Backups ;) Much is lost, some is retained... (The original poster wrote «records that exist that can be used to tell this story»: of all the documentation that

Backups ;) Much is lost, some is retained... (The original poster wrote «records that exist that can be used to tell this story»: of all the documentation that can be lost, that produced during the first imperial Rome is probably some of the most secured. We still lost a lot: for example, the culmination of that period is probably under Trajan, and he wrote the Commentarii de bellis Dacicis - lost, contrary to its model, Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico...)