Now these _Neniæ_, together with the _Laudationes_ kept in the Atrium, are sources for the earliest history. There were besides some longer epic poems among the Romans, as well as among other people; for instance, the Servians, &c. The modern Greek songs are only of a lyrical description, but those of the Servians are a combination of the epic with the lyric. A fragment of an heroic poem of this kind on the combat of the Horatii and Curatii, I think I have discovered in Livy. Now it is not by any means to be supposed that Livy had still seen these old heroic poems, and written from them; but he wrote, either directly or indirectly, through Varro, from the books of the pontiffs and augurs, in which very many fragments of such ancient epic lays were preserved; many of them dating even from the time of the taking of the city. In the passage of Livy alluded to, wherein the appeal to the people is related, which he had taken from these books, he speaks of _lex horrendi carminis_. The formulas of that time were, however, called _carmina_, and were written in the old measure. That Livy has indirectly or directly borrowed from these books is so much the more certain, as Cicero asserts, that the formula of the _provocatio ad populum_ was contained in the _libri augurales_. The formula is Duúmviri pérduelliónem júdicent, &c. in which the old metre is still to be recognised. That Cicero’s assertion, _laudationibus historia nostra facta est mendosior_, is acknowledged also by Livy, has been already remarked. For as every thing good may easily be turned to evil, that lofty feeling of family pride which the Romans had was also liable to be perverted, and we may well believe that saying. After the first scanty notices from the earlier times were for the most part destroyed in the Gallic devastation, they were restored from outlines taken from the songs of the _Vates_; the poems were changed in passing from mouth to mouth, and from these combined with the _Laudationes_ history arose. These are the materials which Fabius found extant. If we look at the tenth book of Livy, we find in it a disproportionate prolixity in the account of the campaigns of Fabius Maximus Rullianus. Now this is exactly an instance of a story taken from family records. In fact not a few statements may even be pointed out, which have no other source than family vanity. People even ventured to interpolate fictitious consulships and triumphs into the family annals, as Livy himself tells us.