ich has been
preserved in some passages of Polybius, but to a larger extent in the
fragments of the _Library of Universal History_ compiled by Diodorus the
Sicilian about 30 B. C. Existing portions of his work (books 11 to 20)
cover the period from 480 to 302 B. C.; and as his library is little more
than a series of excerpts his selections dealing with Roman history
reflect his sources with little contamination.

Other Roman chroniclers of the second century B. C. also wrote in Greek
and, although early in that century Ennius wrote his epic relating the
story of Rome from the settlement of Aeneas, it was not until about 168
that the first historical work in Latin prose appeared. This was the
_Origins_ of Marcus Porcius Cato, which contained an account of the
mythical origins of Rome and other Italian cities, and was subsequently
expanded to cover the period from the opening of the Punic Wars to 149
B. C.

Contemporary history soon attracted the attention of the Romans but they
did not neglect the earlier period. In their treatment of the latter new
tendencies appear about the time of Sulla under patriotic and rhetorical
stimuli. The aim of historians now became to provide the public with an
account of the early days of Rome that would be commeasurate with her
later greatness, and to adorn this narrative, in Greek fashion, with
anecdotes, speeches, and detailed descriptions, which would enliven their
pages and fascinate their readers. Their material they obtained by
invention, by falsification, and by the incorporation into Roman history
of incidents from the history of other peoples. These writers were not
strictly historians, but writers of historical romance. Their chief
representative was Valerius Antias.

The Ciceronian age saw great vigor displayed in antiquarian research, with
the object of explaining the origin of ancient Roman customs, ceremonies,
institutions, monuments, and legal formulae, and of establishing early
Roman chronology. In this field the greatest activity was shown by Marcus
Terentius Varro, whose _Antiquities_ deeply influenced his contemporaries
and successors.

In the age of Augustus, between 27 B. C. and 19 A. D., Livy wrote his
great history of Rome from its beginnings. His work summed up the efforts
of his predecessors and gave to the history of Rome down to his own times
the form which it preserved for the rest of antiquity. Although it is
lacking in critical acumen in the handling of s