annalists whose books were no longer in general circulation. Hence, while endeavoring to create a great work of art that might supplant the most fascinating of his predecessors, he also attained to a higher standard of accuracy than his rivals. In this brief sketch of Republican historiography it becomes apparent that it is in the second period, the time of popularization and of Hellenistic influence, that the historical conscience weakened. We must now revert to the earlier annalists to see how they worked and to understand how it was that they succeeded in preserving the essential basis of facts that modern discoveries are verifying. The field covered by these annalists may be divided into three parts: (_a_) the regal period (largely legendary); (_b_) the first two centuries of the Republic (500-280 B.C.), for which some archival materials existed; and (_c_) the period after 280 B.C., in which archival material could safely be supplemented by reports of eyewitnesses, partly Greek, and later by the native written records. Critics of the nineteenth century popularized the view that Fabius Pictor must have worked with unsafe conceptions of history because he told several of the early legends in full. This criticism misses a vital distinction which the Romans themselves recognized. The early annalists knew that the regal period provided no reliable sources, but, with due warning to the reader, they reported the legends for what they might be worth. Fabius[4] seems to have been rather meticulous in giving these exactly as he had heard them without any attempt to rationalize them, for Dionysius enjoys pointing out their unplausible elements. Where we must test the scientific attitude of the early annalists is in their treatment of the second and third periods. As regards the second period, we have seen that Piso, the last of the group—whose statements are as full as any—has in this portion an average of only about twelve lines per year. There is for this second period no trace of legendary material in the fragments of any of the earliest historians, and we can well understand why Cicero constantly compares the oldest accounts with the wiry _Annales Maximi_, why Dionysius says that in this portion they touched only upon outstanding facts, and why Asellio complains that no annalists before him had adequately discussed the causes of the events which they recorded.