[Sidenote: Example of a trustworthy legend from Roman history.] § 17. But perhaps the reader will desire to hear of a case where a legend has conveyed acknowledged truth, rather than the multifarious cases where it may lead us into error. I will give an instance from Roman history, all the more remarkable from the connection in which it is found. [Sidenote: Niebuhr, Arnold, Mommsen.] That history, as we all know, used to commence with a pretty full account of the seven kings, who ruled for very definitely stated periods. The difficulties in accepting this legend were first shown by Niebuhr; and then came Arnold, who told again the legend as a mere nursery tale, refusing to call it history. Mommsen, in his very brilliant work, goes further, and omits the whole story contemptuously, without one word of apology. The modern reader who refers to his book to know who the kings of Rome were, would find one casual and partial list, no official chapter. I am not sure that Mommsen names most of them more than once in any passing mention. [Sidenote: The _rex sacrorum_ at Rome.] But does it follow that Mommsen denies there ever were kings at Rome? Far from it. For there were laws and ordinances, lasting into historical times, which would be wholly inexplicable had they not come down from a monarchy. Thus there remained a priest of great dignity, though of little importance, whose very title--_rex sacrorum_--shows that his office was created to perform those priestly functions once performed by the abolished kings, and not otherwise provided for in the reformed constitution. The fact therefore asserted by the famous legend, that there were once kings in Rome, is established to the satisfaction of any reasonable man by the evidence of surviving usages. [Sidenote: The king-archon at Athens.] In the same way we have at Athens legends of kings, but all of such antiquity as to make us hesitate in believing them, had there not survived into historical days the _king-archon_, whose name and functions point clearly to their being a survival of those kingly functions which were thought indispensable on religious or moral grounds, even after the actual monarchs had passed away[35:1]. The legends, therefore, which tell of a gradual change from a monarchy to an aristocracy, and a gradual widening of the Government to embrace more members by making its offices terminable, are no mere plausible fictions, but an obscure, and perhaps inadequate, yet still real account of what did happen in Attica in the days before written records existed. [Sidenote: Legends of foreign immigrants.] [Sidenote: Corroborative evidence of art, but not of language.]