we can readily comprehend that Fabius may have failed in objectivity in writing of the wars in which he took an active part. But there is no reason for supposing that he did not set himself a high standard in recording the actual events of Roman history.