in literary activity, it was not till the middle of the sixth century that there was felt the need and desire of imparting a knowledge of the deeds and fortunes of the Roman people, by means of authorship, to the contemporary world and to posterity.  When at length this desire was felt, there were neither literary forms ready at hand for the use of Roman history, nor was there a public prepared to read it, and great talent and considerable time were required to create both.  In the first instance, accordingly, these difficulties were in some measure evaded by writing the national history either in the mother-tongue but in that case in verse, or in prose but in that case in Greek.  We have already spoken of the metrical chronicles of Naevius (written about 550?) and of Ennius (written about 581); both belong to the earliest historical literature of the Romans, and the work of Naevius may be regarded as the oldest of all Roman historical works.  At nearly the same period were composed the Greek “Histories” of Quintus Fabius Pictor(56) (after 553), a man of noble family who took an active part in state affairs during the Hannibalic war, and of Publius Scipio, the son of Scipio Africanus (about 590).  In the former case they availed themselves of the poetical art which was already to a certain extent developed, and addressed themselves to a public with a taste for poetry, which was not altogether wanting; in the latter case they found the Greek forms ready to their hand, and addressed themselves —­as the interest of their subject stretching far beyond the bounds of Latium naturally suggested—­primarily to the cultivated foreigner.  The former plan was adopted by the plebeian authors, the latter by those of quality; just as in the time of Frederick the Great an aristocratic literature in the French language subsisted side by side with the native German authorship of pastors and professors, and, while men like Gleim and Ramler wrote war-songs in German, kings and generals wrote military histories in French.  Neither the metrical chronicles nor the Greek annals by Roman authors constituted Latin historical composition in the proper sense; this only began with Cato, whose “Origines,” not published before the close of this epoch, formed at once the oldest historical work written in Latin and the first important prose work in Roman literature.(57)

All these works, while not coming up to the Greek conception of history,(58) were, as contrasted with the mere detached notices of the book of Annals, systematic histories with a connected narrative and a more or less regular structure.  They all, so far as we can see, embraced the national history from the building of Rome down to the time of the writer, although in point of title the work of Naevius related only to the first war with Carthage, and that of Cato only to the very early history.  They were thus naturally divided into the three sections of the legendary period, of earlier, and of contemporary, history.