The History of Rome. Book II

The idea naturally suggested itself that, along with the names of the magistrates, the most important events occurring under their magistracy might be noted; and from such notices appended to the catalogue of magistrates the Roman annals arose, just as the chronicles of the middle ages arose out of the memoranda marginally appended to the table of Easter. But it was not until a late period that the pontifices formed the scheme of a formal chronicle (liber annalis), which should steadily year by year record the names of all the magistrates and the remarkable events. Before the eclipse of the sun noticed under the 5th of June 351, by which is probably meant that of the 20th June 354, no solar eclipse was found recorded from observation in the later chronicle of the city: its statements as to the numbers of the census only begin to sound credible after the beginning of the fifth century[13], the cases of fines brought before the people, and the prodigies expiated on behalf of the community, appear to have been regularly introduced into the annals only after the second half of the fifth century began. To all appearance the institution of an organized book of annals, and - what was certainly associated with it - the revision (which we have just explained) of the earlier list of magistrates so as to make it a year-calendar by the insertion, where chronologically necessary, of intercalary years, took place in the first half of the fifth century. But even after it became a practically recognized duty of the pontifex maximus to record year after year campaigns and colonizations, pestilences and famines, eclipses and portents, the deaths of priests and other men of note, the new decrees of the people, and the results of the census, and to deposit these records in his official residence for permanent preservation and for any one's inspection, these records were still far removed from the character of real historical writings. How scanty the contemporary record still was at the close of this period and how ample room is left for the caprice of subsequent annalists, is shown with incisive clearness by a comparison of the accounts as to the campaign of 456 in the annals and in the epitaph of the consul Scipio[14]. The later historians were evidently unable to construct a readable and in some measure connected narrative out of these notices from the book of annals; and we should have difficulty, even if the book of annals still lay before us with its original contents, in writing from it in duly connected sequence the history of the times. Such chronicles, however, did not exist merely in Rome; every Latin city possessed its annals as well as its pontifices, as is clear from isolated notices relative to Ardea for instance, Ameria, and Interamna on the Nar; and from the collective mass of these city-chronicles some result might perhaps have been attained similar to what has been accomplished for the earlier middle ages by the comparison of different monastic chronicles. Unfortunately the Romans in later times preferred to supply the defect by Hellenic or Hellenizing falsehoods.

Family Pedigrees

Besides these official arrangements, meagrely planned and uncertainly handled, for commemorating past times and past events, there can scarcely have existed at this epoch any other records immediately serviceable for Roman history.  Of private chronicles we find no trace. The leading houses, however, were careful to draw up genealogical tables, so important in a legal point of view, and to have the family pedigree painted for a perpetual memorial on the walls of the entrance-hall. These lists, which at least named the magistracies held by the family, not only furnished a basis for family tradition, but doubtless at an early period had biographical notices attached to them. The memorial orations, which in Rome could not be omitted at the funeral of any person of quality, and were ordinarily pronounced by the nearest relative of the deceased, consisted essentially not merely in an enumeration of the virtues and excellencies of the dead, but also in a recital of the deeds and virtues of his ancestors; and so they were doubtless, even in the earliest times, transmitted traditionally from one generation to another. Many a valuable notice may by this means have been preserved; but many a daring perversion and falsification also may have been in this way introduced into tradition.

Roman Early History of Rome