The incessant wars with these Ausonian nations, which for more than a century occur almost every year, have induced Livy to express a fear that, as he cannot write of them without weariness, he shall excite a like feeling in his readers. How much more reason then has a foreiner to expect this, living eighteen hundred years after, with very few among his contemporaries who reflect that the glory of Arpinum and its sons belonged to the Volscian name, or who are familiar with the noble hills, the scene of those wars; and not one who takes interest in them from any of the feelings connected with his birthplace! Hence the endless uniformity of occurrences, few of which are even distinguisht by the mention of the spot where they took place, and which look like mere predatory inroads, passing away and perpetually recurring without any result, must to us be intolerably tedious. But this appearance of intrinsic insignificance has only been occasioned by the dishonesty of the Roman annalists, which has studiously thrown the conquests of these nations into oblivion, as their narrowness of mind has the wholesome and politic treaties with them at which the vanity of the later Romans took offense.