Among ourselves also, family events are even now still frequently noted in our Bibles. Such annotations are most ancient, and it may safely be supposed that they existed in Rome likewise in very great numbers. When magistrates were introduced who changed every year, it became necessary to note down their names for the Fasti; for no document had legal validity unless the accurate date was affixed to it. In these Fasti they had without doubt an era _a regibus exactis_, the consuls being at the same time registered, and the principal events put down. To these annals belong the _Annales Maximi_, more rarely called _Annales Pontificum_, an authentic and more comprehensive arrangement of annals, the object of which was to record every thing that was to be preserved for public memory. Cicero, de Oratore II, 12. and Servius ad Virg. Æn. I, 373, state that the chief pontiff wrote the most important events on an album which was exhibited at his residence, where probably many may have copied it, as we know of Cn. Flavius who exhibited a copy of the Fasti in the Forum. An album is a whitewashed tablet (a proof of the difficulty of the material), on this the transcript of the public documents was painted, as for example, the _Edictum Prætorium_ and others. Now Cicero states, that the noting down of the annals had been made _ab initio rerum Romanarum_ to the pontificate of P. Mucius; from which people wanted to conclude that the Romans in his time had had authentic annals which had gone on without interruption from the first beginning of the state. But this is by no means what Cicero says, he merely states that the noting down of events had been a usage observed from the first; that the annals had been preserved entire in his time, he does not mention any where. Vopiscus mentions, that they had been kept _ad excessu Romuli_, beginning therefore with Numa; but this is only the opinion of an illiterate man. The pontificate was referred to Numa, and so was therefore also the institution of the annals.