They were also carefully stored in a building set apart for the
purpose, where any person could have access to them, and make copies of
them for the benefit of their friends in distant parts of the empire. It
is probable also that the Roman historians availed themselves of them in
their compilations. They were not only reports of the ordinary
occurrences in the city, but journals of the proceedings in the courts
and town councils as well, and they contain records of trials,
elections, punishments, buildings, deaths, sacrifices, state
ceremonials, prodigies, etc., etc. They are alluded to in the
correspondence between Cicero and Coelius, when the great orator was
governor of Cilicia. Coelius had promised to send him an account of
the news of Rome, and encloses in his first letter a journal of the
events which had transpired in the city during his absence. Cicero, in
reply, complains that his friend had misinterpreted his wishes, and says
that he had not desired him to send an account of the matches of
gladiators, the adjournments of the courts, and occurrences of that
kind, which nobody dared to talk to him about even when he was residing
in Rome: what he wanted was a description of the course of politics and
but the newspaper of Chrestus. He also refers to these sheets, that is
to say, to accounts of public affairs _in actis_ and _ex actis_, in two
letters to Cassius and one to Brutus, written previously to the
triumvirate.
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