oned to us--not one of them is preserved--seem to have been
not only of a wholly secondary character, but in great part
even pervaded by interested falsification. It is true
that the chronicle of Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius (about 676?)
was written in an old-fashioned but good style, and studied at least
a commendable brevity in the representation of the fabulous period.
Gaius Licinius Macer (d. as late praetor in 688), father of the poet
Calvus,(30) and a zealous democrat, laid claim more than
any other chronicler to documentary research and criticism,
but his -libri lintei- and other matters peculiar to him are
in the highest degree suspicious, and an interpolation
of the whole annals in the interest of democratic tendencies--
an interpolation of a very extensive kind, and which has passed over
in part to the later annalists--is probably traceable to him.

Valerius Antias

Lastly, Valerius Antias excelled all his predecessors in prolixity
as well as in puerile story-telling. The falsification of numbers
was here systematically carried out down even to contemporary history,
and the primitive history of Rome was elaborated once more
from one form of insipidity to another; for instance the narrative
of the way in which the wise Numa according to the instructions
of the nymph Egeria caught the gods Faunus and Picus; with wine,
and the beautiful conversation thereupon held by the same Numa
with the god Jupiter, cannot be too urgently recommended
to all worshippers of the so-called legendary history of Rome
in order that, if possible, they may believe these things--of course,
in substance. It would have been a marvel if the Greek novel-writers
of this period had allowed such materials, made as if for their use,
to escape them. In fact there were not wanting Greek literati,
who worked up the Roman history into romances; such a composition,
for instance, was the Five Books "Concerning Rome" of the Alexander
Polyhistor already mentioned among the Greek literati living in Rome,(31)
a preposterous mixture of vapid historical tradition and trivial,
principally erotic, fiction. He, it may be presumed,
took the first steps towards filling up the five hundred years,
which were wanting to bring the destruction of Troy and the origin
of Rome into the chronological connection required by the fables
on either side, with one of those lists of kings without achievements
which are unhappily familiar to the Egyptian and Greek chr