ntion in this instance to the
incongruity; but he does not appear to have proposed any mode of
getting over the difficulty--the list of the Alban kings, which
was afterwards inserted with this view, certainly did not proceed
from him.

The same uncritical spirit, which prevailed in the early history,
prevailed also to a certain extent in the representation of historical
times. The accounts certainly without exception bore that strong
party colouring, for which the Fabian narrative of the commencement
of the second war with Carthage is censured by Polybius with the
calm severity characteristic of him. Mistrust, however, is more
appropriate in such circumstances than reproach. It is somewhat
ridiculous to expect from the Roman contemporaries of Hannibal a
just judgment on their opponents; but no conscious misrepresentation
of the facts, except such as a simple-minded patriotism of itself
involves, has been proved against the fathers of Roman history.

Science

The beginnings of scientific culture, and even of authorship relating
to it, also fall within this epoch. The instruction hitherto given
had been substantially confined to reading and writing and a knowledge
of the law of the land.(65) But a closer contact with the Greeks
gradually suggested to the Romans the idea of a more general culture;
and stimulated the endeavour, if not directly to transplant this
Greek culture to Rome, at any rate to modify the Roman culture to
some extent after its model.

Grammar

First of all, the knowledge of the mother-tongue began to shape itself
into Latin grammar; Greek philology transferred its methods to the
kindred idiom of Italy. The active study of grammar began nearly at
the same time with Roman authorship. About 520 Spurius Carvilius, a
teacher of writing, appears to have regulated the Latin alphabet, and
to have given to the letter -g, which was not previously included in
it,(66) the place of the -z which could be dispensed with--the place
which it still holds in the modern Occidental alphabets. The Roman
school-masters must have been constantly working at the settlement
of orthography; the Latin Muses too never disowned their scholastic
Hippocrene, and at all times applied themselves to orthography side
by side with poetry. Ennius especially--resembling Klopstock in this
respect also--not only practised an etymological play on assonance
quite after the Alexandrian style,(67) but also introduced, in place
of