Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings

...commemorates in Book III of the Annals, ch. 41, as Lipsius not implausibly suspects 1. I omit certain similar but more ambiguous cases.

In the rest of his work, Valerius, tenacious of his purpose, approached older literary monuments and used sources that were not ignoble and are for the most part still available today, primarily Cicero and Livy, so that it is possible to pass judgment on the method he followed in utilizing them. But this very method imposes a new necessity for censure. I do not wish to press the point, which I see has already been noted by others, that he snatched up and rendered the matters to be recounted arbitrarily and indiscriminately, omitting his own judgment and examination; that is surely the most certain indication of a mediocre and weak intellect, for he did not even shrink from borrowing words from those authors, I would almost say stealing them by theft. So that we may not appear to have passed judgment too unjustly, let us place together a few passages from which, by establishing a comparison, the Valerian diligence in stripping the works of earlier writers becomes apparent. Nor is a long search necessary, since from the very first example of the first book, Valerius uses almost the same words as the author of the speech On the Responses of the Soothsayers original: "De Haruspicum Responsis". For it is read:

The things that follow shortly after are taken from Cicero, On Divination original: "de diuinatione" I, 41, 92.

From the same Cicero he shamelessly borrowed what is reported about the sacrileges of Dionysius...

1) Indeed, Pliny (Natural History VII, 53) took these things from Valerius.