Gnaeus Gellius

He continued the historical tradition set by Fabius Pictor of writing a year-by-year history of Rome from mythological times to his day.

However, with about a hundred books, Gellius' Annales were massively more developed than the other Roman annalists, and was only surpassed by Livy's gigantic History of Rome.

Gellius followed the standard established by Fabius Pictor—the first Roman historian—of writing a chronological history of Rome from mythological times to the present.

[9] Although Pictor wrote his book in Greek, Roman historians switched to Latin after Cato published his Origines in that language at the end of his life (in the 150s).

This number was unprecedented in Roman historiography; for instance, Lucius Cassius Hemina wrote only five books,[16] Piso about 8, and Tuditanus at least 13.

The number of 97 books is therefore consistent with Gellius' chronology; moreover, as with the other Roman historians, he probably spent more time telling about the events he witnessed.

It was first thought, especially by Ernst Badian, that Gellius could only have produced such quantity of books by including into his work the information contained in the Annales Maximi.

This theory crumbled after a study published by Bruce Frier in 1979, who argued that the true date of the Annales Maximi's publication was under Augustus.

Frier triggered a long debate among scholars, but they have agreed with him that their significance was not as crucial as Badian used to think, and the view that they were used by Gellius to fill his hundred books has been abandoned.

515] was said with knowledge rather than comic intent; it is written there that Hersilia, when she was speaking before Titus Tatius and begging for peace, prayed in the following way: I beseech you, Neria wife of Mars, give us peace, I beseech you that we may enjoy long-lasting and successful marriages, because it was the plan of your husband that brought it about that they should seize us in the same way, when we were virgins, from whom they could acquire children for themselves and their relations, and future generations for their fatherland.Briscoe suggests instead that Gellius filled his books with invented speeches; significantly, the only long verbatim quote of Gellius' work is a speech of the Sabine Hersilia (and Romulus' wife) in the aftermath of the Rape of the Sabines.

This process called "the expansion of the past" by Badian was concluded by Livy in his monumental History of Rome, which is also full of fictitious speeches and repetitive military campaigns.

As Gellius especially developed the founding myths of the world, he was used five times by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, principally about the inventions of writing, mining, weights and measures, etc.