Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/236

 ^30 THE CITY. BOOK III. The desire to praise the gods might be stronger than the love of truth. Still they must have been at least a reflection of the annals, and must generally have been in accord with them. For the priests who drew up and who read the annals were the same who pre- sided at the festivals where these old lays were sung. There came a time, too, when these annals were divulged. Rome finally published hers; those of other Italian cities were known ; the priests of Greek cities no longer made any scruple of relating what theirs contained. Men studied and compiled from these authentic monuments. There was formed a school of learned men from Var^'o and Verrins Flaccus to Aulus Gellius and Macrobius. Light was thrown upon all ancient history. Some errors were corrected which had found their way into the traditions, and which the historians of the preceding period had repeated : men learned, for example, that Porsenna had taken Rome, and that gold had been paid to the Gauls. The age of historical criticism had begun. But it is worthy of remark that this criticism, which went back to the sources, and studied the annals, found nothing there that authorized it to reject the historic whole which writers like Herodotus and Livy had coustructed.