inner constitution and the external conquests and diplomacy of Rome. The
beginnings of both went further back than Latin antiquaries could trace
them. Out of the mists of a legendary antiquity two fixed points rise,
behind which it is needless or impossible to go. The code known as
that of the Twelve Tables, of which large fragments survive in later
law-books, was drawn up, according to the accepted chronology, in the
year 450 B.C. Sixty years later the sack of Rome by the Gauls led to
the destruction of nearly all public and private records, and it was
only from this date onwards that such permanent and contemporary
registers--the consular _fasti_, the books of the pontifical college,
the public collections of engraved laws and treaties--were extant as
could afford material for the annalist. That a certain amount of work
in the field both of law and history must have been going on at Rome
from a very early period, is, of course, obvious; but it was not till
the time of the Punic Wars that anything was produced in either field
which could very well be classed as literature.

In history as in poetry, the first steps were timidly made with the help
of Greek models. The oldest and most important of the early historians,
Quintus Fabius Pictor, the contemporary of Naevius and Ennius, actually
wrote in Greek, though a Latin version of his work certainly existed,
whether executed by himself or some other hand is doubtful, at an almost
contemporary date. Extracts are quoted from it by the grammarians as
specimens of the language of the period. The scope of his history was
broadly the same as that of the two great contemporary poets. It was a
narrative of events starting from the legendary landing of Aeneas in
Italy, becoming more copious as it advanced, and dealing with the events
of the author's own time at great length and from abundant actual
knowledge. The work ended, so far as can be judged, with the close of the
second Punic War. It long remained the great quarry for subsequent