entrance-hall.  These lists, which at least named the magistracies held by the family, not only furnished a basis for family tradition, but doubtless at an early period had biographical notices attached to them.  The memorial orations, which in Rome could not be omitted at the funeral of any person of quality, and were ordinarily pronounced by the nearest relative of the deceased, consisted essentially not merely in an enumeration of the virtues and excellencies of the dead, but also in a recital of the deeds and virtues of his ancestors; and so they were doubtless, even in the earliest times, transmitted traditionally from one generation to another.  Many a valuable notice may by this means have been preserved; but many a daring perversion and falsification also may have been in this way introduced into tradition.

Roman Early History of Rome

But as the first steps towards writing real history belonged to this period, to it belonged also the first attempts to record, and conventionally distort, the primitive history of Rome.  The sources whence it was formed were of course the same as they are everywhere.  Isolated names like those of the kings Numa, Ancus, Tullus, to whom the clan-names were probably only assigned subsequently, and isolated facts, such as the conquest of the Latins by king Tarquinius and the expulsion of the Tarquinian royal house, may have continued to live in true general tradition orally transmitted.  Further materials were furnished by the traditions of the patrician clans, such as the various tales that relate to the Fabii.  Other tales gave a symbolic and historic shape to primitive national institutions, especially setting forth with great vividness the origin of rules of law.  The sacredness of the walls was thus illustrated in the tale of the death of Remus, the abolition of blood-revenge in the tale of the end of king Tatius(15), the necessity of the arrangement as to the -pons sublicius- in the legend of Horatius Cocles,(15) the origin of the -provocatio- in the beautiful tale of the Horatii and Curiatii, the origin of manumission and of the burgess-rights of freedmen in the tale of the Tarquinian conspiracy and the slave Vindicius.  To the same class belongs the history of the foundation of the city itself, which was designed to connect the origin of Rome with Latium and with Alba, the general metropolis of the Latins.  Historical glosses were annexed to the surnames of distinguished Romans; that of Publius Valerius the “servant of the people” (-Poplicola-), for instance, gathered around it a whole group of such anecdotes.  Above all, the sacred fig-tree and other spots and notable objects in the city were associated with a great multitude of sextons’ tales of the same nature as those out of which, upwards of a thousand years afterwards, there grew up on the same ground the Mirabilia Urbis.  Some attempts to link together these different tales—­the adjustment of the series of the seven kings, the setting