Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/209

Rh have been traditional only, filled out and ornamented by their own invention, by stories adapted from the Greek, or by the untrustworthy pride of patrician houses. Others followed their example with even less conscious regard for truth, and in the Augustan age Livy and Dionysius worked up the whole mass into an artistic form, making use at the same time of much antiquarian lore which the scholars of that day had unearthed and were trying to interpret.

In its stories of war and conquests, in its speeches and dramatic incidents, this history is quite worthless. Yet there are certain landmarks which stand out with tolerable clearness in the general mist, and which become realities for us when our knowledge of later Roman institutions is brought to bear on them. The Romans, it should never be forgotten, had always a very clear conception of the salient features of their own legal institutions, and a very steady tradition as to their origin. Whatever doubt there may be as to dates and details, certain laws mentioned by the annalists may be taken as historical facts which fixed themselves on the memory of the Romans at a time when very few could read or write; and of one great piece of legislation some fragments survive even now. These laws, and such explanations of them as are generally received, must form the material of the present chapter. They will provide an outline of this period of transition, of which we can thus recover the leading features, though the relation of the events to each other cannot always be made quite certain.