inserted in them which never were performed, or existed—False triumphs, supernumerary consulships, and forged pedigrees(129). Connected with these prose legends, there were also the old heroic ballads formerly mentioned, on which the annals of Ennius were in a great measure built, and to which may be traced some of those wonderful incidents of Roman history, chiefly contrived for the purpose of exalting the military achievements of the country. Many things which of right belong to such ancient poems, still exist under the disguise of an historical clothing in the narratives of the Roman annalists. Niebuhr, the German historian of Rome, has recently analysed these legends, and taken much from the Roman history, by detecting what incidents rest on no other foundation than their chimerical or embellished pictures, and by shewing how incidents, in themselves unconnected, have by their aid been artificially combined. Such, according to him, were the stories of the birth of Romulus, of the treason of Tatia, the death of the Fabii, and the incidents of an almost complete Epopée, from the succession of Tarquinius Priscus to the battle of Regillus. These old ballads, being more attractive and of easier access than authentic records and monuments, were preferred to them as authorities; and even when converted into prose, retained much of their original and poetic spirit. For example, it was feigned in them that Tullus Hostilius was the son of Hostus Hostilius, who perished in the war with the Sabines, which, according to chronology, would make Tullus at least eighty years old when he mounted the throne; but it was thought a fine thing to represent him as the son of a genuine Roman hero, who had fallen in the service of his country. Niebuhr, probably, as I have already shown, has attributed too much to these old heroic ballads, and has assigned to them an extent and importance of which there are no adequate proofs. But I strongly suspect that the heroic or historical poems of Ennius had formed a principal document to the Roman annalists for the transactions during the Monarchy and earlier times of the Republic, and had been appealed to, like Ferdousi’s Shad-Nameh, for occurrences which were probably rather fictions of fancy than events of history.