erve to prepare
us for the almost total want of scientific historical criticism which we
shall discern in their literature, and has, besides, afforded fresh
corroborations of the conditions essential to the rise of this spirit,
and of the modes of thought which it reflects and in which it is always
to be found. Roman historical composition had its origin in the
pontifical college of ecclesiastical lawyers, and preserved to its close
the uncritical spirit which characterised its fountain-head. It
possessed from the outset a most voluminous collection of the materials
of history, which, however, produced merely antiquarians, not historians.
It is so hard to use facts, so easy to accumulate them.

Wearied of the dull monotony of the pontifical annals, which dwelt on
little else but the rise and fall in provisions and the eclipses of the
sun, Cato wrote out a history with his own hand for the instruction of
his child, to which he gave the name of Origines, and before his time
some aristocratic families had written histories in Greek much in the
same spirit in which the Germans of the eighteenth century used French as
the literary language. But the first regular Roman historian is Sallust.
Between the extravagant eulogies passed on this author by the French
(such as De Closset), and Dr. Mommsen's view of him as merely a political
pamphleteer, it is perhaps difficult to reach the via media of unbiassed
appreciation. He has, at any rate, the credit of being a purely
rationalistic historian, perhaps the only one in Roman literature. Cicero
had a good many qualifications for a scientific historian, and (as he
usually did) thought very highly of his own powers. On passages of
ancient legend, however, he is rather unsatisfactory, for while he is too
sensible to believe them he is too patriotic to reject them. And this is
really the attitude of Livy, who claims for early Roman legend a certain
uncritical homage from the rest of the subject world. His view in his
history is that it is not worth while to examine the truth of these
stories.

In his hands the history of Rome unrolls before our eyes like some
gorgeous tapestry, where victory succeeds victory, where triumph treads
on the heels of triumph, and the line of heroes seems never to end. It
is not till we pass behind the canvas and see the slight means by which
the effect is produced that we apprehend the fact that like most
picturesque writers Livy is an indifferent