likewise older books of history to check the Roman legends with, we might just as easily get the proof of the want of authenticity of the early Roman history. In the meanwhile where shall we find them? The Greeks had no intercourse with Rome, and although they knew of the Romans at a much earlier period than is generally supposed, yet they did not trouble themselves about them, precisely because they never came into contact with them. The case would be quite different with the Greeks of Southern Italy, and the Siceliotes, of whom we have, however, no more authors left. Neither Herodotus nor Thucydides can mention the Romans. There nevertheless exists a notice which gives one a sample of Roman history as it was told among other nations, quite a detached fragment of Etruscan history. The case is as follows,--Claudius, afterwards emperor, who was so unfortunate in his youth, who was disowned by his mother, and whose feeble understanding, in spite of his other good qualities, was entirely spoiled by ill-treatment, seems to have excited Livy’s pity, who gave him instruction and encouragement for writing history. Thus he wrote several works, Καρχηδονιακά, in eight, and Tυῤῥηνικά, in twenty books, certainly in Greek, the loss of which we have very much to regret. Even Pliny does no more quote this latter work. But in the sixteenth century two tablets were discovered, on which fragments of an oration of the emperor Claudius are found, wherein he proposes in the senate to give the Lugdunensian Gauls the full citizenship, and to admit them into the senate, as had long been the case already in the _Provincia Romana_. The inhabitants of Gaul were Roman citizens, had Roman names, yet they had not the right of admission into the senate. With this right the emperor Claudius presented Lugdunensian Gaul. The two brazen tablets are still left, out of several which contained the speech mentioned by Tacitus; and they either do not immediately join each other, or a considerable piece must be wanting at the bottom. Before the French Revolution they were still in the town hall at Lyons; whether they be still there, I know not. Lipsius had them printed in his edition of Tacitus, Gruter in the Corpus Inscriptionum; but yet they have been little read. They give us an idea of the stupidity of Claudius, so that we feel assured that the ancients have not done him injustice. In this harangue he says at full length what Tacitus very summarily condensed, that we ought not to say that this was an innovation. Innovations had been made from the beginning of the state; foreigners had ever been received, as for instance the Sabines of Titus Tatius. Even foreigners had been made kings--Numa; Tarquin the Etruscan, a descendant of the Greeks; Servius Tullius, who, according to our annals, was a Corniculensian, but according to the Tuscan ones was a Tuscan of the name of Mastarna, a follower of Cæles Vibenna. He emigrated and settled on the Mons