ny one's inspection, these records were still
far removed from the character of real historical writings. How scanty
the contemporary record still was at the close of this period and how
ample room is left for the caprice of subsequent annalists, is shown
with incisive clearness by a comparison of the accounts as to the
campaign of 456 in the annals and in the epitaph of the consul
Scipio.(14) The later historians were evidently unable to construct a
readable and in some measure connected narrative out of these notices
from the book of annals; and we should have difficulty, even if the
book of annals still lay before us with its original contents, in
writing from it in duly connected sequence the history of the times.
Such chronicles, however, did not exist merely in Rome; every Latin
city possessed its annals as well as its pontifices, as is clear from
isolated notices relative to Ardea for instance, Ameria, and Interamna
on the Nar; and from the collective mass of these city-chronicles
some result might perhaps have been attained similar to what has
been accomplished for the earlier middle ages by the comparison of
different monastic chronicles. Unfortunately the Romans in later times
preferred to supply the defect by Hellenic or Hellenizing falsehoods.

Family Pedigrees

Besides these official arrangements, meagrely planned and uncertainly
handled, for commemorating past times and past events, there can
scarcely have existed at this epoch any other records immediately
serviceable for Roman history. Of private chronicles we find no trace.
The leading houses, however, were careful to draw up genealogical
tables, so important in a legal point of view, and to have the family
pedigree painted for a perpetual memorial on the walls of the
entrance-hall. These lists, which at least named the magistracies held
by the family, not only furnished a basis for family tradition, but
doubtless at an early period had biographical notices attached to
them. The memorial orations, which in Rome could not be omitted at the
funeral of any person of quality, and were ordinarily pronounced by
the nearest relative of the deceased, consisted essentially not merely
in an enumeration of the virtues and excellencies of the dead, but
also in a recital of the deeds and virtues of his ancestors; and so
they were doubtless, even in the earliest times, transmitted
traditionally from one generation to another. Many a valuable
notice may by th