xlii
Q. VALERIUS ANTIAS.
better literature which preceded his own age, and went back
to the earliest times, which were more to his taste.
Q. Valerius Antias is the very opposite of Quadrigarius: of
all the Koman historians he is the most untrue ; in him we can
point out manifest falsifications.36 Livy37 says that none sur-
passed him in exaggerations. He knew all the details of the
earliest times most accurately, the numbers of the slain, pri-
soners, &c ; he was always inclined to exaggerate, especially in
regard to numbers. His fabrications have quite a different cha-
racter from the earlier ones, the numbers in which were by no
means invented for the purpose of deceiving; they only men-
tion a round number, as sexceτdi, μυpιoι (ter centum tonat, in
V irgil), to indicate an indefinite number. This poetical mix-
ture of indefiniteness and apparent definiteness prevails every-
where in the Roman legends. Thus the thirty Sabine maidens
are by no means a definite number, but only mean many. Va-
lerius Antias, however, states their number to have been 547.
In this manner he wrote an enormous work, which was
particularly minute in the accounts of the later times; but
notwithstanding all this, he was not able to produce an ani-
mated narrative, but related the single occurrences in a dry
and dull manner. His work is quoted down to the seventy-
fifth book; in the second, he spoke of Numa; and in the
twelfth, of the tribune Tib. Gracchus. Fragments, from which
we might judge of his style, do not exist.
One might be inclined to consider this Valerius to be a
gentilis of the Maximi and Publicolae; and in a very loose
sense, he may have been one, but he did not belong to the gens
of the patrician Valerii. The L. Valerius Antias, who occurs
in the Hannibalian war, was probably a citizen of Antium, and
may have been one of the ancestors of our annalist.
It is surprising that Livy, although he repeatedly mentions
the UntrustworthinessofValcrius Antias, yet has in his first
books passages which can have been taken from none but
Valerius Antias.
35 Compare vol∙ii. p. 9.
37 xxxvi.38: Inaugendoeononaliusintemperantiorest. Compare xxxviii. 23,
xxxiii. 11.
c. Licinius macer.
xliii
LECTURE VI.
All these annalists had something extremely old-fashioned in
their tone and language, which differed from that of the writers
of the subsequent period, just as much as the German, written
in the beginning of the eighteenth century, from that which
became established about the time of the Seven Years’ war.
At the end of the seventh century, after this series of pretty
uniform writers, we find only one distinguished annalist, C.
Licinius Macer.1 He was the father of the orator and poet
C. Licinius Calvus, and a contemporary of Catullus, with
whom he flourished about the year 700; so that at the time
of Cicero’s consulship, Macer may have been beyond the prime
of life. His tribuneship falls about the year 680, before the
first consulship of Pompey. Licinius Macer was a remarkable
man; and we are able to form an idea of the character of his
work from what Livy and Dionysius quote from it. From the
quotations in Livy we see that Macer did what only two wri-
ters had done before him, the one as an historian and the other
as a writer on the constitution, for he derived his materials
from documents which he sought and found.2 Maccr may have
related a great many things which were passed over by his
successors, merely because they could not reconcile them with
the current accounts which they adopted or with their own
preconceived notions; for Livy3 says, in more than one
place, that his statements did not agree with other annals.
The treaty with Porsenna, referred to by Pliny, was pro-
bably mentioned by nobody but Licinius Macer.4 Pliny
speaks of him as if he had read him5, and frequently names hiιn
among his authorities. Cicero is dissatisfied with him; and in
the introduction to his work “ de Legibus,” he mentions him
disrespectfully. He might be right to some extent ; for Macer,
although he deserved respect as a critical historian, may yet not
have been equally distinguished as a writer, which is indeed
1 Compare vol. ii. p. 10.
2 Livy, iv. 7,20,23, vii. 9, ix. 38, 46, x. 9. Compare Dionys. ii. 52, iv. 6, v. 74,
and passim. 3 vii. 9, ix.46, x. 9.
4 Compare vol. i. p. 546, foil. β Hist. Nat. xxxii. 3 and 5.