personal and purely titular: until then Roman senators had been
styled simply "Patres," but from that time downwards they were
denominated "Patres CONSCRIPTI." No Roman could have been ignorant
of this; and if the author of the Annals did not know it, we ought
not to be too severe upon him, when we shall see afterwards that
he was a Florentine of the fifteenth century: then on account of
his having lived so many centuries after the events of which he
writes, it is quite excusable that he should fall into a state of
confusion with respect to this rather out of the way matter,
though into such a state of confusion no Roman could have fallen
on account of his intimate acquaintance with the outlines of his
constitution, the customs of his country, and the distinctions of
rank in native society.

VII. The author of the Annals takes the grandson of the great
dictator Camillus to have been his son, when he observes: "after
the illustrious recoverer of the city" (meaning Rome) "and his son
Camillus": "post illum reciperatorem urbis, filiumque ejus
Camillum," (II. 52). In that case what becomes of the exclamation
of Spartian in his Life of the Emperor Severus, when speaking of
great Romans who had no illustrious children: "What of Camillus?
For had he children like himself?" "Quid Camillus? Nam sui similes
liberos habuit?" Why, certainly, "he had children like himself,"
if Marcus Furius had been his son, and not his grandson; for he
was Consul and Dictator like the renowned and noble-minded Lucius
Furius. The mistake is easily accounted for in a modern European
writing Roman history from the famous Marcus Furius Camillus being
Consul only eleven years after his grandfather, which makes it
look as if it was the son who succeeded, and not the grandson. But
it cannot be explained in a Roman, who must have taken so much