Note 2 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL FORCES

See Hendrickson, “A Pre-Varronian Chapter of Roman Literary History,” Am. Jour. Phil., 1898, 285. Of the famous chapter in Livy (VII, 2) I should attribute only a scanty line regarding the Etruscan ludii to the Annales Maximi. The rest is unreliable reconstruction, since it refers to a period that antedates historical records by over a century. Many attempts have been made to enucleate the kernel of a dramatic history from the passage, but no one who has dealt with the historical sources of the fourth century can accept such attempts.