Wearied of the dull monotony of the pontifical annals, which dwelt on little else but the rise and fall in provisions and the eclipses of the sun, Cato wrote out a history with his own hand for the instruction of his child, to which he gave the name of Origines, and before his time some aristocratic families had written histories in Greek much in the same spirit in which the Germans of the eighteenth century used French as the literary language.  But the first regular Roman historian is Sallust.  Between the extravagant eulogies passed on this author by the French (such as De Closset), and Dr. Mommsen’s view of him as merely a political pamphleteer, it is perhaps difficult to reach the via media of unbiassed appreciation.  He has, at any rate, the credit of being a purely rationalistic historian, perhaps the only one in Roman literature.  Cicero had a good many qualifications for a scientific historian, and (as he usually did) thought very highly of his own powers.  On passages of ancient legend, however, he is rather unsatisfactory, for while he is too sensible to believe them he is too patriotic to reject them.  And this is really the attitude of Livy, who claims for early Roman legend a certain uncritical homage from the rest of the subject world.  His view in his history is that it is not worth while to examine the truth of these stories.

In his hands the history of Rome unrolls before our eyes like some gorgeous tapestry, where victory succeeds victory, where triumph treads on the heels of triumph, and the line of heroes seems never to end.  It is not till we pass behind the canvas and see the slight means by which the effect is produced that we apprehend the fact that like most picturesque writers Livy is an indifferent critic.  As regards his attitude towards the credibility of early Roman history he is quite as conscious as we are of its mythical and unsound nature.  He will not, for instance, decide whether the Horatii were Albans or Romans; who was the first dictator; how many tribunes there were, and the like.  His method, as a rule, is merely to mention all the accounts and sometimes to decide in favour of the most probable, but usually not to decide at all.  No canons of historical criticism will ever discover whether the Roman women interviewed the mother of Coriolanus of their own accord or at the suggestion of the senate; whether Remus was killed for jumping over his brother’s wall or because they quarrelled about birds; whether the ambassadors found Cincinnatus ploughing or only mending a hedge.  Livy suspends his judgment over these important facts and history when questioned on their truth is dumb.  If he does select between two historians he chooses the one who is nearer to the facts he describes.  But he is no critic, only a conscientious writer.  It is mere vain waste to dwell on his critical powers, for they do not exist.

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In the case of Tacitus imagination has taken the place of history.  The past lives again in his pages, but through no laborious criticism; rather through a dramatic and psychological faculty which he specially possessed.