Annals

Annals. These were at first books which contained a record, in chronological order, of the principal events occurring in one or more years. The name is derived from the oldest historical documents of the Romans, the Annales Pontificum, or Annales Maximi, the duty of drawing up which devolved upon the Pontifex Maximus; but these were all destroyed by the Gauls at the sack of Rome, nearly four hundred years before the time of Christ. After the second Punic War, the Annales Gentium and Annales Consulares, of families or individual public men, continued to be composed by educated members of the Roman laity, such as Fabius Pictor and Calpurnius Piso. At a still later period, the term was applied to any historical work that followed the order of time in its narrations, separating them off into single years—as, for instance, the Annals of Tacitus.