Henry Francis Pelham

“ Gold, precious stones and Greek masterpieces adorned its walls. Most marvellous of all were the grounds in which it stood, with their meadows and lakes, their shady woods and their distant views. To defray the enormous cost, Italy and the provinces, says Tacitus, were ransacked, and in Asia and Achaia especially the rapacity of the imperial commissioners recalled the days of Mummius and of Sulla. ”

“ 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.
This enthusiasm for Rome and for Roman virtues is, moreover, saved from degenerating into gross partiality by the genuine candour of Livy’s mind and by his wide sympathies with every thing great and good. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we except writers like Voltaire who could see in Augustus only the man who had destroyed the old republic and extinguished political liberty, the verdict of posterity on Augustus has varied just in proportion as his critics have fixed their attention, mainly, on the means by which he rose to power, or the use which he made of the power when acquired. ”

“ If we may believe report, Nero found time in the intervals of his artistic triumphs for more vicious excesses. The stories of his mock marriage with Sporus, his execution of wealthy Greeks for the sake of their money, and his wholesale plundering of the temples were evidently part of the accepted tradition about him in the time of Suetonius, and are at least credible. Far more certainly true is his ungrateful treatment of Domitius Corbulo, who, when he landed at Cenchreae, fresh from his successes in Armenia, was met by an order for his instant execution and at once put an end to his life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the moment Augustus turned, almost of necessity, to his surviving step-son. Tiberius was associated with him as Agrippa had been in the tribunician power, was married against his will to Julia, and sent to complete his brother Drusus’s work in Germany (7–6 B.C.) . But Tiberius was only his step-son, and, with all his great qualities, was never a very lovable man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the road the news met him that Vindex had been crushed by the army of the Rhine, and for the moment he resolved to abandon his attempt. Meanwhile, Nero had reluctantly left Greece, but returned to Italy only to renew his revels. When on the 19th of March the news reached him at Naples of the rising in Gaul, he allowed a week to elapse before he could tear himself away from his pleasures, and then contented himself with proscribing Vindex, and setting a price on his head. The revolts in Spain and Germany terrified him too late into something like energy. ”

“ But the attack was never delivered, for at this moment, in the rear of Tiberius, the whole of Pannonia and Dalmatia burst into a blaze of insurrection. The crisis is pronounced by Suetonius to have been more serious than any which had confronted Rome since the Hannibalic war, for it was not merely the loss of a province but the invasion of Italy that was threatened, and Augustus openly declared in the senate that the insurgents might be before Rome in ten days. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When in 68 his neighbour Galba, the governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, rose in revolt against Nero, Otho accompanied him to Rome. Resentment at the treatment he had received from Nero may have impelled him to this course, but to this motive was added before long that of personal ambition. Galba was far advanced in years, and Otho, encouraged by the predictions of astrologers, aspired to succeed him. But in January 69 his hopes were dissipated by Galba’s formal adoption of L. Calpurnius Piso as the fittest man to succeed him. Nothing remained for Otho but to strike a bold blow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Augustus, however, was now seventy-two, the Dalmatian outbreak had severely tried his nerve, and now for the second time in three years the fates seemed to pronounce clearly against a further prosecution of his long-cherished scheme of a Roman Germany reaching to the Elbe.
All that was immediately necessary was done. Recruiting was pressed forward in Rome, and first Tiberius and then Germanicus were despatched to the Rhine. But the German leaders were too prudent to risk defeat, and the Roman generals devoted their attention mainly to strengthening the line of the Rhine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the frontiers, thanks chiefly to Corbulo's energy and skill, no disaster occurred serious enough to shake the general confidence, and even the murder of Britannicus seems to have been accepted as a necessary measure of self-defence. But Seneca's fear lest Nero's sleeping passions should once be roused were fully verified, and he seems to have seen all along where the danger lay, namely in Agrippina's imperious temper and insatiable love of power. The success of Seneca's own management of Nero largely depended on his being able gradually to emancipate the emperor from his rnother's control. ”

“ In 18 B.C. Augustus’s imperium was renewed for five years, and his tried friend Marcus Agrippa, now his son-in-law, was associated with him as a colleague. From October of 19 B.C. till the middle of 16 B.C. Augustus’s main attention was given to Rome and to domestic reform, and to this period belong such measures as the Julian law “as to the marriage of the orders.” In June of 17 B.C. the opening of the new and better age, which he had worked to bring about, was marked by the celebration in Rome of the Secular games. ”

“ Fearing that worse might follow when the kingdom should be annexed, and encouraged by the absence of the legate and his legions, the Iceni, led by Prasutagus's daughter Boudicca (Boadicea) rose in revolt and were joined by the Trinobantes in Essex, who had been long subject to Rome and had their own grievances to redress. Colchester, since A.D. 50 a Roman colony, was sacked. The ninth legion which had hurried from Lincoln was cut to pieces, and the insurgents prepared to march on London. The news of the outbreak found the legate Suetonius Paulinus engaged in attacking Anglesey. ”

“ Nor has Livy much acquaintance with either the theory or the practice of politics. He exhibits, it is true, political sympathies and antipathies. He is on the whole for the nobles and against the commons; and, though the unfavourable colours in which he paints the leaders of the latter are possibly reflected from the authorities he followed, it is evident that he despised and disliked the multitude. Of monarchy he speaks with a genuine Roman hatred, and we know that in the last days of the republic his sympathies were wholly with those who strove in vain to save it. ”

“ In the next year (16 B.C.) , however, Augustus was suddenly called away from Rome to deal with a problem which engrossed much of his attention for the next twenty-five years. The defeat of Marcus Lollius, the legate commanding on the Rhine, by a horde of German invaders, seems to have determined Augustus to take in hand the whole question of the frontiers of the empire towards the north, and the effective protection of Gaul and Italy. The work was entrusted to Augustus’s step-sons Tiberius and Drusus. ”

“ Galba, Piso and others were brutally murdered by the praetorian. The brief struggle over, Otho returned in triumph to the camp, and on the same day was duly invested by the senators with the name of Augustus, the tribunician power and the other dignities belonging to the principate. Otho had owed his success, not only to the resentment felt by the praetorian guards at Galba’s well-meant attempts to curtail their privileges in the interests of discipline, but also largely to the attachment felt in Rome for the memory of Nero ”

“ It is not surprising, therefore, to find that he fails altogether to present a clear and coherent picture of the history and working of the Roman constitution, or that his handling of intricate questions of policy is weak and inadequate.
Sources.—If from the general aim and spirit of Livy’s history we pass to consider his method of workmanship, we are struck at once by the very different measure of success attained by him in the two great departments of an historian’s labour. He is a consummate artist, but an unskilled and often careless investigator and critic. ”

“ But of late years, our increasing mistrust of the current gossip about him, and our increased knowledge of the magnitude of what he actually accomplished, have conspicuously influenced the judgments passed upon him. We allow the faults and crimes of his early manhood, his cruelties and deceptions, his readiness to sacrifice everything that came between him and the end he had in view. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Five days later the news reached Rome of the disaster to Varus and his legions, in the heart of what was to have been the new province of Germany beyond the Rhine. The disaster was avowedly due entirely to Varus’s incapacity and vanity, and might no doubt have been repaired by leaders of the calibre of Tiberius and Germanicus. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In September 59 he re-entered Rome amid universal rejoicing. A prolonged carnival followed. Chariot races, musical and dramatic exhibitions, games in the Greek fashion rapidly succeeded each other. In all the emperor was a prominent figure, but these revels at least involved no bloodshed, and were civilized compared with the gladiatorial shows.
A far more serious result of the death of Agrippina was the growing influence over Nero of Poppaea and her friends. In 62 Burrus died, it was said by poison, and Seneca retired from the unequal contest. ”

“ Augustus was ageing fast, and was more and more disinclined to appear personally in the senate or in public. Yet in A.D. 13 he consented, reluctantly we are told, to yet one more renewal of his imperium for ten years, stipulating, however, that his step-son Tiberius, himself now over fifty, should be associated with himself on equal terms in the administration of the empire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lepidus was an object of contempt to all parties, and Octavianus and Antonius remained to fight for supreme power.
The five years (36–31 B.C.) which preceded the decisive encounter between the two rivals were wasted by Antony in fruitless campaigns, and in a dalliance with Cleopatra which shocked Roman sentiment. By Octavian they were employed in strengthening his hold on the West, and his claim to be regarded as the one possible saviour of Rome and Roman civilization. ”

“ It is urged that Livy, who in the fourth and fifth decades shows himself so sensible of the great merits of Polybius, is not likely to have ignored him in the third, and that his more limited use of him in the latter case is fully accounted for by the closer connexion of the history with Rome and Roman affairs, and the comparative excellence of the available Roman authorities, and, lastly, that the points of agreement with Polybius, not only in matter but in expression, can only be explained on the theory that Livy is directly following the great Greek historian. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gaius, wounded by an obscure hand in Armenia, started reluctantly for home, only to die in Lycia. Tiberius alone was left, and Augustus, at once accepting facts, formally and finally declared him to be his colleague and destined successor (A.D. 4) and adopted him as his son.
The interest of the last ten years of Augustus’s life centres in the events occurring on the northern frontier. The difficult task of bringing the German tribes between the Rhine and the Elbe under Roman rule, commenced by Drusus in 13 B.C., had on his death been continued by Tiberius (9–6 B.C.) . ”