A short time after Cato, about the time of the destruction of Carthage, the history of Rome was written by L. Cassius Hemina, of whose work we have historical quotations in the Grammarians. Several writers call him _antiquissimus auctor_, which is not said of Piso and others. He had concerning Alba still the old native chronology: the earlier times of Rome he made to synchronize with Grecian history. He began from the very earliest times; and, what was indeed quite different from all the annalists, from before the foundation of the city. One finds of him several things concerning the Sicilian towns in Latium; from whence it would appear that the archæology of the towns was his principal object. As to his style we may form an idea of it from a single larger fragment: it is worse than that of Cato. The fourth book, according to Priscian, had for its title _Bellum Punicum Posterior_; consequently at the time when he wrote the third war had not yet begun. The secular festival, 607 according to Varro, he has indeed mentioned; yet it may have been quite at the end of his work. We must not, however, believe that his history consisted of four books only; as the whole of the fourth was taken up by the second Punic war, and thus there must have been at the very least five or six of them. From that time, history was written repeatedly, and therefore no original way of treating the subject is any more to be thought of. The _Rhetores Latini_ have surely made use of the books which then existed, and have besides consulted the ancient annals. How far this may have been the case with each of them in particular is indeed no more to be decided; but on the whole we shall not be mistaken in this supposition. It is in this time that the Fabius Pictor is to be placed, whom Cicero mentions in his work--de Oratore. He was a learned writer: his work entitled _Res Gestæ_, seems to have been very diffuse, as it mentions the burning of the city by the Gauls in the fourth book; yet the number of the books is unknown. No fragment of any import has been preserved of it. His name was Servius, or perhaps Sextus; for in the Brutus of Cicero Ser. Fulvius, and then Ser. Fabius is spoken of, whom he terms _juris pontificii peritissimus_. Yet the books de Oratore and Brutus, which seem to have such an excellent text, are corrupted in many little passages, which a clever copyist of the sixteenth century furbished up. Of the books de Oratore, only one old manuscript has been found in Milan, which is particularly indistinct. The Brutus does not fare better: none of the manuscripts date higher than 1430. There is therefore much doubt about the names in these books. A MS. at Heidelberg has Serius Fabius, and it is probable that it ought to be Sextus, as the prænomen Servius is unheard of in the family of the Fabii. Perhaps this Pictor is the same as he who in a fragment quoted is called Fabius Maximus Servilianus, since he at least belonged to that time.