Even the Aborigines--i.

e.

"those from the very beginning"-- that simple rudimental form of historical speculation as to the Latin race--are met with about 465 in the Sicilian author Callias.

It is of the very nature of a chronicle that it should attach prehistoric speculation to history and endeavour to go back, if not to the origin of heaven and earth, at least to the origin of the community; and there is express testimony that the table of the pontifices specified the year of the foundation of Rome.

Accordingly it may be assumed that, when the pontifical college in the first half of the fifth century proceeded to substitute for the former scanty records--ordinarily, doubtless, confined to the names of the magistrates--the scheme of a formal yearly chronicle, it also added what was wanting at the beginning, the history of the kings of Rome and of their fall, and, by placing the institution of the republic on the day of the consecration of the Capitoline temple, the 13th of Sept.