I have related the tale of the last king's glory and of his fall no less nakedly than it will have appeared in those homely Annals, the scantiness of which appeared to Cicero to make it his duty, and induced Livy, to throw a rich dress over the story of Rome. That which is harmonious in a national and poetical historian, would be out of tune in a work written more than eighteen hundred years later by a foreigner and a critic. His task is to restore the ancient tradition with greater completeness, by reuniting such features as have been preserved here and there, but have been left out in that classical narrative which has become the current one, and to free it from the refinements with which learning has disfigured it: that distinct and lively view, which his representation also aims to give, is nothing more than the clear and vivid perception of the outlines of the old lost poem. Had a perfectly simple narrative by Fabius or Cato been preserved, I would merely have translated it, have annexed to it whatever remnants I could collect of other accounts, and have added a commentary, such as I now have to write on my own text.