Ix MOTIVES OF LIVY.
Here we see how the great writer has grown old and become
loquacious, a character so exquisitely portrayed by Cicero in
his Cato Major, and which may have been very agreeable in
personal intercourse with Livy. If we possessed the second
decad, which was probably far better than the later ones, we
should see manifest reasons to account for the loss of the latter ;
for as they were so much inferior to the first decads, they were
never read in the schools of the grammarians, and consequently
were very seldom or never copied. His preface is very char-
acteristic : it is one of the worst parts of his work ; whereas the
introductions in the great practical historians, Thucydides, Sal-
lust and Tacitus, are real master-pieces of composition. This
may be accounted for by the fact, that Livy began his work
without being conscious of any definite object; while the other
historians sketched in bold outlines the results of their long
meditations.
LECTURE VIIL
It is quite manifest, that at the time when Livy began his
work, he was any thing but intimately acquainted with his
subject, although, considering that the history of Rome was
at that time extremely neglected, he may, comparatively
speaking, have possessed a tolerable knowledge of it, for he
had read several of the old books ; but he had no mastery what-
ever over his subject. His reasons for undertaking the task
were undoubtedly those which he states in his preface: his
delight in history and its substance, and the consolation to be
derived from its pages at a time when the Romans were re-
covering from the evils of their civil wars, and the rising
generation required to be refreshed by being led back to the
glorious times of old. He seems to have set to work imme-
diately after he had formed the resolution, and with that
enthusiastic delight which we generally feel the moment after
Siinilartautologies, however, occur in the earlier decads also. In xxx^ii. 21, we
read; inde retro, unde profecta erat, Elaeam redιιt; in xxxviιi. 16: Leonorivs
retro, unde venerat, cum majore parte homιnum repetit Byzantium-, and χl. 48;
Convertit, ιnde agmen retro, unde venerat, ad Alcen.
1 Compare vol. i. p.3.
Authoeities of livy. lχi
we have come to the determination to realise a grand idea.
In the first part of his work, the history of the kings, he
followed Ennius alone2, whence his accounts are consistent in
themselves, and not made up of contradictory or irreconcile-
able statements. But as he went on, he gradually began to
use more authors, though their number always remained very
limited. In Livy every thing stands isolated, whereas in
Dionysius one thread runs through the whole work: Livy
took no pains to write a learned or authentic history. Of the
history of foreign countries he was quite ignorant; he could
not have stated that the Carthaginians came to Sicily for the
first time in the year 324, if he had known that fifty years
before they had made their great expedition against that
island; the expedition of Alexander of Epirus ought, accord-
ing to him, to have lasted eighteen years; and he mistakes
Heraclitus, Philip’s ambassador to Hannibal, for the philosopher
of that name.
We must suppose that Livy, like most of the ancient writers,
dictated his history to a scribe or secretary, and the manner in
which he worked seems to have been this; he had the events
of one year read to him, and then dictated his own history of
that year, so that he composed the work in portions, each
comprising the events of one year, without viewing this year
either in its connexion with the preceding or the subsequent
one. Hence it often occurs that the end of a year appears at
the same time as the conclusion of a series of events; and
hence we also very often find that the events recorded in one
year arc Irreconcileable with those of the year preceding.
These inconsistences, however, are not Unfrequently of very
great use to us, since they sometimes give us interesting in-
formation concerning events about which there existed different
accounts. At first Livy used only few annalists; taking one
as his foundation, so that generally the events of any one year
are not contradictory; Fabius35 Valerius Antias4, Tuberosand
Quadrigarius are mentioned; but I doubt whether he had
read the Oiigines of Cato, and I cannot say whether he made
use of Quadrigarius for the period which followed immediately
2 Compaie voLi. p.346, foil, and p.234.
3 Livy, i. 44, 55; ii. 40; x. 37.
4 Livy, x. 41, ComparevoLiii. p.35S, and above, p xlii.
Livy, LV. 23, x. 9.