That his history is not in its proper place, is manifest. The law against those who should disturb the popular assembly could not certainly have been made before the Publilian Rogations. If the Volscians had advanced to the gates of Rome as early as we find it stated in our books, there would not have been left any demesne for the distribution of which Sp. Cassius could have proposed a law; and, in fact, after the disastrous Volscian wars the agitations about the agrarian laws are at an end, because there was then no occasion for them. Moreover, if the war of Coriolanus in the year 262, had been carried on in the manner in which it appears to have been from the narrative, the Romans would not have had to restore any thing to the Volscians; but after the great Volscian war, these possessed Antium. Lastly, the demanded isopolity was really granted in the year 296, as is proved by the numbers of the census.--As to the giving up of Antium, the Romans say that it had fallen off: yet this is absurd with regard to a colony. The Roman colony was simply withdrawn, and the old Tyrrhenian population left to the Volscians. Even what is mentioned as the cause of the breaking out of the war of Coriolanus, that is to say, the account of the famine, during which a Greek king of Sicily was said to have sent a gift of corn, points to a later period. After the destructive Veientine war, under the consulship of Virginius and Servilius, the surrounding country had been burnt and devastated during the harvest and seed-time. In the year 262, Gelon was at most only prince of the insignificant town of Gela. Dionysius of Halicarnassus shows himself very clever at the expense of the old annalists who mention here the tyrant Dionysius, when he proves that the latter began his reign some eighty years later; yet he deserves much more severe censure himself, as he names Gelon. But after the Veientine war, according to the more probable chronology, Gelon, or at least his brother Hiero, was ruler of Syracuse, and had, on account of his hostility against the Etruscans, substantial reason to support the Romans. All the circumstances indicate the time which we have fixed upon. What gave rise to the mistake, was the mention of the temple of the _Fortuna Muliebris_, as has been remarked before; yet this surely belongs to an earlier period. The daughter of Valerius Poplicola is mentioned as the first priestess; if it were at all connected with the history of Coriolanus, his wife, or his mother, would have been the first priestess. The account is now as follows.