63 B. C.) the Roman list
demonstrably coincides, not indeed in detail but yet on the whole,
with the Roman calendar, and is thus chronologically certain, so far
as the defectiveness of the calendar itself allows. The 47 years
preceding that date cannot be checked, but must likewise be at least
in the main correct.(12) Whatever lies beyond 245 remains,
chronologically, in oblivion.

Capitoline Era

No era was formed for ordinary use; but in ritual matters they
reckoned from the year of the consecration of the temple of the
Capitoline Jupiter, from which the list of magistrates also started.

Annals

The idea naturally suggested itself that, along with the names of
the magistrates, the most important events occurring under their
magistracy might be noted; and from such notices appended to the
catalogue of magistrates the Roman annals arose, just as the
chronicles of the middle ages arose out of the memoranda marginally
appended to the table of Easter. But it was not until a late period
that the pontifices formed the scheme of a formal chronicle (-liber
annalis-), which should steadily year by year record the names of all
the magistrates and the remarkable events. Before the eclipse of the
sun noticed under the 5th of June 351, by which is probably meant that
of the 20th June 354, no solar eclipse was found recorded from
observation in the later chronicle of the city: its statements as to
the numbers of the census only begin to sound credible after the
beginning of the fifth century,(13) the cases of fines brought before
the people, and the prodigies expiated on behalf of the community,
appear to have been regularly introduced into the annals only after
the second half of the fifth century began. To all appearance the
institution of an organized book of annals, and--what was certainly
associated with it--the revision (which we have just explained) of the
earlier list of magistrates so as to make it a year-calendar by the
insertion, where chronologically necessary, of intercalary years, took
place in the first half of the fifth century. But even after it became
a practically recognized duty of the -pontifex maximus- to record year
after year campaigns and colonizations, pestilences and famines,
eclipses and portents, the deaths of priests and other men of note,
the new decrees of the people, and the results of the census, and
to deposit these records in his official residence for permanent
preservation and for a