A man of great but ill-directed abilities.—Seneca.
I confess that I am astonished that Titus Livy, a most celebrated writer, in one of the volumes of his history, which he traces back to the foundation of the city, used the following exordium: that he had already acquired sufficient glory, and had it in his power to cease his exertions, were it not that his intellectual restlessness obtained food by labour.—Pliny.
Titus Livy and Cornelius Nepos have recorded that the breadth of the Straits of Gibraltar at the narrowest part is seven miles; but at the widest part ten miles.—Pliny. The proper number of consuls being elected.—Servius.
Thou, whosoever thou art, shalt be ours, are the words of a general receiving a deserter under his protection, in which sense we meet them in Livy.—Servius.
I was destined from my birth to be a general, not a common soldier.
William of Malmesbury appears to have borrowed this expression of Scipio from Livy.
Tell me, when we often read in Roman history, on the authority of Livy, that countless thousands of men perished very frequently in this city by the breaking out of plagues, and that matters often came to such a state that there were scarcely sufficient men to constitute an army in those warlike times, were no sacrifices offered to your god, Februarius, at that period? Or was his worship utterly ineffectual? Were not the Lupercalia celebrated at that time? For you cannot say that these sacred rites were unknown at the time since they were said to have been introduced into Italy by Evander before the date of Romulus. But Livy, in his second decade, tells us the reason of the institution of the Lupercalia (as they are intimately connected with his own superstitions): he does not say that they were instituted to check disease, but to remove the barrenness of women, which was then prevalent.—Gelasius.
According to Livy, ambassadors suing for peace are called heralds.—Servius.
Livy calls silver heavy; he means masses of it.—Servius.
On this eminence (the promontory of Circæum) was a town, which was called both Circæum and Circæi. For Livy uses both.—Servius.