The great defect, then, imputed to the class of annalists above enumerated, is the meagerness of their relations, which are stript of all ornament of style--of all philosophic observation on the springs or consequences of action--and all characteristic painting of the actors themselves. That they often perverted the truth of history, to dignify the name of their country at the expense of its foes, is a fault common to them with many national historians--that they sometimes exalted one political faction or chief to depreciate another, was almost unavoidable amid the anarchy and civil discord of Rome--that they were credulous in the extreme, in their relations of portents and prodigies, is a blemish from which their greater successors were not exempted: The easy faith of Livy is well known. Even the philosophic Tacitus seems to give credit to those presages, which darkly announced the fate of men and empires; and Julius Obsequens, a grave writer in the most enlightened age of Rome, collected in one work all the portents observed from its foundation to the age of Augustus.
The period in which the ancient annalists flourished, also produced several biographical works; and these being lives of men distinguished in the state, may be ranked in the number of histories.
Lucius Emilius Scaurus, who was born in 591, and died in 666, wrote memoirs of his own life, which Tacitus says were accounted faithful and impartial. They are unfortunately lost, but their matter may be conjectured from the well-known incidents of the life of Scaurus. They embraced a very eventful period, and were written without any flagrant breach of truth. We learn from Cicero, that these memoirs, however useful and instructive, were little read, even in his days, though his contemporaries carefully studied the Cyropædia; a work, as he continues, no doubt sufficiently elegant, but not so connected with our affairs, nor in any respect to be preferred to the merits of Scaurus(174).
Rutilius Rufus, who was Consul in the year 649, also wrote memoirs of his own life. He was a man of very different character from Scaurus, being of distinguished probity in every part of his conduct, and possessing, as we are informed by Cicero, something almost of sanctity in his demeanour. All this did not save him from an unjust exile, to which he was condemned, and which he passed in tranquillity at Smyrna. These biographical memoirs being lost, we know their merits only from the commendations of Livy(175), Plutarch(176), Velleius Paterculus(177), and Valerius Maximus(178). As the author served under Scipio in Spain--under Scævola in Asia, and under Metellus in his campaign against Jugurtha, the loss of this work is severely to be regretted.