ABSTRACT
THE earliest historians of Rome lived in the time of the Second Punic War. Hence, since the written materials which are known or reasonably supposed to have existed when Roman historiography began were few and scanty in the extreme,1 our knowledge of the early history of the country must perforce depend on what the earlier Greek writers have to tell us, which is not much,2 on the evidence of archaeology, which is most useful as far as it goes, but sorely needs a commentary, and on such traditions as Italian historians have preserved for us. The mythologist is concerned with these alone; and he must share the disgust of the historian when he realizes that the overwhelming majority of them are not genuine popular native traditions at all, but comparatively late, artificial tales, put together either by Greeks or under Greek influence.
