Henry Francis Pelham

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ LIVY [Titus Livius] (59 B.C.–A.D. 17) , Roman historian, was born at Patavium (Padua) . The ancient connexion between his native city and Rome helped to turn his attention to the study which became the work of his life. For Padua claimed, like Rome, a Trojan origin, and Livy is careful to place its founder Antenor side by side with Aeneas. A more real bond of union was found in the dangers to which both had been exposed from the assaults of the Celts (Livy x. 2) , and Padua must have been drawn to Rome as the conqueror of her hereditary foes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The consequence of this indifference to original research and patient verification might have been less serious had the written tradition on which Livy preferred to rely been more trustworthy. But neither the materials out of which it was composed, nor the manner in which it had been put together, were such as to make it a safe guide. It was indeed represented by a long line of respectable names. The majority of the Roman annalists were men of high birth and education, with a long experience of affairs, and their defects did not arise from seclusion of life or ignorance of letters. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is little more than a collection of fables told with scarcely any attempt at criticism, and with no more regard to chronological sequence than was necessary to make the tale run smoothly or to fill up such gaps as that between the flight of Aeneas from Troy and the supposed year of the foundation of Rome. But from its very commencement the history of the republic wears a different aspect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even where he mentions a writer by name, it is frequently clear that the writer named is not the one whose lead he is following at the moment, but that he is noticed incidentally as differing from Livy’s guide for the time being on some point of detail (compare the references to Piso in the first decade, i. 55, ii. 32, &c.) . It is very rarely that Livy explicitly tells us whom he has selected as his chief source (e.g. Fabius xxii. 7; Polybius xxxiii. 10) . ”

“ He is often righteously indignant, but never satirical, and such a pessimism as that of Tacitus and Juvenal is wholly foreign to his nature.
Though he studied and even wrote on philosophy (Seneca, Ep. 100. 9) , Livy is by no means a philosophic historian. We learn indeed from incidental notices that he inclined to Stoicism and disliked the Epicurean system. With the scepticism that despised the gods (x. 40) and denied that they meddled with the affairs of men (xliii. 13) he has no sympathy. The immortal gods are everywhere the same ”

“ Antiquarian studies were popular in his day, but the instances are very few in which he has turned their results to account. There is no sign that he had ever read Varro; and he never alludes to Verrius Flaccus. The haziness and inaccuracy of his topography make it clear that he did not attempt to familiarize himself with the actual scenes of events even that took place in Italy. Not only does he confuse Thermon, the capital of Aetolia, with Thermopylae (xxxiii. 35) , but his accounts of the Roman campaigns against Volsci, Aequi and Samnites swarm with confusions and difficulties ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.) ”