Ivi
LIVY.
Severingly than perhaps any one else : Iiis faults did not escape
me, and I thought him &r inferior to Livy. 1 have been
censured for wishing to find fault with him; but assuredly no
one feels that respect, esteem, and gratitude towards him
which I feel. The more I search, the greater are the treasures
I find in him. In former times it was the general belief, that
whatever Dionysius had more than Livy were mere fancies of
his own ; but with the exception of his speeches there is abso-
lutely nothing that can he called invented : he only worked
up those materials which were transmitted to him by other
authorities. It is true that he made more use of Cn. Gellius
and similar writers than of Cato ; it is also true that he not
Unfrequently preferred those authors who furnished abundant
materials to others who gave more solid and substantial infor-
mation5—all this is true ; but he is nevertheless undervalued,
and has claims to an infinitely higher rank than that which is
usually assigned to him. He worked with the greatest love of
his subject, and did not, certainly, intend to introduce any
forgery. He is not now, nor will he perhaps ever be, much
read.
It was nearly about the time of the publication of Dionysius
(743, according to Cato, or 745, according to Varro), that
Livy began to write his history. It is my conviction that he
did not begin earlier; and I here express it after mature con-
sideration and scrupulous investigation. He was born at
Patavium in 693 according to Cato, or 695 according to Varro,
in the consulship of the great Caesar, and died in his eightieth
year, in 772 according to Cato, or 774 according to Varro:
that is, the twentieth year after the birth of Christ; so that
he saw the early part of the reign of Tiberius. The only
circumstances of his early life which we know, are, that he
commenced his career as a rhetorician, and wrote on rhetoric.6
But these early works were obscured and thrown into the
shade by the deep impression which his history made upon his
contemporaries. There are several reasons for believing that
he began the composition of his history at a late period. The
first decad of his historical work has been called a work of
his youth, as if he had written it at the age of about thirty, or
even earlier. But against this opinion the following reasons
5 ComparevoLii, ρ.ll.
β Quiactil, x.1,39, viiι.2,18; Senec. Epist, ∖Q0-i Sueton. Claud, 41.
THE TIME AT WHICH LIVY WBOTE.
Ivii
must be adduced:—In speaking of Numa, lie mentions Augus-
tus as tlιe founder and restorer of all temples7, which cannot
have been said before the year 730; the closing of the temple
of Janus8, and the building of the temple of Jupiter Feretrius.9
He also mentions Caesar Augustus in the war of Cossus. Dod-
well, a man who seldom hits the right point, is perfectly right
here, when he observes that, from the manner in which Livy
speaks of Spain, it must have been conquered by Augustus.10
The ninth book was written after the campaigns of Drusus in
Germany; for, in speaking of the Ciminian forest, ho says,
that at that time the roads through it were more impassable
and horrible quam nuper fueri Germanici saltus11, and Domitius
Ahenobarbus and Drusus were the first who, in the year 740,
threw the German forests open to the Romans. It might
indeed be said that these passages were later additions, but it
can easily be recognised whether a work is composed in one
breath, or has been re-fashioned; and there can be no doubt
that Livy’s work belongs to the former class. To these facts
we may also add the circumstance that Dionysius nowhere
mentions Livy. If a work written in such a masterly manner
as that of Livy had existed, we should be utterly unable to
comprehend how Dionysius could have remained ignorant of
it, or have overlooked it ; nor could Dionysius have complained
of the total neglect of the materials of Roman history. In
Livy, on the other hand,—and that even in the last books of
the first decad,—we find several traces of his having read
Dionysius. From the Excerpts “ De Legationibus," we know
the manner in which Dionysius treated the Samnite war ;
and Livy’s narrative of it cannot possibly have been derived
from Roman annals, but must have been taken from Greek
authorities, especially the account which he12 gives of the
manner in which Naples fell into the hands of the Romans,
which Dionysius seems to have taken from a Neapolitan chro-
nicle; Livy Iriimelf could not know this, and yet gives a
detailed account of it; he must have had a Greek source, and
this was Certainlyno other than Dionysius. It is also probable,
that in his comparison of the power of Alexander the Great with
that of the Romans11, he followed a Greek writer who had done
7Livy, iv. 20. 8Livy, i. 19. 9Livy, i. 10. 10 Annal. Vellei. p. 19.
" Livy, ix.36, ConiparevoLiii p.279, note 485. *a vιιi. 22, foil.
'3 ix. 18, foil.