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From An Introduction to the History of History, by James T. Shotwell; Columbia University Press; New York; 1922; pp. 247-256.

247


CHAPTER XXI

LIVY

WHATEVER opinions one may have as to the place of Sallust among historians, that of Livy remains unchallenged. He was the national historian of Rome; the only one who successfully handled the long and intricate story of war and politics from the establishment of the City to that of the Empire. Others worked at portions; he took over the whole. Even in mere size his history was monumental. It had no less than one hundred forty-two books; and a book in Livy is not like the meagre division of Cæsar’s Commentaries; it is a small work in itself. But apart from its vastness, the conception which underlay the history of Livy was so consistently developed, the outlines of his structure so clear and so harmonious, that it is hardly too much to say that it was the impress which he gave to the history of the Republic that lasted down to the day of Niebuhr and the nineteenth century critics. He carried the idea of the fated mission of Rome as the unifying centre of the civilized world back across the centuries of its obscurity, and linked together past, present and future in one culminating perspective. In a sense it was merely the reflection in history of the greatness of the writer’s own times. But the fact that those times were great made the faith in Rome itself, —   — which was Livy’s creed, — almost the same as a belief in human progress or a vital interest in organized society. Thus his patriotism became catholic, and remained an inspiration to succeeding ages, even after the Roman world had passed away.1 Whatever criticism may have to say as to his methods of work, it cannot shake the place of Livy as one of the few historians whose works have lived rather than endured. Judged 248 in this light, the national historian of Rome stands high among the old masters.

Titus Livius (59 B.C.-17 A.D.) was born at Padua, but passed most of his life at Rome, and wrote under the direct patronage of Augustus. Indeed, he represented in history that effort toward reform in morals, in which Augustus was so much concerned, by the strong emphasis which he placed upon the ancient virtues and the depiction of heroic acts and patriotic sacrifice.2 But the very sincerity of character, which revealed itself in this moral attitude of Livy, kept him independent in spirit, so that although at court he was no courtier. He did not, like Horace and Vergil, place Augustus among the gods, and indeed only mentioned him incidentally, “once to mark a date, again to prove a fact.”3 On the other hand, he ventured to praise Brutus and Cassius.4 A sturdy provincial, without any of the ties that made partisanship a family virtue, he came to Rome just when the hot feuds of the latter Republic were quenched in the great civil wars, and the era of corruption and intrigue which obscured the perspectives of Sallust was apparently over. Consequently, without surrendering his republican principles, he could see in the Principate a continuation of these elements in the Roman past which made for greatness. But while his character and outlook are clearly shown in his works and in the few references we have concerning his life, those references are so few that, as in the case of Herodotus, we are left with a history rather than a historian. As Taine has somewhat sententiously summed it up: “A date in Eusebius, some details scattered in Seneca and Quintilian, two words thrown by chance in his own work; that is all that is left us on the life of Titus Livius. The historian of Rome has no history.”5 The fragments we have show him to have been modest in the midst of his vast popularity;6 his work 249 reveals the fact that he travelled little and read much; and his style bears the marks of the training of a rhetor. In other words he was a cultured gentleman of studious habits. Beyond that we can hardly go.

When we turn from the man to the history, we may as well begin at the beginning and let Livy describe his purpose and his conception of the work, as he does, frankly enough, in the Preface to the Ab Urbe Condita:

“Whether the task I have undertaken of writing a complete history of the Roman people from the very commencement of its existence will reward me for the labour spent on it, I neither know for certain, nor if I did know would I venture to say. For I see that this is an old-established and a common practice, each fresh writer being invariably persuaded that he will either attain greater certainty in the materials of his narrative or surpass the rudeness of antiquity in the excellence of his style.

“However this may be, it will still be a great satisfaction to me to have taken my part, too, in investing, to the utmost of my abilities, the annals of the foremost nation in the world with a deeper interest; and if in such a crowd of writers my own reputation is thrown into the shade, I would console myself with the renown and greatness of those who eclipse my fame.

“The subject moreover is one that demands immense labour. It goes back beyond 700 years, and, starting from small and humble beginnings, has grown to such dimensions that it begins to be overburdened by its greatness. I have very little doubt, too, that for the majority of my readers, the earliest times and those immediately succeeding will possess little attraction; they will hurry on to those modern days in which the might of a long paramount nation is wasting by internal decay. I, on the other hand, shall look for a further reward of my labours in being able to close my eyes to the evils which our generation has witnessed for so many years; so long, at least, as I am devoting all my thoughts to retracing those pristine records, free from all the anxiety which can disturb the historian of his own times even if it cannot warp him from the truth.

“The traditions of what happened prior to the foundation of the City, or whilst it was being built, are more fitted to adorn the creations of the poet than the authentic records of the historian, and I have no intention of establishing either their truth or their falsehood. This much licence is conceded to the ancients, that by intermingling human actions with divine they may confer a more august dignity on the origins of states. Now, if any nation ought to be allowed to claim a sacred origin and point back to divine paternity, that nation is Rome. For such is her renown in war that when she chooses to represent Mars as her own and her founder’s father, the nations of the world accept the statement with the same equanimity with which they accept her dominion.

250

“But whatever opinions may be formed or criticisms passed upon these and similar traditions, I regard them as of small importance. The subjects to which I would ask each of my readers to devote his earnest attention are these — the life and morals of the community; the men and the qualities by which, through domestic policy and foreign war, dominion was won and extended. Then, as the standard of morality gradually lowers, let him follow the decay of the national character, observing how at first it slowly sinks, then slips downward more and more rapidly, and finally begins to plunge into headlong ruin, until he reaches those days in which we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies.

“There is this exceptionally beneficial and fruitful advantage to be derived from the study of the past, that you see, set in the clear light of historical truth, examples of every possible type. From these you may select for yourself and your country what to imitate, and what, as being mischievous in its inception and disastrous in its issue, you are to avoid. Unless, however, I am misled by affection for my undertaking, there has never existed any commonwealth greater in power, with a purer morality, or more fertile in good examples; or any state in which avarice and luxury have been so late in making their inroads, or poverty and frugality so highly and continuously honoured, showing so clearly that the less wealth men possessed the less they coveted. In these latter years wealth has brought avarice in its train, and the unlimited command of pleasure has created in men a passion for ruining themselves and everything else through self-indulgence and licentiousness.

“But criticisms which will be unwelcome, even when perhaps necessary, must not appear in the commencement, at all events, of this extensive work. We should much prefer to start with favourable omens, and if we could have adopted the poets’ custom, it would have been much pleasanter to commence with prayers and supplications to gods and goddesses that they would grant a favourable and successful issue of the great task before me.”7

Nowhere else in antique historiography have we so winning an appeal. It has the personal note of Polybius without his pedagogical airs, the moral atmosphere of Sallust but not his censorious declamation, and a promise of the charm of a Herodotus in the logi about old, forgotten things that take the mind off the sordid cares of the present. The light touch which brings one at the close to the borderland that lies between humor and poetry, shows at once the sure hand of a master. The omens are favorable when the historian has in mind the frailties of his readers to the point 251 of not recalling them unduly, but can leave the heroic past to convey its own lessons.

The history of Livy bore the simple title, From the Foundation of the City (Ab Urbe Condita), and it properly begins with Æneas, whose deeds are hurriedly sketched on the basis of the “generally accepted” legend.8 There is little indication of enthusiasm for this or the story of Romulus which follows. There is even a rising doubt as to the divine paternity of the founder of Rome and a naturalistic alternative to the tales about him. Indeed, the narrative hardly gets under way in the legends of origin. It is not until we have the struggle of Rome against Alba Longa, culminating in the dramatic duel of the three Horatii against the Curiatii,9 that we are conscious of the swing of unfettered movement and the play of the historical imagination. The problem of origins is left unsolved; the case is given away to neither the credulous nor the skeptical; details hardly matter; for in any case, says Livy, “in my opinion, the origin of so great a city and the establishment of an empire next in power to that of the gods was due to the Fates.”10

This at once suggests the phase of Livy’s story which is most open to question in our eyes. It is so religious in tone as to be frankly mediæval in the inclusion of the supernatural as an intrinsic part of the human story, and especially in the handling of crises, when by miracle or portent the gods reveal themselves. Omens and prodigies abound; when the gods are not on the scene they are just behind it. Herodotus by comparison is almost modern, for, although the oracles play a great part in his narrative, the gods remain aloof. Livy, on the contrary, in the spirit of Augustus’ religious reforms,11 made piety the very core of patriotism. There is a flavor of Stoic doctrine, as Pelham points out, in the way in which Fate “disposes the plans of men,12 and blinds their minds,13 yet leaves their wills free.”14 But the philosopher yields 252 to the historian, as he relates the narratives, in the way he finds them in his sources, and realizes how fully his characters believed in all the apparatus of official magic, and the uncanny presences that heralded disaster or victory. In a sentence with is practically unmatched in antique history for penetrating historical imagination, he admits the influence which the old faiths exert over him as he sinks himself into the past and learns to think and feel the way his ancient heroes did. “In narrating ancient things,” he says, “my soul, I know not how, becomes antique, and when I see men so wise treat these events as affairs of state, I have scruples at finding them unworthy my annals.”15 This is certainly the most that can be said in his defence. If the gods reveal the future, as they do in the instance which calls forth this aside, they are moving in the pages of Livy as they did through the brains of his heroes, and to that degree the supernatural is the more natural history.

The story of Rome was one of constant war, and Livy is at his best describing campaigns and battle scenes. A man of letters and not a soldier himself, he is deficient in military science and inaccurate in geography,16 and his sense of numbers is poor; yet his narrative of action is nervous, swift and forceful. While in argumentative sections his style is often involved and sometimes drags, here he has the art of securing speed and yet combining it with the picturesque. The only thing that spoils his best portions is the chance that he will interrupt them to insert just such an argument in the shape of interminable speeches or harangues. These were undoubtedly, in Livy’s eye, the high points of his art; for the influence of Isocrates, or at least of that form of rhetoric which Romans most admired, was dominant in his style. There are over four hundred speeches in the thirty-five books which have come down to us, and they were adjudged, by no less a critic than Quintilian, to be unsurpassed in diction and content.17 It must be admitted, indeed, that they are not vapid declamations but real, characteristic speeches; but they are often long and labored.

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It was not the speeches which Livy feared might drive readers away, but the long succession of the wars themselves. After ten books of them he is moved to exhort the tired reader to continue as a patriotic task:

“What sort of a man must he be who would find the long story of those wars tedious, though he is only narrating or reading it, when they failed to wear out those who were actually engaged in them.”18

In this apprehension Livy was justified. It was the greatest tribute to his genius that antiquity preserved, well into the Middle Ages, so vast a repertory of archaic wars. If only relatively small portions of the great work have come down to us,19 it was not until those dark ages after the seventh century that the missing books disappeared, and even some parts of them are preserved in extracts by later authors. Why the long story of obscure struggles was preserved when so much more important parts were lost is of course impossible to say; but perhaps the historian’s love for those quaint far-off days had something to do in preserving them.

When we turn from the art of Livy to his criticism and use of sources, we at once come upon his weakness. Criticism was contrary to his nature. He was a narrator. He gives one the impression that he used criticism only superficially and because it was the fashion.20 He did not discriminate among his sources, but took what best fitted with the scheme of the story. Pictor and Polybius21 were used, but not consistently. Second-hand annalists were good enough so long as they contained the data. While hardly going so far as to apply the adage se non e vero e ben trovato, Livy did not interest himself in those researches in either philology or antiquarian lore which the new scholarship of his day had made available. It is enough to say that he shows no trace of having read Varro.22

There are, however, signs of the distinct sense of dependence 254 upon the sources which he found available. The most notable is the difference in tone after the burning of the city by the Gauls. The sixth book, which begins the new era, starts as follows:

“The history of the Romans from the foundation of the City to its capture, . . . has been set forth in the five preceding books. The subject-matter is enveloped in obscurity; partly from its great antiquity, like remote objects which are hardly discernible through the vastness of the distance; partly owing to the fact that written records, which form the only trustworthy memorials of events, were in those times few and scanty, and even what did exist in the pontifical commentaries and public and private archives nearly all perished in the conflagration of the City. Starting from the second beginnings of the City, which, like a plant cut to its roots, sprang up in greater beauty and fruitfulness, the details of its history both civil and military will now be exhibited in their proper order, with greater clearness and certainty.”23

The promise in these latter lines was made good rather in a literary than a scholarly sense. Where all his authorities agree, he is happy;24 where they disagree he is without any principles of criticism to guide him. An interesting instance of this is in a passage to which reference has already been made. After stating that his readers will doubtless tire of his Volscians, he goes on to say:

“But they will also be struck with the same difficulty which I have myself felt whilst examining the authorities who lived nearer to this period, namely, from what source did the Volscians obtain sufficient soldiers after so many defeats? Since this point has been passed over by the ancient writers, what can I do more than express an opinion, such as anyone may form from his own inferences.”25

The point to be noted is that Livy does not dream of questioning the fact of the great size of the Volscian army, in view of the agreement of his authorities. He can only turn aside to theories which may help to rationalize the account so as to make it more credible. The modern historian must first do what Livy seems not to have done at all, determine the relation of his various sources one to the other.

If Livy was not a scholarly historian, neither was he qualified 255 by that experience in practical affairs which Polybius preferred to scholarship. His failure to see the value of that wider knowledge of men and places shows itself not only in his lack of exactness in geography, to which reference has been made, but it narrows as well his view of history and of Rome. As Pelham has so ably put it, “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, that must be dealt with, not as an isolated fact, but in connexion with the general march of events in the civilized world. . . .  Livy writes as a Roman, to raise a monument worthy the greatness of Rome, and to keep alive, for the guidance and warning of Romans, the recollection alike of the virtues which had made Rome great and of the vices which had threatened her with destruction.”26

Livy’s history is, therefore, intensely patriotic. Rome was always in the right. Its rise was due to the sterling virtues of the good old days; above all, to piety. The fathers of the Republic are men of courage and firmness, and of unshaken faith in the greatness of their destiny. Fortunately, these are virtues of general application, and however inadequate they may be as an explanation of the Roman triumph, they offered to subsequent moralists much inspiration to apply the lessons elsewhere. It is only in our own day that civic virtues have ceased to be impressed upon the young by the model supplied from the pages of the classics. And it is sufficient tribute to Livy in this regard to recall that he was the one writer of antiquity singled out by the clearest political thinker of the humanistic era, Machiavelli, to drive home to his age the lessons of the past.27

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The literature on Livy is so well organized in the various manuals that no detailed bibliography is necessary here. Several editions of the text may be noted, however. They are those of W. Weissenborn and M. Müller (3 vols., Teubner, 1882-1885; 2d ed., Vols. I-II, 1901-1915); A. Zingerle (3 vols., 1883-1904); R. S. Conway and C. F. Walters (Oxford Library of Classical 256 Authors, Vol. I, 1914). The translation of the Loeb Classical Library is by B. O. Foster (13 vols., Vol. I, 1919), that in Everyman’s Library is by W. M. Roberts (3 vols., 1912). Bibliographies are to be found in the Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, Vol. CXLVII (1910), pp. 113 sqq., for 1901-1909; Sup. Vol. CLVI, pp. 513 sqq.; Vol. CLXXIII (1915), pp. 73 sq., pp. 210 sq.; Vol. CLXXVII (1916-1918), p. 241.

FOOTNOTES

1  Cf. A. Molinier, Les sources de l’histoire de France, Vol. I, p. 36 for the influence of Livy’s perspective upon the historical ideas of the Middle Ages. The influence, however, was rather indirect, while from the days of the humanists to our own Livy has again his place among “the classics.” .

2   Cf. H. Peter, Wahrheit und Kunst, p. 352.

3  H. Taine, Essai sur Tite Live (1856), p. 6.

4  Cf. Tacitus, Annales, Bk. IV, Chap. XXXIV.

5  H. Taine, Essai sur Tite Live, p. 1.

6  The younger Pliny tells us a striking story, apparently current in his day, which sufficiently indicates the contemporary fame of Livy. “Have you never read (he says to Nepos) about a certain man from Cadiz, who came from the very end of the world to see Livy, moved thereto by the latter’s name and fame, and immediately after seeing him went back him again?” Cf. Epistulæ, Bk. II, Letter 3.

7  Translation by W. M. Roberts in the edition of Livy in Everyman’s Library (3 vols., 1912). The translator has succeeded in giving the sense of Livy’s ease of style but hardly his compression. The Latin is about half the length of the English.

8  Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Bk. I, Chap. I. The division into books is by the author (cf. Bk. VI, Chap. I, 1); that into decades or sets of ten books is a later device.

9  Ibid., Bk. I, Chap. XXV.

10  Ibid., Bk. I, Chap. IV.

11  Cf. ibid., Bk. I, Chap. XIX.

12  Ibid., Bk. I, Chap. XLII.

13  Ibid., Bk. V, Chap. XXXVII.

14  Ibid., Bk. XXXVII, Chap. XLV; H. F. Pelham, article Livy, in Encyclopædia Britannica.

15  Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Bk. XLIII, Chap. XIII.

16  His battle schenes do not work out on the actual map. Cf. H. Peter, Wahrheit und Kunst, p. 356.

17  H. Peter, op. cit., p. 356.

18  Bk. X, Chap. XXXI. Cf. also Bk.VI, Chap. XII, “I have no doubt that my readers will be tired of such a long record of incessant wars with the Volscians.”

19  The extant books are I-X, XXI-XLV, of which XLI and XLIII are incomplete.

20  H. Peter, op. cit., p. 356.

21  Polybius was used for the Greek and Oriental history in the thirtieth book; but he had nothing so good for Rome. Vide W. Soltau, Livius’ Geschichtswerk, seine Komposition und seine Quellen (1897).

22  Cf. H. F. Pelham, article Livy, in Encyclopædia Britannica.

23  Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Bk. VI, Chap. I.

24  Ibid., Bk. IV, Chap. XX; Bk.VIII, Chap. VI; Bk. VI, Chap. XII.

25  Ibid., Bk. VI, Chap. XII.

26  H. F. Pelham, article Livy, in Encyclopædia Britannica.

27  Vide Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (various editions, English translations 1836 and 1883).

[According to Wikipedia, this work was written by Niccolò Machiavelli about the year 1517. — Elf.Ed.]








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