ed. The pontifex maximus, we are told with precision, kept a
_tabula_, or whited board, on which these events were noted down, with
the consuls' names attached to them, or possibly a kind of almanac, made
out for the whole year, on which they could append their notes to
particular days.[579] This yearly _tabula_ was no doubt at first kept
secret, like all the pontifical documents, but sooner or later, perhaps
at the same time as the publication of the _fasti_ and _legis actiones_,
it was exposed to public view in or at the Regia.[580] This went on for
at least two centuries, and the records, which in the nature of things
must have grown in length and detail as events became more startling and
numerous, were edited in eighty books by the pontifex maximus P. Mucius
Scaevola in 123 B.C.--the year of the first tribunate of C. Gracchus.
The large number of these books has long been a stumbling-block to the
learned, for we are expressly told that the _annales maximi_, as the
records were called, were (in spite of their name) of a very meagre
character; and many conjectures have quite recently been made to explain
it.[581] But guessing is almost useless, seeing that there are no data
for it. The editor may have added matter of his own, amplifying and
adorning after the manner of writers of his day; or he may have worked
in the contents of other pontifical books, _libri_ or _commentarii
pontificales_. The point for us is simply the continued activity of the
pontifex maximus in this work, which must have become almost entirely
secular in character. The notes may have been jejune, but they were
probably accurate, and free from the perversions of family vanity or
such lengthy rhetorical ornamentation as became the universal fashion
among private writers of annalistic history. They were, we may suppose,
exactly what our modern historical conscience demands. But all that is
left of them, or almost all, is the list of consuls (_fasti consulares_)
and of triumphs (_fasti triumphales_) which in their present form must,
or at least may, have been extracted from them.[582] On the whole, we
may reckon them as the most valuable work of the college; and they may
be taken as marking a growing sense of the importance of Rome and her
history, the commemoration of which is thus committed to an official
who, as an individual, had invariably served the State well, and in whom
all classes had perfect confidence.[583]

One important part of the work