The difficulties that an author of Livy’s day had in dealing with the source-materials may be illustrated by a few examples. Hannibal’s famous route over the Alps is still being discussed, though Hannibal had with him on the journey three Greek reporters who described it. Since they had no maps and no compasses, and names of rivers, tribes, and mountains had little interest for them, their accounts were so confused that Polybius and Caelius, who used them, fell into hopeless confusion. Their routes are quite impossible despite the fact that Polybius claims to have searched for the pass. Livy’s route (from the mouth of the Iserè, to the headwaters of the Durance, thence across the passes and down to Turin) betrays lack of autopsy, but it is apparently based upon an identification of place-names mentioned in the sources by the use of some map of the Allobrogic country made, presumably, during Caesar’s campaigns. Thus by using geographical knowledge recently attained he was able to hit upon a very probable solution that was hidden to earlier writers.
In my second illustration, the account of the Scipionic trials, Livy was less successful.[13] His record of the court procedure in the cases in the 38th book is confused in the extreme; but it is doubtful whether the facts were any longer available. No historian was writing at Rome at the time of the impeachments, and even if there had been one he probably would then have omitted mention of them as being outside the true province of political history. Even Polybius, who was devoted to the fame of the great Scipio, did not give any account of the trials, merely referring to them casually when giving a brief character sketch of Scipio. Nor would there have been any records in the archives, since the trials were not completed and the archives kept only the results of completed decisions. Finally, the affair fell at a time when it was not yet generally customary to publish speeches. The two or three that Livy found seemed to be of dubious authenticity and were harangues that gave but few cues to the real facts. In fact no historian wrote up the affair until long afterwards, when partisan legends, some favorable to the Catonian position, and others to the Scipionic view, had obscured all the facts. It seems today that Livy yielded too much to the pro-Scipionic accounts, thereby undervaluing the opposite views, and many attempts have been made to amend him with the aid of an excursus which he inserted—perhaps in a second edition—and with the help of various casual references. In this affair the facts are now beyond reach and probably were so in Livy’s day. Here, then, Livy did not follow hazy sources from choice. There were apparently no accurate records of the affair available. They were all late, and packed with hearsay partisanship.
Finally, we may well take an instance in which political custom and psychology were misunderstood by his predecessors so as to mislead Livy as well. The Second Macedonian War was brought on by a number of motives: fear of Philip, a desire for revenge, an enthusiasm for the Greek republics which were being oppressed, and other similar factors. The declaration, as such declarations usually are, emphasized not the important psychological imponderables but “the obligations of Rome to her allies.” Now in point of fact there was no legal obligation that had to be heeded, and the states to be aided were amici but not permanent socii. But before any Roman historian—it was fifty years later—undertook to record this war and enumerate its causes the distinction between amici and socii had been virtually obliterated and the writers listed the several states as socii, though in a strict sense they were not. Had Livy tested these historians by reference to the original treaties in the record office he might have found reason to distrust them. But this of course was not his task. Now it cannot be done, but it seems probable that in this case the historians who first recorded the events were so far removed from them that they failed to comprehend the precise factors that caused that war, explained it in terms comprehensible in their day, and thus misled Livy.
It is my belief that modern emenders and critics who have not sufficiently studied the various sources of Livy have gone too far in assuming that Livy is untrustworthy in any and every portion of his work. When the necessary distinctions have been made we shall learn to use him to better advantage. De Sanctis[14] has shown that Livy’s much criticized account of Hannibal’s march on Rome in 211 B.C. is more reasonable than that of Caelius. Livy’s account of the battle of the Trebia, which was formerly pronounced impossible, becomes lucid if we correct our conceptions of the early geography of the region of Placentia.[15] In 1926 while Beloch was pronouncing the Livian tradition of the third-century Fasti impossible, an Italian scholar was publishing a newly discovered fragment which proved the tradition correct. Beloch had to retract in an appendix of his volume.[16] Editions of the fourth decade of Livy have regularly tampered with a reference to the building of the Apollo temple in 179 B.C. because they supposed the temple was earlier. A recent examination of the materials of the temple proves Livy’s text correct. We now accept Livy’s statement of Hannibal’s march over the Alps as preferable to that of Polybius, as we know that his topography of New Carthage is better though Polybius had visited the place. By a simple emendation of one word Conway has revealed that Livy was correct about Hannibal’s route into Etruria, though the account has been severely criticized for a century. With Kromayer we also accept his topography of the battle of Cannae and of Metaurus. And so the work of recovery continues. The day is approaching when we shall be able to give Livy his due for a good method, for honesty, and for fairness, as well as for a lucid style.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Inez Scott, Early Roman Tradition in the Light of Archaeology, Memoirs Am. Acad. in Rome, VII (1929). The archaeological evidence referred to in this chapter may be found in my Roman Buildings of the Republic (Rome 1924), and in an essay on the “Early Temple of Castor,” Mem. Am. Acad. in Rome, V; a part of this chapter has already appeared in the Am. Hist. Rev. (1927).
[2] E.g. Rosenberg, Einleitung und Quellenkunde, and J. T. Shotwell, Introduction to the History of History.
[3] See art. “Licinius Macer,” by Münzer, in Realencycl., XIII.
[4] Cato’s first three books of Origines similarly recorded the legends of other Italian cities without pretending to judge their historical value, but in his history of his own day he proved himself a very accurate observer. However, he seems to have treated only episodes that interested him. Piso, the last of the early annalists, introduced the unwise method of rationalizing the early myths in order to make them more plausible.
[5] Some of the evidence may be found in my Roman Buildings, 53, 78, 83.