Tac. Hist. ii. 80.

Cæs. de Bell. Civ. i. 6.

Tac. Ann. i. 5.

Vide Herod. viii. 108, 109.

Varro distributes the ages of the world into three periods; viz: the unknown, the fabulous, and the historical. Of the former, we have no accounts but in Scripture; for the second, we must consult the ancient poets, such as Hesiod, Homer, or those who wrote still earlier, and then again come back to Ovid, who, in his Metamorphoses, seems, in imitation perhaps of some ancient Greek poet, to have intended a complete collection, or a kind of continued and connected history of the fabulous age, especially with regard to changes, revolutions, or transformations.