ibited in an open place at his
house, so that the people might read it, first, the name of the consuls
and other magistrates, and then the noteworthy events that had occurred
during the year (_per singulos dies_, as Servius says). These records
were called in Cicero's time the _Annales Maximi_. After the pontificate
of Publius, the practice of compiling annals was carried on by various
unofficial writers, of whom Cicero names Cato, Pictor and Piso. The
_Annales_ have been generally regarded as the same with the _Commentarii
Pontificum_ cited by Livy, but there seems reason to believe that the
two were distinct, the _Commentarii_ being fuller and more
circumstantial. The nature of the distinction between annals and history
is a subject that has received more attention from critics than its
intrinsic importance deserves. The basis of discussion is furnished
chiefly by the above-quoted passage from Cicero, and by the common
division of the work of Tacitus into _Annales_ and _Hlstoriae_. Aulus
Gellius, in the _Nodes Alticae_ (v. 18), quotes the grammarian Verrius
Flaccus, to the effect that history, according to its etymology ([Greek:
istorein], _inspicere_, to inquire in person), is a record of events
that have come under the author's own observation, while annals are a
record of the events of earlier times arranged according to years. This
view of the distinction seems to be borne out by the division of the
work of Tacitus into the _Historiae_, relating the events of his own
time, and the _Annales_, containing the history of earlier periods. It
is more than questionable, however, whether Tacitus himself divided his
work under these titles. The probability is, either that he called the
whole _Annales_, or that he used neither designation. (See TACITUS,
CORNELIUS.)

In the middle ages, when the order of the liturgical feasts was partly
determined by the date of Easter, the custom was early established in
the Western Church of drawing up tables to indicate that date for a
certain number of years or even centuries. These Paschal tables were
thin books in which each annual date was separated from the next by a
more or less considerable blank space. In these spaces certain monks
briefly noted the important events of the year. It was at the end of the
7th century and among the Anglo-Saxons that the compiling of these
Annals was first begun. Introduced by missionaries on the continent,
they were re-copied, augmented and continued