It would be easy to show that this narrative is so very improbable, as to be wholly unworthy of credit; but how are we to account for the universal credence which it received?
To decide this question we must discuss the credibility of the early Roman history, a subject which has of late years attracted more than ordinary attention.
The first Roman historian of any authority, was Fa'bius Pic'tor, who flourished at the close of the second Punic war; that is, about five centuries and a half after the foundation of the city, and nearly a thousand years after the destruction of Troy.

The materials from which his narrative was compiled, were the legendary ballads, which are in every country the first record of warlike exploits; the calendars and annals kept by the priests, and the documents kept by noble families to establish their genealogy.

Imperfect as these materials must necessarily have been under any circumstances, we must remember that the city of Rome was twice captured; once by Porsenna, and a second time by the Gauls, about a century and a half before Fabius was born.
On the latter occasion the city was burned to the ground, and the capital saved only by the payment of an immense ransom.

By such a calamity it is manifest that the most valuable documents must have been dispersed or destroyed, and the part that escaped thrown into great disorder.

The heroic songs might indeed have been preserved in the memory of the public reciters; but there is little necessity for proving that poetic historians would naturally mingle so much fiction with truth, that few of their assertions could be deemed authentic.
The history of the four first centuries of the Roman state is accordingly full of the greatest inconsistences and improbabilities; so much so, that many respectable writers have rejected the whole as unworthy of credit; but this is as great an excess in scepticism, as the reception of the whole would be of credulity.