A History of Rome to 565 A. D.

contemporary of Livy was the Greek writer Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote a work called Roman Antiquities, which covered the history of Rome down to 265 B. C. The earlier part of his work has also been preserved. In general he depended upon Varro and Livy, and gives substantially the same view of early Roman history as the latter.

What these later writers added to the meagre annalistic narrative preserved in Diodorus is of little historical value, except in so far as it shows what the Romans came to believe with regard to their own past. The problem which faced the later Roman historians was the one which faces writers of Roman history today, namely, to explain the origins and early development of the Roman state. And their explanation does not deserve more credence than a modern reconstruction simply because they were nearer in point of time to the period in question, for they had no wealth of historical materials which have since been lost, and they were not animated by a desire to re