My proposed project is a monograph that reconsiders and ultimately rewrites the history of the invention and development of historical literature in Ancient Rome. Scholarship since the 19th century has maintained that the earliest instantiations of historical writing in Rome were a result of Roman authors turning almost wholesale to Greek historiographical models. My book challenges the idea that the Roman historiographical turn was fueled chiefly by Hellenic interests and instead attempts to recover a more authentic narrative regarding the origin of literary history in ancient Rome that gives equal emphasis to native Roman and Italian influences. The book offers new readings of ancient historical fragments and testimonia by revisiting and contextualizing the history of scholarship on early Roman history in early modern and modern eras.