Three large islands are likewise reckoned as appertaining to Italy: they are Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. According to the political geography of the Romans they were, however, considered as provinces. Although the above islands were, along the coast, occupied by aliens, the aboriginals, under their own kings, maintained a footing in the inland parts; among these the Siculi, said to have migrated from Italy, were the most celebrated; they remained in Sicily, and gave their name to the whole island. Concerning the cities, the more important of which were, some of Phoenician, but the most part of Grecian, origin, see above, p. 30, and p. 155, sqq. FIRST PERIOD. _From the foundation of Rome to the conquest of Italy and the commencement of the wars with Carthage, B. C. 754-264, or A. U. C. 1-490._ SOURCES. The most copious author, and, if we except his system of deducing everything connected with Rome from Greece, the most critical of all those who have written on the earlier history of Rome and Italy, is Dionysius Halicarnassensis, in his _Archaeologia_: of this work only the first eleven books, reaching down to the year 443, have been preserved; to these, however, must be added the fragments of the nine following books, xii-xx. discovered in 1816, and published by the Abbate Mai of Milan. Next to Dionysius is Livy, who as far as lib. iv, c. 18, is our main authority, till B. C. 292. Of the Lives of Plutarch the following belong to this period, Romulus, Numa, Coriolanus, Poplicola and Camillus; which for the knowledge and criticism they display, are perhaps more important even than Livy and Dionysius, see A. H. L. HEEREN, _De fontibus et auctoritate vitarum Plutarchi_, inserted in _Comment Recentiores Soc. Scient. Gott. Comment. I. II. Graeci, III. IV. Romani_; reprinted also as an appendix to the editions of Plutarch by Reiske and Hutten, _Gottingen_, 1821, _ap. Dieterich_. The sources of the most ancient Roman history were extremely various in kind. The traditions of the Fathers were preserved in historical ballads; (no mention is ever made of any grand epic poem;) and in this sense there existed a bardic history; by no means, however, wholly poetic, for even the traditions of Numa's Institutes are without the characteristics of poetry. The art of writing was in Italy of earlier origin than the city of Rome; how far, consequently, the public annals, such as the _Libri Pontificum_, extended back in early time remains undetermined. Several of the memorials are, beyond a doubt, mere family records, whether preserved by vocal tradition or in written documents. To the above must be added monuments, not only buildings and works of arts, but also treaties engraved on tables; of which, nevertheless, too little use seems to have been made. The Romans having learnt the art of writing from the Greeks, their history was as