FOOTNOTES [2] [The decisive overthrow of the Etruscans was achieved by Hiero, his successor, in a battle fought off Cumæ in 474.] [3] [Meyer[d] thinks it probable that the Roman (like the four Ionic) tribes were an artificial division patterned after a pre-existing ethnic scheme.] [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER II. EARLY LEGENDS OF ROME--ÆNEAS AND ROMULUS It is not easy to determine between either the facts or the writers, which of them deserves the preference: I am inclined to think that history has been much corrupted by means of funeral panegyrics and false inscriptions on statues; each family striving by false representations to appropriate to itself the fame of warlike exploits and public honours. From this cause, certainly, both the actions of individuals and the public records of events have been confused. Nor is there extant any writer, contemporary with those events, on whose authority we can certainly rely.--LIVY. According to the legends immortalised by Virgil[f] if not by Livy,[c] Æneas, escaping from Troy, after its destruction by the Greeks (as narrated in the Homeric poems), fled to Italy, and there became the progenitor of the people afterwards to be known as the Romans. So firmly stamped did this legend become in classical literature that few or no writers share even Livy’s polite scepticism. For many centuries after the Roman Empire itself had passed away, the fabulous stories of the foundation of Rome were repeated by one generation after another of historians, as unequivocal fact. It was only about a century ago, in an age of scepticism, that an iconoclastic critic arose to lay rude hands upon the time-honoured stories. This critic was the German Niebuhr.[e] He analysed legends not alone of the foundation, but of the supposed early history of Rome, and reached the indubitable conclusion that the familiar stories of early Roman kings and heroes were little better than pure fictions.