The tenth book of Livy is in reality the only source for the first six years of the third Samnite war with the exception of a few insignificant accounts; and we miss with the lost annals of Diodorus those brief statements, which borrowed, though hastily and with ignorance, from original annals, nevertheless served so often as a check upon Livy's narrative during the greater half of the second war. Concerning the last three campaigns, as well as concerning the whole period down to the war against Pyrrhus, only scattered statements are preserved, and though these are in truth but scanty, yet however much they may be so, we must not at all suppose, that we possess very much less of the real history than would remain after an unprejudiced consideration of a detailed account. For it must be acknowledged, that the history of this war in Livy is evidently much more precise than that of the preceding one: and if every trace of most of the places in Samnium had not been obliterated, one could have followed the description of the occurrences in more than one campaign from place to place: several parts are already of quite an historical nature, as the statements respecting the booty and especially the history of Fabius's campaign in 449 (455), in which everything sounds credible and fair.