Two separate but interrelated issues arise whenever one addresses the topic of the early Roman magistrates: first, the reliability of the lists of early magistrates, and second, the mechanisms through which the accounts of the magistracies’ origins may have been produced. For some scholars, the likelihood of widespread corruption or falsification is so great that the lists can be ignored as evidence for anything other than the fact of their spurious creation, but even this position requires a view of the mechanisms for such creation, and the rationale. Although a slightly less sceptical position has begun to win a degree of support, the case still needs to be made and tested.

In addressing this issue, I also try to make better sense of the contribution of what we sometimes call antiquarian thought to Roman historiography and knowledge of the past. Whilst the problem of the Fasti is often addressed from a historical perspective, the impact of the list, or, as is far more probable, lists, on the way that Roman history was constructed demands our attention, especially as it contributes to an understanding of the obscure methods of the now-lost antiquarian writers. In this account, I will return repeatedly to the problem of the praetor maximus as an example of the difficulty of rewriting annalistic history through the insights of antiquarian research. After establishing some of the basic approaches to the Fasti, and examining in some detail the charges, ancient and modern, against various named and unnamed individuals held to have falsified the Fasti, I will offer some thoughts on how antiquarians and annalists may have approached the complex issues surrounding the origins of Roman magistracies.