Livadia

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So great was the fame of Livy in his own life-time, that people came from the extremity of Spain and Gaul, for the purpose only of beholding so celebrated a historian, who was regarded, for his abilities, as a prodigy. This affords a strong proof, not only of the literary taste which then prevailed over the most extensive of the Roman provinces, but of the extraordinary pains with which so great a work must have been propagated, when the art of printing was unknown. ”

“ Livy died at Padua, in his 67th year, and according to some, on that same day Rome was also deprived of another of its brightest ornaments, by the death of the poet Ovid, A.D. 17. It is said that Livia had appointed Livy to be the preceptor to young Claudius the brother of Germanicus, but death prevented the historian from enjoying an honour to which he was particularly entitled by his learning and his universal knowledge. The name of Livy is rendered immortal by his history of the Roman empire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Padua was a bustling place, where public-speaking was rife, and aptitude for affairs common; thus Livy was nursed in eloquence and in scenes of human activity. Nothing tended to turn his mind to the contemplation of nature—at least we see no signs of it in his work,—his conceptions of national development were uncomplicated by reference to the share that physical conditions have in moulding it; man alone, and man as in all respects self-determining, has interest for him. ”

“ So if the poor fragment which came to us recently from Mainz was justly welcomed by scholars with great rejoicing, [115] what acclamation should greet this large addition to Livy's History?
Would to God that this author could be restored to us complete and entire. There are rumours flying round that give some hope of this: men boast of unpublished Liviana existing, now in Denmark, now in Poland, now in Germany. At least now that fortune has given us these remnants against all men's expectations, I do not see why we should despair of the possibility of finding still more. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ At length she became calm, and after bitterly reproaching Aebutius for the return he had made after all she had done for him, and declared that while she stood in great fear of the gods, whose occult mysteries she was revealing, she stood in much greater fear of men who would tear her to pieces if she turned informer. So she begged Sulpicia and the consul to remove her to some place outside the borders of Italy where she could pass the rest of her days in safety. The consul bade her be under no apprehension; he would see to it that she found a safe home in Rome. ”

“ In a few days after the combined fleet of the Romans and Rhodians came from Samos to Elæa, to support the king. When information was brought to Antiochus that these had landed troops at Elæa, and that so many fleets were assembled in one harbour, and at the same time heard that the consul, with his army, was already in Macedonia, and that the things that were necessary for the passage of the Hellespont were being prepared, he judged that now was the time for negotiation, before he should be pressed on sea and land at once ”

“ This canonisation of Rome is Livy's largest and most abiding achievement. The elder Seneca, one of his ablest literary contemporaries, observes, in a fine passage, that when historians reach in their narrative the death of some great man, they give a summing-up of his whole life as though it were an eulogy pronounced over his grave. Livy, he adds, the most candid of all historians in his appreciation of genius, does this with unusual grace and sympathy. ”

“ Like Virgil, Livy traced the origin of the Latin people to Æneas, and like Milton, he re-told the ancient stories, saying that he had no intention of affirming or refuting the traditions that had come down to his time of what had occurred before the building of the city, though he thought them rather suitable for the fictions of poetry than for the genuine records of the historian. He added, that it was an indulgence conceded to antiquity to blend human things with things divine, in such a way as to make the origin of cities appear more venerable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What the Spaniards, the Gauls, the Macedonians, the Carthaginians did not dare to do, this the Ligurian is doing today; he comes up to the Roman rampart and actually surrounds and attacks our camp. And yet, formerly, it was hard to discover him after a close search as he lurked in his trackless hiding-places!" His words were met by a unanimous shout of approval from the soldiers. It was no fault of theirs, they said; no one had given the signal for a sortie; let him give the signal now, he would soon learn that the Romans and the Ligurians were the same that they had always been. ”

“ On the fifth day after that I offered sacrifice to Apollo, at Delphi, in expiation of myself, of your armies and fleets. From Delphi I arrived on the fifth day in the camp; where, having received the command of the army, and altered several matters which greatly impeded success, I advanced into the country; as the enemy’s camp was impregnable, and Perseus could not be brought to an action, I forced the pass of Petra in the very face of his guards, and at length, compelled the king to come to an engagement, and gained a complete victory. I reduced Macedonia under the power of the Romans ”

“ Philip, intent on hastening his march, and in no degree deterred by the clouds, which after the rain lowered over the face of the country, ordered his troops to march: and yet so thick a fog had obscured the day, that neither the standard-bearers could see the road, nor the soldiers the standards; so that all, led blindly by the shouts of uncertain guides, fell into disorder, like men wandering by night. When they had passed over the hills called Cynoscephalae, where they set a strong guard of foot and horse, they pitched their camp. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ambassadors brought word that the Lavicanians had taken arms, and having ravaged the Tusculan territory in conjunction with the army of the Æquans, that they had pitched their camp at Algidum. Then war was proclaimed against the Lavicanians; and a decree of the senate having been passed, that two of the tribunes should proceed to the war, and that one should manage affairs at Rome, a contest suddenly sprung up among the tribunes. Each represented himself as a fitter person to take the lead in the war, and scorned the management of the city as disagreeable and inglorious. ”

“ Livia, then, about 18 B.C. personified in the eyes of the Romans the perfect type of aristocratic great lady created by long tradition. Having been safely preserved by good fortune through the long civil wars, this model was now set back again upon a fitting pedestal in the most powerful and richest family of the empire. She was the living example of all the virtues which the Romans most cherished, a beloved wife and a heeded counselor to the head of the state, honored with that veneration which power, virtue, nobility of birth, and the dignified beauty of face and figure drew from every one ”

“ Though the new bride was descended from one of the most aristocratic and powerful families of Rome, her relatives were not especially prominent at that time; so it would seem that the triumvir's regard for her was not regulated by the calculations of expediency. Livia possessed not only beauty, but also the character of mind which was likely to charm a man with the disposition of Octavius. She was quick to understand and appreciate his intelligent purposes and far-reaching achievements. There was between the two that sympathy which is the absolute requisite of a happy marriage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Serene and practical, Livia seems to have accepted the fate assigned her and endured all the sacrifices it involved. A few years later, however, when Tiberius Claudius Nero died, he appointed Octavian,—who had then become the Emperor Augustus,—the guardian of his sons, and Livia received them back and cared for them with a mother’s devoted solicitude. She seems truly to have won the admiration if not the affection of Augustus. He was proud of her ability, her faithfulness, her household thrift, her wise counsel in the affairs of state. They lived simply in their house upon the Palatine. ”

“ Having pitched his camp at the distance of a mile from the enemy, he kept his men quiet. The enemy filled the space lying between the two camps with their army in order of battle, and not a single Roman made answer when they challenged them to fight. At length, wearied with standing and waiting in vain for a contest, the Aequans and Volscians, considering that the victory was almost yielded to them, went off some to Hernican, others to Latin territory, to commit depredations. There was left in the camp rather a garrison for its defence than sufficient force for a contest. ”

“ Has the man whose appeals failed to rouse a single slave been so successful as to corrupt you? Is it when the enemy is over our heads that you decide that men shall lay down their arms and discuss laws?" Then turning to the Assembly he said, "If, Quirites, you feel no concern for the City, no anxiety for yourselves, still show reverence for your gods who have been taken captive by an enemy! Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Queen Juno and Minerva, with other gods and goddesses, are being besieged; a camp of slaves holds the tutelary deities of your country in its power. ”