Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Wrote his Ρωμαϊκὴ Ἀρχαιολογία during the 22 years following his arrival in Italy, which seems to have been shortly after the battle of Actium. See Antiqq. (Antiquitates Romanse, the Latin style of his work under which it will be hereafter referred to) 1. 7. καταπλϵύσας ϵἰς Ἰτάλίαν ἄμα του̑ καταλυΦη̑ναι τὸν ϵ̓ μφύλιον πόλεμον ὑπὸ του̑ Σεβαστου̑ Καίσαρος, κ.τ.λ.
Zumpt (Criminal-recht der Römischen Republik, Einleitung, p. 9) allows this author much more credit than is usually given him. Dionysius had, no doubt, as he tells us, read all of the histories extant in his time, as well as accumulated much information from private family records. Being a faithful reporter of legends, many of which have some literary, though little historical, value, he is not, except in the article of speeches, quite such dreary reading as has been represented by Lord Macaulay and others. He does not impress one as often guilty of direct invention; but his small critical power and consequent inability to sift his materials according to their value, and his inveterate tendency to moralize, render him undoubtedly an untrustworthy authority. It is in the regal and first republican period that this tendency appears the most: so much so that at times we might almost suppose ourselves to be reading a Télémaque of less inventive power than Fenelon's but about the same historical value. It was perhaps a similar despair of a decayed society felt by pureminded and conscientious men which disposed both authors to attribute so much to the heroic worthies of half-fabulous times.
Of Livy of course I need say nothing but that he wrote after the triumph of Augustus, A.V.C. 725 (as appears from 1. 19. of his history), and died according to Eusebius A.V.C. 770.
Festus (Sextus Pompeius), the epitomizer, writing in the 2nd or 3rd century after Christ, of a lost work 'on the signification of words' by M. Verrius Flaccus, an author of Augustus' time. Flaccus is mentioned by Varro (see below), quoted in Macrobius' Saturnalia, 1. 15. 21, as iuris pontifici peritissimum. This Epitome is only known to us by the still briefer one of Paulus made in the 9th century, which appears to have supplanted the original, and by a fragmentary copy of the latter, now in the library at Naples. There seems, however, no reason to think either of the editors of Flaccus' work disposed (or perhaps qualified) to tamper with the fragments of old Latin, which may therefore be regarded as genuine antiques, or at least so considered in the time of Augustus. Of our two sources, the Naples fragment is evidently the
