Iviii
DIVISIONS OF LIVY⅛ ΠISTOKY.
the same before lιim. The account of the war of Pyrrhus,and
of the piratical expedition of Cleonymus14 must Iikeivise have
been taken from a Greek writer, which I believe the more
firmly, as in that narrative Livy calls the Sallentines, Messa-
piansιs, probably not knowing that the Iatterwas the Greek name
for Sallentines. I therefore firmly believe that Dionysius had
completed his work before Livy finished his first decad, and
that the latter made use of Dionysius even before he wrote the
eighth book. Nay, it is not impossible that the Greek work
of Dionysius may have suggested to Livy the idea of writing
the history of Rome in Latin. The liveliness and freshness of
the style of Livy’s work may indeed be said to be opposed to
my supposition, that he wrote it at an advanced period of his
life; but such things depend merely upon the personal char-
acter of the writer. Let no one say that I allow him too little
time to complete his history; for as he was about fifty years old
when Dionysius published his work, there still remained thirty
years from the time he commenced his history until his death ;
and the work is not too extensive to be executed in the course
of twenty-five years, especially if we take into consideration
Livy’s method of writing. It is moreover probable to me that
he died before he had accomplished his object. We know it
to be a fact that his work consisted of one hundred and forty-
two books, and that the last of them ended with the death of
Drusus. Here we perceive an evident want of symmetry,
which with Livy and the ancients in general would be some-
thing incomprehensible. The whole plan of the work renders
it manifest that it was intended to be divided into decads ; Jhe
very word decas would not have been invented in later times.
If we possessed the second decad, we should see still more
clearly that it was Livy himself who made this division. The
twentieth book, for instance, must have been of double the
extent of the others; and this for no other reason but because
he would not begin the second Punic war with the twenty-
second book, in order that this war again might be brought to
a close in the thirtieth, and that the thirty-first might open
with the Macedonian war. He cannot therefore have intended
“ x. 2.
15 It is by a slip of the memory that Niebuhr here refers this Greek name to
the account of the expedition of Clconymus (x. 2.), for it occurs in the account
of Alexander of Epirus (viiɪ. 24.).
INEQUALITY OF LIVY.
Iix
to close his work in the middle of a decad. The epitome at
least extends only to the 142nd book ; and we should therefore be
obliged to suppose that at the end some books of the epitome
are wanting, as two are actually wanting in the middle.
If we examine Livy’s history with due attention to style and
the mode of treating his subjects, we find it extremely unequal.
The several decads are essentially different from one ano-
ther; and the first book of the first decad differs materially
from the other books of the same decad. The first book and
some parts of the second Punic war are, perhaps, the most
beautiful portions of the whole work, and show how unsurpass-
able he would have been, if he had written a more condensed
history. The second Punic war is written with peculiar care,
and contains passages of the most exquisite beauty. Throughout
the first decad he is extremely eloquent, and many parts are
very successfully worked up. The more Livy feels himself free
from restraint, the more beautiful is his narrative. In the third
decad, where he has to record the recurrence of the same or
similar circumstances, he himself often grows weary, and writes
without pleasure ; but the descriptions of the battles of Trasime-
nus and Cannae are still excellent. This, however, is the turning
point. From the thirty-first book onward all are far inferior ; he
Usesmorc words than are needed, and we see traces of old age.
In the fourth and fifth decads, which are much below the second,
he gave for the most part a mere Latin paraphrase of Polybius,
and he could not indeed have chosen a, better guide: but it is
evident that he is beginning to hurry onwards to other sub-
jects, and here things happen to him which we scarcely ever
meet with in the earlier books : he contradicts himself, his style
becomes prolix, and he relates the same things over again. The
style of the fragment belonging to the ninety-first book, which
was discovered at Kome, is perfectly different from that of all
the other extant parts of his work: repetitions are here so fre-
quent in the small compass of four pages, and the prolixity is
so great, that we should hardly believe it to belong to Livy,
if we did not read at the beginning of the fragment : Titi Livii
Iiher xci., and if sundry other things did not prove it to be his.
Here we see the justice of the censures which the ancient gram-
marians passed upon him for his repetitions and tautologies.16
ιs Diomedcs quotes a passage from Livy, which does not occur in the extant
books, and which runs thus: Iegatiretro domum, unde vénérant, redιerunt. N.—