We are next confronted by a unanimous tendency to make the kings, _i.e._ the communities personified in them, appear as Romans from the outset. The tendency is comprehensible: the name Roman took its rise originally from one community, but in the course of time it had become an honourable title common to all, the descriptive cognomen of all citizens of the conjoint city, and every man desired to pose as a Roman of the old stock, a good citizen of the Roman commonwealth. This was, however, in direct contravention of history. The greater number of these kings, _i.e._ of these communities, were in reality originally strangers or even enemies, the destiny of the city had frequently accomplished itself through deadly feuds and bloody battles, and if it had been thought desirable to insist on these facts the ancient history of the city would have worn a very different aspect from that with which we are familiar. But in that case a very questionable light would have been thrown on most of the elements out of which it had grown; and hence there was naturally a general endeavour to obliterate the traces of ancient conflict. The remembrance of those old-world struggles was intentionally confused, or effaced by fictitious additions, modified by tradition, or rejected altogether. In the only, or almost the only version in which it is known to us, the picture drawn by later hands of the most ancient history of Rome, both of the monarchy and the early days of the republic, conveys no hint, or at least only the remotest, of the crises which the city and state must have passed through before taking the form in which it became the basis of a common life and activity to all elements of the community alike. The attitude assumed by this false patriotism is chiefly responsible for the falsification of the earlier history, especially the records connected with the names of the kings.