During the same period and catering to the same taste, many histories of special periods and propagandizing biographies appeared. Caelius Antipater, a professional writer, produced a history of the Second Punic War in which dramatic composition and stylistic values counted for more than accuracy. He wrote not for the information of statesmen but rather for the delectation of the young and the leisured dilettanti. Some of the autobiographies and histories of the time were produced by important statesmen, but their value was in many cases marred by a willingness to cater to the lower critical standards of the day and no less by a desire to excuse their political behavior at a time when factional strife had raised dangerous animosities. Fannius, indeed, seems to have written with some sobriety regarding his part in the Gracchan struggle, but Aemilius Scaurus, Sulla, Marius, and Catulus pleaded their cases with more or less open partisanship. Of similar tendency, though more restrained, were men like Licinius Macer, Cornelius Sisenna, and Sallust, who, having engaged in the factional struggles of their day, wrote history with a political bias, and furthermore, heeded the new demand for stylistic attractiveness to the extent of disregarding now and then the requirements of accuracy. The third group of writers, the professional researchers, appears during the Ciceronian period. As the first extension of a superficial culture had created a demand for easy and interesting general histories, so the spread of a more thorough education produced a class of readers who became suspicious of popular accounts and demanded solider works on special topics. Furthermore, the increasing number of writers desired reference books that presented details in more compendious and reliable form than did the voluminous histories of the Sullan age. It was in response to such demands that dry antiquarians now wrote their crabbed commentaries and encyclopaedias. Aelius Stilo, best known for his grammatical work, also delved in the sources of political history. Varro, his pupil, compiled reference books on Roman law, on religious institutions, on the Roman _tribus_, and on geography. The great jurist Sulpicius wrote commentaries on the Twelve Tables and a history of the praetorian edicts. Licinius Macer[3] and Aelius Tubero attempted to find new archival materials in the priestly offices and financial bureaus, various men made up convenient _libri magistratuum_, and even Cicero so far entered the field of the specialist as to write a history of Roman oratory, in the preparation of which he read hundreds of orations. Such special studies naturally did not supplant the popular accounts—in fact a score of less serious writers were busy at the same time—but their influence upon historiography was abiding. Livy, for example, not only used their digests of material but learned from them to be skeptical of the Sullan romancers and to respect the data provided by the early