We thus see that the authentic materials for the early history of Rome were meagre and imperfect--that the annals of the Pontiffs and public monuments had perished--that the _Leges Regiæ_, Twelve Tables, and remains of the religious or ritual books of the Pontiffs, could throw no great light on history, and that the want of better materials was supplied by false, and sometimes incredible relations, drawn from the family traditions--"_ad ostentationem scenæ gaudentis miraculis aptiora quàm ad fidem_(132)." The mutilated inscriptions, too, the scanty treaties, and the family memoirs, became, from the variations in the language, in a great measure unintelligible to the generation which succeeded that in which they were composed. Polybius informs us, that the most learned Romans of his day could not read a treaty with the Carthaginians, concluded after the expulsion of the kings. Hence, the documents for history, such as they were, became useless to the historian, or, at least, were of such difficulty, that he would sometimes mistake their import, and be, at others, deterred from investigation.
When all this is considered, and also that Rome, in its commencement, was the dwelling of a rude and ignorant people, subsisting by rapine--that the art of writing, the only sure guardian of the remembrance of events, was little practised--that critical examination was utterly unknown; and that the writers of no other nation would think of accurately transmitting to posterity events, which have only become interesting from the subsequent conquests and extension of the Roman empire, it must be evident, that the materials provided for the work of the historian would necessarily be obscure and uncertain.