Analysis of the History.—For us the interest of Livy’s life centres in the work to which the greater part of it was devoted, the history of Rome from its foundation down to the death of Drusus (9 B.C.). Its proper title was Ab urbe condita libri (also called historiae and annales). Various indications point to the period from 27 to 20 B.C., as that during which the first decade was written. In the first book (19. 3) the emperor is called Augustus, a title which he assumed early in 27 B.C., and in ix. 18 the omission of all reference to the restoration, in 20 B.C., of the standards taken at Carrhae seems to justify the inference that the passage was written before that date. In the epitome of book lix. there is a reference to a law of Augustus which was passed in 18 B.C. The books dealing with the civil wars must have been written during Augustus’s lifetime, as they were read by him (Tac. Ann. iv. 34), while there is some evidence that the last part, from book cxxi. onwards, was published after his death A.D. 14.
The work begins with the landing of Aeneas in Italy, and closes with the death of Drusus, 9 B.C., though it is possible that the author intended to continue it as far as the death of Augustus. The division into decades is certainly not due to the author himself, and is first heard of at the end of the 5th century; on the other hand, the division into libri or volumina seems to be original. That the books were grouped and possibly published in sets is rendered probable both by the prefaces which introduce new divisions of the work (vi. 1, xxi. 1, xxxi. 1) and by the description in one MS. of books cix.-cxvi. as “bellorum civilium libri octo.” Such arrangement and publication in parts were, moreover, common with ancient authors, and in the case of a lengthy work almost a necessity.
Of the 142 libri composing the history, the first 15 carry us down to the eve of the great struggle with Carthage, a period, as Livy reckons it, of 488 years (xxxi. 1); 15 more (xvi-xxx.) cover the 63 years of the two great Punic wars. With the close of book xlv. we reach the conquest of Macedonia in 167 B.C. Book lviii. described the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, 133 B.C. In book lxxxix. we have the dictatorship of Sulla (81 B.C.), in ciii. Caesar’s first consulship (59 B.C.), in cix.-cxvi. the civil wars to the death of Caesar (44 B.C.), in cxxiv. the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi, in cxxxiii. and cxxxiv. the battle of Actium and the accession of Augustus. The remaining eight books give the history of the first twenty years of Augustus’s reign.
Of this vast work only a small portion has come down to modern times; only thirty-five books are now extant (i.-x., xxi.-xlv.), and of these xli. and xliii. are incomplete. The lost books seem to have disappeared between the 7th century and the revival of letters in the 15th—a fact sufficiently accounted for by the difficulty of transmitting so voluminous a work in times when printing was unknown, for the story that Pope Gregory I. burnt all the copies of Livy he could lay his hands on rests on no good evidence. Only one important fragment has since been recovered—the portion of book xci. discovered in the Vatican in 1772, and edited by Niebuhr in 1820. Very much no doubt of the substance of the lost books has been preserved both by such writers as Plutarch and Dio Cassius, and by epitomizers like Florus and Eutropius. But our knowledge of their contents is chiefly derived from the so-called periochae or epitomes, of which we have fortunately a nearly complete series, the epitomes of books cxxxvi. and cxxxvii. being the only ones missing.[1] These epitomes have been ascribed without sufficient reason to Florus (2nd century); but, though they are probably of even later date, and are disappointingly meagre, they may be taken as giving, so far as they go, a fairly authentic description of the original. They have been expanded with great ingenuity and learning by Freinsheim in Drakenborch’s edition of Livy.[2] The Prodigio of Julius Obsequens and the list of consuls in the Chronica of Cassiodorus are taken directly from Livy, and to that extent reproduce the contents of the lost books. It is probable that Obsequens, Cassiodorus and the compiler of the epitomes did not use the original work but an abridgment.
Historical Standpoint.—If we are to form a correct judgment on the merits of Livy’s history, we must, above all things, bear in mind what his aim was in writing it, and this he has told us himself in the celebrated preface. He set himself the task of recording the history of the Roman people, “the first in the world,” from the beginning. The task was a great one, and the fame to be won by it uncertain, yet it would be something to have made the attempt, and the labour itself would bring a welcome relief from the contemplation of present evils; for his readers, too, this record will, he says, be full of instruction; they are invited to note especially the moral lessons taught by the story of Rome, to observe how Rome rose to greatness by the simple virtues and unselfish devotion of her citizens, and how on the decay of these qualities followed degeneracy and decline.
He does not, therefore, write, as Polybius wrote, for students of history. With Polybius the greatness of Rome is a phenomenon to be critically studied and scientifically explained; the rise of Rome forms an important chapter in universal history, and must be dealt with, not as an isolated fact, but in connexion with the general march of events in the civilized world. Still less has Livy anything in common with the naïve anxiety of Dionysius of Halicarnassus to make it clear to his fellow Greeks that the irresistible people who had mastered them was in origin, in race and in language Hellenic like themselves.
Livy writes as a Roman, to raise a monument worthy of the greatness of Rome, and to keep alive, for the guidance and the warning of Romans, the recollection alike of the virtues which had made Rome great and of the vices which had threatened her with destruction. In so writing he was in close agreement with the traditions of Roman literature, as well as with the conception of the nature and objects of history current in his time. To a large extent Roman literature grew out of pride in Rome, for, though her earliest authors took the form and often the language of their writings from Greece, it was the greatness of Rome that inspired the best of them, and it was from the annals of Rome that their themes were taken. And this is naturally true in an especial sense of the Roman historians; the long list of annalists begins at the moment when the great struggle with Carthage had for the first time brought Rome into direct connexion with the historic peoples of the ancient world, and when Romans themselves awoke to the importance of the part reserved for Rome to play in universal history. To write the annals of Rome became at once a task worthy of the best of her citizens. Though other forms of literature might be thought unbecoming to the dignity of a free-born citizen, this was never so with history. On the contrary, men of high rank and tried statesmanship were on that very account thought all the fitter to write the chronicles of the state they had served. And history in Rome never lost either its social prestige or its intimate and exclusive connexion with the fortunes of the Roman people. It was well enough for Greeks to busy themselves with the manners, institutions and deeds of the “peoples outside.” The Roman historians, from Fabius Pictor to Tacitus, cared for none of these things. This exclusive interest in Rome was doubtless encouraged by the peculiar characteristics of the history of the state. The Roman annalist had not, like the Greek, to deal with the varying fortunes and separate doings of a number of petty communities, but with the continuous life of a single city. Nor was his attention drawn from the main lines of political history by the claims of art, literature and philosophy, for just as the tie which bound Romans together was that of citizenship, not of race or culture, so the history of Rome is that of the state, of its political constitution, its wars and conquests, its military and administrative system.
Livy’s own circumstances were all such as to render these views natural to him. He began to write at a time when, after a century of disturbance, the mass of men had been contented to purchase peace at the price of liberty. The present was at least inglorious, the future doubtful, and many turned gladly to the past for consolation. This retrospective tendency was favourably regarded by the government. It was the policy of Augustus to obliterate all traces of recent revolution, and to connect the new imperial régime as closely as possible with the ancient traditions and institutions of Rome and Italy. The Aeneid of Virgil, the Fasti of Ovid, suited well with his own restoration of the ancient temples, his revival of such ancient ceremonies as the Ludi Saeculares, his efforts to check the un-Roman luxury of the day, and his jealous regard for the purity of the Roman stock. And, though we are nowhere told that Livy undertook his history at the emperor’s suggestion, it is certain that Augustus read parts of it with pleasure, and even honoured the writer with his assistance and friendship.
Livy was deeply penetrated with a sense of the greatness of Rome. From first to last its majesty and high destiny are present to his mind. Aeneas is led to Italy by the Fates that he may be the founder of Rome. Romulus after his ascension declares it to be the will of heaven that Rome should be mistress of the world; and Hannibal marches into Italy, that he may “set free the world” from Roman rule. But, if this ever-present consciousness often gives dignity and elevation to his narrative, it is also responsible for some of its defects. It leads him occasionally into exaggerated language (e.g. xxii. 33, “nullius usquam terrarum rei cura Romanos effugiebat”), or into such mis-statements as his explanation of the course taken by the Romans in renewing war with Carthage, that “it seemed more suitable to the dignity of the Roman people.” Often his jealousy for the honour of Rome makes him unfair and one-sided. In all her wars not only success but justice is with Rome. To the same general attitude is also due the omission by Livy of all that has no direct bearing on the fortunes of the Roman people. “I have resolved,” he says (xxxix. 48), “only to touch on foreign affairs so far as they are bound up with those of Rome.” As the result, we get from Livy very defective accounts even of the Italic peoples most closely connected with Rome. Of the past history and the internal condition of the more distant nations she encountered he tells us little or nothing, even when he found such details carefully given by Polybius.
Scarcely less strong than his interest in Rome is his interest in the moral lessons which her history seemed to him so well qualified to teach. This didactic view of history was a prevalent one in antiquity, and it was confirmed no doubt by those rhetorical studies which in Rome as in Greece formed the chief part of education, and which taught men to look on history as little more than a storehouse of illustrations and themes for declamation. But it suited also the practical bent of the Roman mind, with its comparative indifference to abstract speculation or purely scientific research. It is in the highest degree natural that Livy should have sought for the secret of the rise of Rome, not in any large historical causes, but in the moral qualities of the people themselves, and that he should have looked upon the contemplation of these as the best remedy for the vices of his own degenerate days. He dwells with delight on the unselfish patriotism of the old heroes of the republic. In those times children obeyed their parents, the gods were still sincerely worshipped, poverty was no disgrace, sceptical philosophies and foreign fashions in religion and in daily life were unknown. But this ethical interest is closely bound up with his Roman sympathies. His moral ideal is no abstract one, and the virtues he praises are those which in his view made up the truly Roman type of character. The prominence thus given to the moral aspects of the history tends to obscure in some degree the true relations and real importance of the events narrated, but it does so in Livy to a far less extent than in some other writers. He is much too skilful an artist either to resolve his history into a mere bundle of examples, or to overload it, as Tacitus is sometimes inclined to do, with reflections and axioms. The moral he wishes to enforce is usually either conveyed by the story itself, with the aid perhaps of a single sentence of comment, or put as a speech into the mouth of one of his characters (e.g. xxiii. 49; the devotion of Decius, viii. 10, cf. vii. 40; and the speech of Camillus, v. 54); and what little his narrative thus loses in accuracy it gains in dignity and warmth of feeling. In his portraits of the typical Romans of the old style, such as Q. Fabius Maximus, in his descriptions of the unshaken firmness and calm courage shown by the fathers of the state in the hour of trial, Livy is at his best; and he is so largely in virtue of his genuine appreciation of character as a powerful force in the affairs of men.