Treaties of peace, which were the pledges of the public tranquillity from without, being next to the laws of the greatest importance to the state, much care was bestowed, after the expulsion of the Gauls, in recovering as many of them as the flames had spared. Some of them were the more easily restored, from having been kept in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which the fury of the enemy could not reach(115). Those which had been saved, continued to be very carefully preserved, and there is no reason to suspect them of having been falsified. Among the treaties which were rescued from destruction, Horace mentions those of the Kings, with the Gabii and the Sabines (_Fœdera Regum_(116).) The former was that concluded by Tarquinius Superbus, and which, Dionysius of Halicarnassus informs us, was still preserved at Rome in his time, in the temple of Jupiter Fidius, on a buckler made of wood, and covered with an ox’s hide, on which the articles of the treaty were written in ancient characters(117). Dionysius mentions two treaties with the Sabines—the first was between Romulus and their king Tatius(118); and the other, the terms of which were inscribed on a column erected in a temple, was concluded with them by Tullus Hostilius, at the close of a Sabine war(119). Livy likewise cites a treaty made with the Ardeates(120); and Polybius has preserved entire another entered into with the Carthaginians, in the year of the expulsion of the kings(121). Pliny has also alluded to one of the conditions of a treaty which Porsenna, the ally of Tarquin, granted to the Roman people(122). Now these leagues with the Gabii, Sabines, Ardeates, and one or two with the Latins, are almost the only treaties we find anywhere referred to by the ancient Latin historians; who thus seem to have employed but little diligence in consulting those original documents, or drawing from them, in compiling their histories, such assistance as they could have afforded. The treaties quoted by Polybius and Pliny, completely contradict the relations of the Latin annalists; those cited by Polybius proving, in opposition to their assertions, that the Carthaginians had been in possession of a great part of Sicily about a century previous to the date which Livy has fixed to their first expedition to that island; and those quoted by Pliny, that Porsenna, instead of treating with the Romans on equal terms, as represented by their historians, had actually prohibited them from employing arms,—permitting them the use of iron only in tilling the ground(123).