always such a subjective canon that an appeal to it is rarely
conclusive. I would note, however, as regards the inscriptions
which, if genuine, would of course have settled the matter, that
Polybius looks on them as a mere invention on the part of Timaeus,
who, he remarks, gives no details about them, though, as a rule, he
is over-anxious to give chapter and verse for everything. A
somewhat more interesting point is that where he attacks Timaeus
for the introduction of fictitious speeches into his narrative; for
on this point Polybius seems to be far in advance of the opinions
held by literary men on the subject not merely in his own day, but
for centuries after.

Herodotus had introduced speeches avowedly dramatic and fictitious.
Thucydides states clearly that, where he was unable to find out
what people really said, he put down what they ought to have said.
Sallust alludes, it is true, to the fact of the speech he puts into
the mouth of the tribune Memmius being essentially genuine, but the
speeches given in the senate on the occasion of the Catilinarian
conspiracy are very different from the same orations as they appear
in Cicero. Livy makes his ancient Romans wrangle and chop logic
with all the subtlety of a Hortensius or a Scaevola. And even in
later days, when shorthand reporters attended the debates of the
senate and a DAILY NEWS was published in Rome, we find that one of
the most celebrated speeches in Tacitus (that in which the Emperor
Claudius gives the Gauls their freedom) is shown, by an inscription
discovered recently at Lugdunum, to be entirely fabulous.

Upon the other hand, it must be borne in mind that these speeches
were not intended to deceive; they were regarded merely as a
certain dramatic element which it was allowable to introduce into