One point is still to be mentioned, Diomedes (III, 480) states, that the _res gestæ populi Romani_ are (in the present tense) noted down by the pontiffs and scribes. Now authors like him are to be taken _cum grano salis_, but he is of some weight in so far as he had no desire to deceive, and he might have known it after all. When therefore Cicero states that the Annales had been written only as far down as to P. Mucius, a distinction must perhaps be made. In the times of P. Mucius, it may have been deemed superfluous to continue them any longer, the later _acta diurna_ may about this time have commenced,--a sort of town gazette, which also contained the acts of the senate. The farther development of these _acta diurna_ (afterwards _diurnale_, _journal_) together with the rise of literature is probably the cause of the _Annales Pontificum_ having ceased. Yet similar annals may have been continued privately. The infinitely important fragment of a chronicle of Rome, by a monk of the name of Benedict, who belonged to the monastery of Soracte, discovered by Pertz,[2] contains at the time of Pope John the Eighth, annotations made quite in the old language of the annals concerning the _Ostenta_, which at that time were seen in Rome and the environs; that the lightning had struck the city wall; that there had been a shower of stones; and such like entries. In many monasteries the Annals of St. Jerome were continued. Every year the most remarkable events were inserted, as when an Emperor ascended the throne, &c. In this manner the expression of Diomedes may be justified. These different annals were the only books of history from the earliest times which have been preserved among the Romans. All others mentioned by Livy, _libri magistratuum_, _libri legum_, &c. are Fasti, of which there were certainly a great number dating from the commencement of the Republic, the like of which we have still in the _Fasti Capitolini_ and _Triumphales_, incomplete, even frequently falsified. These Fasti, which are still to be seen on the Capitol, where Augustus set them up, and which originated with Varro or Atticus,--the so-called Capitoline Fasti which formerly stood in the Curia Julia--contained only at the side of some detached yearly dates some memorable events. The Triumphal Fasti, which stood in the same edifice in a different place, had certainly existed from very early times. Every triumph was marked down in them, and very likely with more detail than was done in those which are preserved. The statements of Livy concerning the booty which had been made, are undoubtedly always taken from these Triumphal Fasti; but it is very remarkable that they are first found the year after that in which his extracts from the _Annales Pontificum_ commence.