Livy’s easy, independent life at Rome, and his aristocratic leanings in politics, have been taken as proof that he was the son of well-born and opulent parents; and it is certain that he was able to afford the luxury of a good education, for he was widely read in Greek literature, and a student both of rhetoric and philosophy. We have also evidence in his writings that he had prepared himself for his great work by researches into the history of his native town. His youth and early manhood, spent perhaps chiefly at Padua, were cast in stormy times, and the impression which they left upon his mind was ineffaceable. He was ten years old when Caesar crossed the Rubicon and civil war began. In his fifteenth year came the murder of the great dictator, of whom he afterwards declared that he knew not “whether it were better for him to have been born or not,” and one year later the murder of Cicero, to whose memory he paid an eloquent tribute. Of the part taken by Padua in the troubles which distracted the empire from 49 b.c. till the decisive victory at Actium we know nothing beyond the fact that in 43 b.c. it closed its gates against Antony, and was afterwards punished for doing so by Asinius Pollio. Livy’s personal sympathies were with Pompey and the republican party (Tac., Ann., iv. 34); but far more lasting in its effects was his experience of the licence, anarchy, and confusion of these dark days. The rule of Augustus he seems to have accepted as a necessity, but he cannot, like Horace and Virgil, welcome it as inaugurating a new and glorious era. While he endeavours to stifle his recollections of the horrors he had witnessed, by fixing his whole mind on older and better times, he writes of the present with despondency as a degenerate and declining age; and, instead of triumphant prophecies of world-wide rule, such as we find in Horace, Livy contents himself with pointing out the dangers which already threatened Rome, and exhorting his contemporaries to learn, in good time, the lessons which the past history of the state had to teach.

It was probably about the time of the battle of Actium that Livy established himself in Rome, and there he seems chiefly to have resided until his retirement to Padua shortly before his death. We have no evidence that he travelled much, though he must have paid at least one visit to Campania (xxxviii. 56), and he never, so far as we know, took any part in political life. Nor, though he enjoyed the personal friendship and patronage of Augustus (Tac., Ann., iv. 34), and stimulated the historical zeal of the future emperor Claudius (Suet., Claud., xli.), can we detect in him anything of the courtier. There is not in his history a trace of that rather gross adulation in which even Virgil does not disdain to indulge. His republican sympathies were freely expressed, and, it should be added, as freely pardoned by Augustus. We must imagine him devoted to the great task which he had set himself to perform, with a mind, as he tells us himself in his preface, free from all disturbing cares, and in the enjoyment of all the facilities for study afforded by the Rome of Augustus, with its liberal encouragement of letters, its newly-founded libraries, and its brilliant literary circles. As his work went on, the fame which he had never coveted came to him in ample measure. He is said to have declared in one volume of his history that he had already won glory enough, and the younger Pliny {Epist., ii. 3) relates that a Spaniard came all the way from Gades merely to see him, and, this accomplished, at once returned home satisfied. The accession of Tiberius (14 a.d.) materially altered for the worse the prospects of literature in Rome, and Livy may have feared for himself the fate which afterwards befell Cremutius Cordus, who was tried before the senate, for having in his annals spoken of Brutus and Cassius as the last of the Romans (Tac., Ann., iv. 34). However this may have been, Livy retired to Padua, and died there in the third year of the reign of Tiberius (17 a.d.), at the ripe age of seventy-six. When we have added that he had at least one son (Quintii., x. 1), who was possibly also an author (Pliny, Nat. Hist., i. 5, 6), and a daughter married to a certain L. Magius, a rhetorician of no great merit (Seneca, Controv., x. 29, 2), we have reached the end of all that is known with certainty of Livy’s personal history; and the apocryphal nature of the details which have been added by later admirers has been too often exposed to make it necessary to deal with them here.

But for us, as for Livy himself, the interest of his life centres in the work to which the greater part of it was devoted. For we must decline to believe with Niebuhr that his history was all written in his later years. On the contrary, various indications point to the period from 27 to 20 B.C., as that during which the first decade was written. In the first book(L 19) the emperor is called Augustus, a title which he assumed early in 27 b,c., and in ix. 18 the omission of all reference to the restoration, in 20 b.c., of the standards taken at Carrhae seems to justify the inference that the passage was written before that date. In the third decade, the allusion in xxviii. 12 to victories in Spain may, as Weissenborn thinks, refer to Agrippa’s campaigns in 19 b.c., but the words “ductu auspicioque Augusti Caesaris” point more naturally to those of Augustus himself, 27-25 b.c. In the epitome of book lix. there is a reference to a law of Augustus which was passed in 18 b.c. The books dealing with the civil wars must have been written during Augustus’s lifetime, as they were read by him (Tac., Ann., iv. 34), while there is some evidence that the last part of the work, from book cxxi. onwards, was published after his death (14 a.d.).

Livy’s history begins with the landing of Aeneas in Italy, and closes with the death of Drusus, 9 b.c., though it is possible that he intended to continue it as far as the death of Augustus. The original title of the work is unknown, but of its general plan it is possible to speak with more certainty. The division into decades is certainly not due to the author himself, and is first heard of at the end of the 5th century; on the other hand, the division into “libri” or “volumina” seems to be original. It is referred to by Livy himself (x. 31, “per quartum jam volumen”; xxxi. 1, “multa volumina”), as well as by Pliny (N. H., prxf) and by later writers. 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, x∑i. 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.) cover the 63 years of the ’ two great Punic wars. With the close of book xlv. we reach the conquest of Macedonia in 167 b,c. Book lviii. described the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, 133 b.c. In book lxxxix. we have the dictatorship of Sulla (81 b.c.), in ciii. Caesar’s first consulship (59 b.c.), in cix.-cxvi. the civil wars to the death of Caesar (44 b.c. ), in cxxiv. the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi, in cxxxiii. and cxxxiv. the battle of Actium and the accession of Augustus. The remaining eight books give the history of the first twenty years of Augustus’s reign.

Such in outline was the vast work of which Martial (xiv. 190) complains that his whole library could not contain it. But a small portion of it, however, has come down to modern times; only thirty-five books are now extant (i,-x,, xx.-xlv.), and of these xli. and xliii. are incomplete. The lost books seem to have disappeared between the 7th century and the revival of letters in the 15th,—a fact sufficiently accounted for by the difficulty of transmitting so voluminous a work in times when printing was unknown, for the story that Pope Gregory I. burnt all the copies of Livy he could lay his hands on rests on no good evidence. Only one important fragment has since been recovered,— the portion of book xc. discovered in the Vatican in 1772, and edited by Niebuhr in 1820. Very much no doubt of the substance of the lost books has been preserved both by such writers as Plutarch and Dion Cassius, and by epitomizers like Florus and Eutropius. 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. These epitomes have been ascribed without sufficient reason to Florus (2d 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 Livv.

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 (not by one only, as Niebuhr thought), 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 llth. An independent value attaches to the ancient palimpsest of Verona, of which the first complete account was given by Mommsen as recently as 1868 {Berliner Monatsber., January). It contains the third, fourth, fifth, and fragments of the sixth book, and, according to Mommsen, whose conclusions are accepted by Madvig {Emend. Livianae, 2d 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 8th century, now at Paris. For the fourth we have two leading MSS.,—Codex Bambergensis, 11th century, and the slightly older Codex Moguntinus, which is only known through the Mainz edition of 1518-19. What remains of the fifth decade depends on the Laurishamensis or Vindobonensis from the monastery of Lörsch, edited at Basel in 1531. It belongs to the 6th century.

If wo are to form a correct judgment on the merits of Livy’s history, we must, above all things, bear in mind what his aim was in writing it, and this he has told us himself in the celebrated preface which Niebuhr rather unaccountably denounces as “the worst part of his work” (Introd. Lect., p. 60). He set himself the task of recording the history of the Roman people, “the first in the world,” from the beginning. The task was a great one, and the fame to be won by it uncertain, yet it would be something to have made the attempt, and the labour itself would bring a welcome relief from the contemplation of present evils; for his readers too this record will, he says, be full of instruction: they are invited to note especially the moral lessons taught by the story of Rome, to observe how Rome rose to greatness by the simple virtues and unselfish devotion of her citizens, and how on the decay of these qualities followed degeneracy and decline.

He does not therefore write, as Polybius wrote, for students of history. 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 naive anxiety of Dionysius 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.

Livy writes as a Roman, to raise a monument worthy of the greatness of Rome, and to keep alive, for the guidance and the warning of Romans, the recollection alike of the virtues which had made Rome great and of the vices which had threatened her with destruction. In so writing he was in close agreement with the traditions of Roman literature, as well as with the conception of the nature and objects of history current in his time. 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. And this is naturally true in an especial sense of the Roman historians; the long list of annalists begins at the moment when the great struggle with Carthage had for the first time brought Rome into direct connexion with the historic peoples of the ancient world, and when Romans themselves awoke to the importance of the part reserved for Rome to play in universal history. To write the annals of Rome became at once a task worthy of the best of her citizens. Though other forms of literature might be thought unbecoming to the dignity of a free-born citizen, this was never so with history. On the contrary, men of high rank and tried statesmanship were on that very account thought all the fitter to write the chronicles of the state they had served. And history in Rome never lost either its social prestige or its intimate and exclusive connexion with the fortunes of the Roman people. 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. Nor was his attention drawn from the main lines of political history by the claims of art, literature, and philosophy, for just as the tie which bound Romans together was that of citizenship, not of race or culture, so the history of Rome is that of the state, of its political constitution, its wars and conquests, its military and administrative system.

Livy’s own circumstances were all such as to render these views natural to him. He began to write at a time when, after a century of disturbance, the mass of men had been contented to purchase peace at the price of liberty. The present was at least inglorious, the future doubtful, and many turned gladly to the past for consolation. This retrospective tendency was favourably regarded by the Government. It was the policy of Augustus to obliterate all traces of recent revolution, and to connect the new imperial regime as closely as possible with the ancient traditions and institutions of Rome and Italy. 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.

Livy was deeply penetrated with a sense of the greatness of Rome. From first to last its majesty and high destiny are present to his mind. Aeneas is led to Italy by the fates that he may be the founder of Rome (ι 1; comp, i. 4, “debebatur fatis tantae origo urbis ”). Romulus after his ascension declares it to be the will of heaven that Rome should be mistress of the world; and Hannibal marches into Italy, that he may “set free the world” from Roman rule. But, if this ever-present consciousness often gives dignity and elevation to his narrative, it is also responsible for some of its defects. It leads him occasionally into exaggerated language (e.g. t xxii. 33, “nullius usquam terrarum rei cura Romanos effugiebat ”), or into such misstatements as that in xxi. 99, where he explains the course taken by the Romans in renewing war with Carthage by saying that “it seemed more suitable to the dignity of the Roman people.” 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 (e.g., the war with Perseus of Macedon; see Cobet in Hnemosyne for 1881). When Hieronymus of Syracuse deserts Rome for Hannibal, Livy says nothing of the complaints against Rome, by which, according to Polybius, he justified his change of policy. 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. “I have resolved,” he says (xxxix. 48), “only to touch on foreign affairs so far as they are bound up with those of Rome.” The operations of the Rhodians in Asia Minor (197 κc., xxxiii. 20) he curtly dismisses in a sentence, that he may pass “ad ea quae propria Romani belli sunt and so again (xli. 25) “it is not worth my while to recount in detail the wars of foreigners with each other; it is as much and more than I can do to record the doings of the Roman people.” As the result, we get from Livy very defective accounts even of the Italic peoples most closely connected with Rome. Of the past history and the internal condition of the more distant nations she encountered he tells us little or nothing, even when he found such details carefully given by Polybius.

Scarcely less strong than his interest in Rome is his interest in the moral lessons...