In the fourth and fifth decades the question of Livy’s authorities presents no great difficulties, and the conclusions arrived at by Nissen in his masterly Untersuchungen have met with general acceptance. These may be shortly stated as follows. In the portions of the history which deal with Greece and the East, Livy follows Polybius, and these portions are easily distinguishable from the rest by their superior clearness, accuracy and fulness. On the other hand, for the history of Italy and western Europe he falls back on Roman annalists, especially, it seems, on Claudius Quadrigarius and Valerius Antias—a most unfortunate choice—and from them too he takes the annalistic mould into which his matter is cast.
Livy’s general method of using these authorities was certainly not such as would be deemed satisfactory in a modern historian. He is indeed free from the grosser faults of deliberate injustice and falsification, and he resists that temptation Critical method. to invent, to which “the minds of authors are only too much inclined” (xxii. 7). Nor is he unconscious of the necessity for some kind of criticism. He distinguishes between rumour and the precise statements of recognized authorities (cf. xxi. 46, v. 21, vii. 6). The latter he reproduced in the main faithfully, but with a certain exercise of discretion. Where they disagreed, he calls attention to the fact, occasionally pronouncing in favour of one version rather than another (ii. 41, xxi. 46) though often on no adequate grounds, or attempting to reconcile and explain discrepancies (vi. 12, 38). Where he detects or suspects the insertion of fabulous matter he has no scruple in saying so. Gross exaggerations, such as those in which Valerius Antias indulged, he roundly denounces, and with equal plainness of speech he condemns the family vanity which had so constantly corrupted and distorted the truth. “I suppose,” he says (viii. 40), “that the record and memorial of these matters hath been depraved and corrupted by these funeral orations of praises, ... while every house and family draweth to it the honour and renown of noble exploits, martial feats and dignities by any untruth and lie, so it be colourable.” The legendary character of the earliest traditions he frankly admits. “Such things as are reported either before or at the foundation of the city, more beautiful and set out with poets’ fables than grounded upon pure and faithful records, I mean neither to aver nor disprove” (Praef.); and of the whole history previous to the sack of Rome by the Gauls (390 B.C.) he writes that it was obscure “both in regard of exceeding antiquity, and also for that in those days there were very few writings and monuments, the only faithful safeguard and true remembrancers of deeds past; and, besides, whatsoever was registered in the commentaries of the priests and in other public or private records, the same for the most part, when the city was burned, perished withal.” Further than this, however, Livy’s criticism does not go. Where his written authorities are not palpably inconsistent with each other or with probability he accepts and transcribes their record without any further inquiry, nor does he ever attempt to get behind this record in order to discover the original evidence on which it rested. His acceptance in any particular case of the version given by an annalist by no means implies that he has by careful inquiry satisfied himself of its truth. At the most it only presupposes a comparison with other versions, equally second-hand, but either less generally accepted or less in harmony with his own views of the situation; and in many cases the reasons he gives for his preference of one account over another are eminently unscientific. Livy’s history, then, rests on no foundation of original research or even of careful verification. It is a compilation, and even as such it leaves much to be desired. For we cannot credit Livy with having made such a preliminary survey of his authorities as would enable him to determine their relations to each other, and fuse their various narratives into a consistent whole. It is clear, on the contrary, that his circle of authorities for any one decade was a comparatively small one, that of these he selected one, and transcribed him with the necessary embellishments and other slight modifications until impelled by various reasons to drop him. He then, without warning, takes up another, whom he follows in the same way. The result is a curious mosaic, in which pieces of all colours and dates are found side by side, and in which even the great artistic skill displayed throughout fails to conceal the lack of internal unity. Thus many of Livy’s inconsistencies are due to his having pieced together two versions, each of which gave a differently coloured account of the same event. Mommsen (Rom. Forschungen, ii.) has clearly shown that this is what has happened in his relation of the legal proceedings against the elder Africanus in book xxxviii.; and in the story of the first secession, as he tells it, the older version which represented it as due to political and the later which explained it by economical grievances are found side by side. Similarly a change from one authority to another leads him not unfrequently to copy from the latter statements inconsistent with those he took from the former, to forget what he has previously said, or to treat as known a fact which has not been mentioned before (cf. ii. 1, xxxiv. 6, and Weissenborn’s Introduction, p. 37). In other cases where the same event has been placed by different annalists in different years, or where their versions of it varied, it reappears in Livy as two events. Thus the four campaigns against the Volsci (ii. 17 seq.) are, as Schwegler (R.G. i. 13) rightly says, simply variations of one single expedition. Other instances of such “doublettes” are the two single combats described in xxiii. 46 and xxv. 18, and the two battles at Baecula in Spain (xxvii. 18 and xxviii. 13). Without doubt, too, much of the chronological confusion observable throughout Livy is due to the fact that he follows now one now another authority, heedless of their differences on this head. Thus he vacillates between the Catonian and Varronian reckoning of the years of the city, and between the chronologies of Polybius and the Roman annalists.
To these defects in his method must be added the fact that he does not always succeed even in accurately reproducing the authority he is for the time following. In the case of Polybius, for instance, he allows himself great freedom in omitting what strikes him as irrelevant, or tedious, or uninteresting to his Roman readers, a process in which much valuable matter disappears. In other cases his desire to give a vividness and point to what he doubtless considered the rather bald and dry style of Polybius leads him into absurdities and inaccuracies. Thus by the treaty with Antiochus (188 B.C.) it was provided that the Greek communities of Asia Minor “shall settle their mutual differences by arbitration,” and so far Livy correctly transcribes Polybius, but he adds with a rhetorical flourish, “or, if both parties prefer it, by war” (xxxviii. 38). Elsewhere his blunders are apparently due to haste, or ignorance or sheer carelessness; thus, for instance, when Polybius speaks of the Aetolians assembling at their capital Thermon, Livy (xxxiii. 35) not only substitutes Thermopylae but gratuitously informs his readers that here the Pylaean assemblies were held. Thanks partly to carelessness, partly to mistranslation, he makes sad havoc (xxxv. 5 seq.) of Polybius’s account of the battle of Cynoscephalae. Finally, Livy cannot be altogether acquitted on the charge of having here and there modified Polybius in the interests of Rome.
Style.—Serious as these defects in Livy’s method appear if viewed in the light of modern criticism, it is probable that they were easily pardoned, if indeed they were ever discovered, by his contemporaries. For it was on the artistic rather than on the critical side of history that stress was almost universally laid in antiquity, and the thing that above all others was expected from the historian was not so much a scientific investigation and accurate exposition of the truth, as its skilful presentation in such a form as would charm and interest the reader. Tried by this standard, Livy deservedly won and held a place in the very first rank. Asinius Pollio sneered at his Patavinity, and the emperor Caligula denounced him as verbose, but with these exceptions the opinion of antiquity was unanimous in pronouncing him a consummate literary workman. The classical purity of his style, the eloquence of his speeches, the skill with which he depicted the play of emotion, and his masterly portraiture of great men, are all in turn warmly commended, and in our own day we question if any ancient historian is either more readable or more widely read. It is true that for us his artistic treatment of history is not without its drawbacks. The more trained historical sense of modern times is continually shocked by the obvious untruth of his colouring, especially in the earlier parts of his history, by the palpable unreality of many of the speeches, and by the naïveté with which he omits everything, however important, which he thinks will weary his readers. But in spite of all this we are forced to acknowledge that, as a master of what we may perhaps call “narrative history,” he has no superior in antiquity; for, inferior as he is to Thucydides, to Polybius, and even to Tacitus in philosophic power and breadth of view, he is at least their equal in the skill with which he tells his story. He is indeed the prince of chroniclers, and in this respect not unworthy to be classed even with Herodotus (Quintilian, x. 1. 101). Nor is anything more remarkable than the way in which Livy’s fine taste and sense of proportion, his true poetic feeling and genuine enthusiasm, saved him from the besetting faults of the mode of treatment which he adopted. The most superficial comparison of his account of the earliest days of Rome with that given by Dionysius shows from what depths of tediousness he was preserved by these qualities. Instead of the wearisome prolixity and the misplaced pedantry which make the latter almost unreadable, we find the old tales briefly and simply told. Their primitive beauty is not marred by any attempt to force them into an historical mould, or disguised beneath an accumulation of the insipid inventions of later times. At the same time they are not treated as mere tales for children, for Livy never forgets the dignity that belongs to them as the prelude to the great epic of Rome, and as consecrated by the faith of generations. Perhaps an even stronger proof of the skill which enabled Livy to avoid dangers which were fatal to weaker men is to be found in his speeches. We cannot indeed regard them, with the Speeches. ancients, as the best part of his history, for the majority of them are obviously unhistorical, and nearly all savour somewhat too much of the rhetorical schools to be perfectly agreeable to modern taste. To appreciate them we must take them for what they are, pieces of declamation, intended either to enliven the course of the narrative, to place vividly before the reader the feelings and aims of the chief actors, or more frequently still to enforce some lesson which the author himself has at heart. The substance, no doubt, of many of them Livy took from his authorities, but their form is his own, and, in throwing into them all his own eloquence and enthusiasm, he not only acted in conformity with the established traditions of his art, but found a welcome outlet for feelings and ideas which the fall of the republic had deprived of all other means of expression. To us, therefore, they are valuable not only for their eloquence, but still more as giving us our clearest insight into Livy’s own sentiments, his lofty sense of the greatness of Rome, his appreciation of Roman courage and firmness, and his reverence for the simple virtues of older times. But, freely as Livy uses this privilege of speechmaking, his correct taste keeps his rhetoric within reasonable limits. With a very few exceptions the speeches are dignified in tone, full of life and have at least a dramatic propriety, while of such incongruous and laboured absurdities as the speech which Dionysius puts into the mouth of Romulus, after the rape of the Sabine women, there are no instances in Livy.
But, if our estimate of the merits of his speeches is moderated by doubts as to his right to introduce them at all, no such scruples interfere with our admiration for the skill with which he has drawn the portraits of the great men who figure in his pages. We may indeed doubt whether in all cases they are drawn with perfect accuracy and impartiality, but of their life-like vigour and clearness there can be no question. With Livy this portrait-painting was a labour of love. “To all great men,” says Seneca, “he gave their due ungrudgingly,” but he is at his best in dealing with those who, like Q. Fabius Maximus, “the Delayer,” were in his eyes the most perfect types of the true Roman.
The general effect of Livy’s narrative is no doubt a little spoilt by the awkward arrangement, adopted from his authorities, which obliges him to group the events by years, and thus to disturb their natural relations and continuity. As the result his history has the appearance of being rather a series of brilliant pictures loosely strung together than a coherent narrative. But it is impossible not to admire the copious variety of thought and language, and the evenly flowing style which carried him safely through the dreariest periods of his history; and still more remarkable is the dramatic power he displays when some great crisis or thrilling episode stirs his blood, such as the sack of Rome by the Gauls, the battle by the Metaurus and the death of Hasdrubal.
In style and language Livy represents the best period of Latin prose writing. He has passed far beyond the bald and meagre diction of the early chroniclers. In his hands Latin acquired a flexibility and a richness of vocabulary unknown to it before. If he writes with less finish and a less perfect rhythm than his favourite model Cicero, he excels him in the varied structure of his periods, and their adaptation to the subject-matter. It is true that here and there the “creamy richness” of his style becomes verbosity, and that he occasionally draws too freely on his inexhaustible store of epithets, metaphors and turns of speech; but these faults, which did not escape the censure even of friendly critics like Quintilian, are comparatively rare in the extant parts of his work. From the tendency to use a poetic diction in prose, which was so conspicuous a fault in the writers of the silver age, Livy is not wholly free. In his earlier books especially there are numerous phrases and sentences which have an unmistakably poetic ring, recalling sometimes Ennius and more often his contemporary Virgil. But in Livy this poetic element is kept within bounds, and serves only to give warmth and vividness to the narrative. Similarly, though the influence of rhetoric upon his language, as well as upon his general treatment, is clearly perceptible, he has not the perverted love of antithesis, paradox and laboured word-painting which offends us in Tacitus; and, in spite of the Venetian richness of his colouring, and the copious flow of his words, he is on the whole wonderfully natural and simple.
These merits, not less than the high tone and easy grace of his narrative and the eloquence of his speeches, gave Livy a hold on Roman readers such as only Cicero and Virgil besides him ever obtained. His history formed the groundwork of nearly all that was afterwards written on the subject. Plutarch, writers on rhetoric like the elder Seneca, moralists like Valerius Maximus, went to Livy for their stock examples. Florus and Eutropius abridged him; Orosius extracted from him his proofs of the sinful blindness of the pagan world; and in every school Livy was firmly established as a text-book for the Roman youth.
Text.—The received text of the extant thirty-five books of Livy is taken from different sources, and no one of our MSS. contains them all. The MSS. of the first decade, some thirty in number, are with one exception derived, more or less directly, from a single archetype, viz., the recension made in the 4th century by the two Nicomachi, Flavianus and Dexter, and by Victorianus. This is proved in the case of the older MSS. by written subscriptions to that effect, and in the case of the rest by internal evidence. Of all these descendants of the Nicomachean recension, the oldest is the Codex Parisinus of the 10th century, and the best the Codex Mediceus or Florentinus of the 11th. An independent value attaches to the ancient palimpsest of Verona, of which the first complete account was given by Mommsen in Abhandl. der preussischen Akad. der Wissenschaften (1868). It contains the third, fourth, fifth and fragments of the sixth book, and, according to Mommsen, whose conclusions are accepted by Madvig (Emend. Livianae, 2nd ed., 1877, p. 37), it is derived, not from the Nicomachean recension, but from an older archetype common to both.
For the third decade our chief authority is the Codex Puteanus, an uncial MS. of the 5th century, now at Paris. For the fourth we have two leading MSS.—Codex Bambergensis, 11th century, and the slightly older Codex Moguntinus, now lost and only known through the Mainz edition of 1518-1519. What remains of the fifth decade depends on the 5th century Laurishamensis or Vindobonensis from the monastery of Lorsch, edited at Basel in 1531.