Various recent books on historiography[2] make little or no reference to these revisions of our knowledge. They are being written as though nothing had been discovered since Wachsmuth and the early critical work of Pais. What is equally disturbing, they continue to assume that Roman senators like Fabius and Cato, who constantly had to consult Rome’s laws and treaties in order to direct senatorial debate on intricate matters of international relations, immediately forgot the value of facts when they undertook to write history. It is no longer justifiable, however, to group all Roman annalists together in one category. If the early annals of Rome tell practically the same story as the remains, there must have been a great difference between the statesmen who first recorded the facts and the romancers of Sulla’s day who wrote popular books for the purpose of entertainment. We may classify the historical writers of the Republic into three distinct groups with reference to their methods and their employment of their sources. In the century before Gaius Gracchus, we know of some eight statesmen who told the story of Rome from the beginning up to their own day. These are Fabius Pictor, senator and pontifex, who had served in the army in 225 B.C., L. Cincius Alimentus, a praetor and general in the Hannibalic war, Cato, consul and censor, C. Acilius, a senator, Postumius Albinus, a consul, Cassius Hemina, Fabius Servilianus, consul and commentator on pontifical law, Calpurnius Piso, consul, censor, and reformer of the courts, and Sempronius Tuditanus, a jurist, who while consul conquered Histria. They all wrote at a time when there were few “general readers,” and their works were in the main intended for the information of magistrates, senators, jurists, and a small circle of readers closely connected with the ruling classes. These men were all thoroughly acquainted with Rome’s laws and treaties. After the Gracchan revolution we find a decided change in the tone and purpose of history. The democratic upheaval had enlarged the circle of readers by bringing large masses into the political arena, and had created a demand for histories that were more easy to read and more sympathetic toward the aspirations of the common people. In addition, a diffusion of the knowledge of Greek, which made available the colorful histories that Alexandrian culture had produced, and which fostered a taste for a more florid style in written and spoken Latin, tended to turn readers away from the dry factitive annals of the preceding century and to encourage professional writers to satisfy the new taste. The first story-teller to meet the new demand was apparently Cn. Gellius of the Gracchan age, who seems to have filled in the meager outline of early Republican history with an abundance of interesting legends. The period that had been covered in seven rolls by the sober Piso required ninety-seven in the library that Gellius produced.