is means have been preserved; but many a daring
perversion and falsification also may have been in this way
introduced into tradition.

Roman Early History of Rome

But as the first steps towards writing real history belonged to
this period, to it belonged also the first attempts to record, and
conventionally distort, the primitive history of Rome. The sources
whence it was formed were of course the same as they are everywhere.
Isolated names like those of the kings Numa, Ancus, Tullus, to whom
the clan-names were probably only assigned subsequently, and isolated
facts, such as the conquest of the Latins by king Tarquinius and the
expulsion of the Tarquinian royal house, may have continued to live in
true general tradition orally transmitted. Further materials were
furnished by the traditions of the patrician clans, such as the
various tales that relate to the Fabii. Other tales gave a symbolic
and historic shape to primitive national institutions, especially
setting forth with great vividness the origin of rules of law. The
sacredness of the walls was thus illustrated in the tale of the death
of Remus, the abolition of blood-revenge in the tale of the end of
king Tatius(15), the necessity of the arrangement as to the -pons
sublicius- in the legend of Horatius Cocles,(15) the origin of the
-provocatio- in the beautiful tale of the Horatii and Curiatii, the
origin of manumission and of the burgess-rights of freedmen in the
tale of the Tarquinian conspiracy and the slave Vindicius. To the same
class belongs the history of the foundation of the city itself, which
was designed to connect the origin of Rome with Latium and with Alba,
the general metropolis of the Latins. Historical glosses were annexed
to the surnames of distinguished Romans; that of Publius Valerius the
"servant of the people" (-Poplicola-), for instance, gathered around
it a whole group of such anecdotes. Above all, the sacred fig-tree and
other spots and notable objects in the city were associated with a
great multitude of sextons' tales of the same nature as those out of
which, upwards of a thousand years afterwards, there grew up on the
same ground the Mirabilia Urbis. Some attempts to link together these
different tales--the adjustment of the series of the seven kings, the
setting down of the duration of the monarchy at 240 years in all,
which was undoubtedly based on a calculation of the length of
generations,(16) and even the commencement o