to the facts of history. He is as innocent of the leading ideas which
shaped the work of Polybius as he is of the cheap theorizing which
wearies us in the pages of Dionysius. The events are graphically, if not
always accurately, described; but of the larger causes at work in
producing them, of their subtle action and reaction upon each other, and
of the general conditions amid which the history worked itself out, he
takes no thought at all. Nor has Livy much acquaintance with either the
theory or the practice of politics. He exhibits, it is true, political
sympathies and antipathies. He is on the whole for the nobles and
against the commons; and, though the unfavourable colours in which he
paints the leaders of the latter are possibly reflected from the
authorities he followed, it is evident that he despised and disliked the
multitude. Of monarchy he speaks with a genuine Roman hatred, and we
know that in the last days of the republic his sympathies were wholly
with those who strove in vain to save it. He betrays, too, an insight
into the evils which were destined finally to undermine the imposing
fabric of Roman empire. The decline of the free population, the spread
of slavery (vi. 12, vii. 25), the universal craving for wealth (iii.
26), the employment of foreign mercenaries (xxv. 33), the corruption of
Roman race and Roman manners by mixture with aliens (xxxix. 3), are all
noticed in tones of solemn warning. But his retired life had given him
no wide experience of men and things. It is not surprising, therefore,
to find that he fails altogether to present a clear and coherent picture
of the history and working of the Roman constitution, or that his
handling of intricate questions of policy is weak and inadequate.
_Sources._--If from the general aim and spirit of Livy's history we pass
to consider his method of workmanship, we are struck at once by the very
different measure of success attained by him in the two great
departments of an historian's labour. He is a consummate artist, but an
unskilled and often careless investigator and critic. The materials
which lay ready to his hand may be roughly classed under two heads: (1)
the original evidence of monuments, inscriptions, &c., (2) the written
tradition as found in the works of previous authors. It is on the second
of these two kinds of evidence that Livy almost exclusively relies. Yet
that even for the very early times a certain amount of original evidence
still existed is proved by the use which was made of it by Dionysius,
who mentions at least three important inscriptions, two dating from the
regal period and one from the first years of the republic (iv. 26, iv.
58, x. 32). We know from Livy himself (iv. 20) that the breastplate
dedicated by Aulus Cornelius Cossus (428 B.C.) was to be seen in his own
day in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, nor is there any reason to
suppose that the _libri lintei_, quoted by Licinius Macer, were not
extant when Livy wrote. For more recent times the materials were
plentiful, and a rich field of research lay open to the student in the
long series of laws, decrees of the senate, and official registers,
reaching back, as it probably did, at least to the beginning of the 3rd
century B.C. Nevertheless it seems certain that Livy never realized the
duty of consulting these relics of the past, even in order to verify the
statements of his authorities. Many of them he never mentions; the
others (e.g. the _libri lintei_) he evidently describes at second hand.
Antiquarian studies were popular in his day, but the instances are very
few in which he has turned their results to account. There is no sign
that he had ever read Varro; and he never alludes to Verrius Flaccus.
The haziness and inaccuracy of his topography make it clear that he did
not attempt to familiarize himself with the actual scenes of events even
that took place in Italy. Not only does he confuse Thermon, the capital
of Aetolia, with Thermopylae (xxxiii. 35), but his accounts of the Roman
campaigns against Volsci, Aequi and Samnites swarm with confusions and
difficulties; nor are even his descriptions of Hannibal's movements free
from an occasional vagueness which betrays the absence of an exact
knowledge of localities.
The consequence of this indifference to original research and patient
verification might have been less serious had the written tradition on
which Livy preferred to rely been more trustworthy. But neither the
materials out of which it was composed, nor the manner in which it had
been put together, were such as to make it a safe guide. It was indeed
represented by a long line of respectable names. The majority of the
Roman annalists were men of high birth and education, with a long
experience of affairs, and their defects did not arise from seclusion
of life or ignorance of letters. It is rather in the conditions under
which they wrote and in the rules and traditions of their craft that
the causes of their shortcomings must be sought.
The Annalists.
It was not until the 6th century from the foundation of the city that
historical writing began in Rome. The father of Roman history, Q.
Fabius Pictor, a patrician and a senator, can scarcely have published
his annals before the close of the Second Punic War, but these annals
covered the whole period from the arrival of Evander in Italy down at
least to the battle by Lake Trasimene (217 B.C.). Out of what
materials, then, did he put together his account of the earlier
history? Recent criticism has succeeded in answering this question
with some degree of certainty. A careful examination of the fragments
of Fabius (see H. Peter, _Historicorum Romanorum Relliquiae_, Leipzig,
1870; and C. W. Nitzsch, _Röm. Annalistik_, Berlin, 1873) reveals in
the first place a marked difference between the kingly period and that
which followed the establishment of the republic. The history of the
former stretches back into the regions of pure mythology. It is little
more than a collection of fables told with scarcely any attempt at
criticism, and with no more regard to chronological sequence than was
necessary to make the tale run smoothly or to fill up such gaps as
that between the flight of Aeneas from Troy and the supposed year of
the foundation of Rome. But from its very commencement the history of
the republic wears a different aspect. The mass of floating tradition,
which had come down from early days, with its tales of border raids
and forays, of valiant chiefs and deeds of patriotism, is now rudely
fitted into a framework of a wholly different kind. This framework
consists of short notices of important events, wars, prodigies,
consecration of temples, &c., all recorded with extreme brevity,
precisely dated, and couched in a somewhat archaic style. They were
taken probably from one or more of the state registers, such as the
annals of the pontiffs, or those kept by the aediles in the temple of
Ceres. This bare official outline of the past history of his city was
by Fabius filled in from the rich store of tradition that lay ready to
his hand. The manner and spirit in which he effected this combination
were no doubt wholly uncritical. Usually he seems to have transferred
both annalistic notices and popular traditions to his pages much in
the shape in which he found them. But he unquestionably gave undue
prominence to the tales of the prowess and glory of the Fabii, and
probably also allowed his own strong aristocratic sympathies to colour
his version of the early political controversies. This fault of
partiality was, according to Polybius, a conspicuous blot in Fabius's
account of his own times, which was, we are told, full and in the main
accurate, and, like the earlier portions, consisted of official
annalistic notices, supplemented, however, not from tradition, but
from his own experience and from contemporary sources. But even here
Polybius charges him with favouring Rome at the expense of Carthage,
and with the undue exaltation of the great head of his house, Q.
Fabius Cunctator.
Nevertheless the comparative fidelity with which Fabius seems to have
reproduced his materials might have made his annals the starting point
of a critical history. But unfortunately intelligent criticism was
exactly what they never received. It is true that in some respects a
decided advance upon Fabius was made by subsequent annalists. M.
Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.) widened the scope of Roman history so as
to include that of the chief Italian cities, and made the first
serious attempt to settle the chronology. In his history of the Punic
wars Caelius Antipater (c. 130 B.C.) added fresh material, drawn
probably from the works of the Sicilian Greek Silenus, while Licinius
Macer (70 B.C.) distinguished himself by the use he made of the
ancient "linen books." No doubt, too, the later annalists, at any rate
from Caelius Antipater onwards, improved upon Fabius in treatment and
style. But in more essential points we can discern no progress. One
annalist after another quietly adopted the established tradition, as
it had been left by his predecessors, without any serious alterations
of its main outlines. Of independent research and critical analysis we
find no trace, and the general agreement upon main facts is to be
attributed simply to the regularity with which each writer copied the
one before him. But, had the later annalists contented themselves with
simply reproducing the earlier ones, we should at least have had the
old tradition before us in a simple and tolerably genuine form. As it
was, while they slavishly clung to its substance, they succeeded, as a
rule, in destroying all traces of its original form and colouring. L.
Calpurnius Piso, tribune in 149 B.C. and consul in 133 B.C., prided
himself on reducing the old legends to the level of common sense, and
importing into them valuable moral lessons for his own generation. By
Caelius Antipater the methods of rhetoric were first applied to
history, a disastrous precedent enough. He inserted speeches,
enlivened his pages with chance tales, and aimed, as Cicero tells us,
at not merely narrating facts but also at beautifying them. His
successors carried still farther the practice of dressing up the
rather bald chronicles of earlier writers with all the ornaments of
rhetoric. The old traditions were altered, almost beyond the
possibility of recognition, by exaggerations, interpolations and
additions. Fresh incidents were inserted, new motives suggested and
speeches composed in order to infuse the required life and freshness
into these dry bones of history. At the same time the political bias
of the writers, and the political ideas of their day were allowed, in
some cases perhaps half unconsciously, to affect their representations
of past events. Annalists of the Gracchan age imported into the early
struggles of patricians and plebeians the economic controversies of
their own day, and painted the first tribunes in the colours of the
two Gracchi or of Saturninus. In the next generation they dexterously
forced the venerable records of the early republic to pronounce in
favour of the ascendancy of the senate, as established by Sulla. To
political bias was added family pride, for the gratification of which
the archives of the great houses, the funeral panegyrics, or the
imagination of the writer himself supplied an ample store of doubtful
material. Pedigrees were invented, imaginary consulships and
fictitious triumphs inserted, and family traditions and family honours
were formally incorporated with the history of the state.
Things were not much better even where the annalists were dealing with
recent or contemporary events. Here, indeed, their materials were
naturally fuller and more trustworthy, and less room was left for
fanciful decoration and capricious alteration of the facts. But their
methods are in the main unchanged. What they found written they
copied; the gaps they supplied, where personal experience failed, by
imagination. No better proof of this can be given than a comparison of
the annalist's version of history with that of Polybius. In the fourth
and fifth decades of Livy the two appear side by side, and the
contrast between them is striking. Polybius, for instance, gives the
number of the slain at Cynoscephalae as 8000; the annalists raise it
as high as 40,000 (Livy xxxiii. 10). In another case (xxxii. 6)
Valerius Antias, the chief of sinners in this respect, inserts a
decisive Roman victory over the Macedonians, in which 12,000 of the
latter were slain and 2200 taken prisoner, an achievement recorded by
no other authority.
Such was the written tradition on which Livy mainly relied. We have
next to examine the manner in which he used it, and here we are met at
the outset by the difficulty of determining with exactness what
authorities he is following at any one time; for of the importance of
full and accurate references he has no idea, and often for chapters
together he gives us no clue at all. More often still he contents
himself with such vague phrases as "they say," "the story goes," "some
think," or speaks in general terms of "ancient writers" or "my
authorities." Even where he mentions a writer by name, it is
frequently clear that the writer named is not the one whose lead he is
following at the moment, but that he is noticed incidentally as
differing from Livy's guide for the time being on some point of detail
(compare the references to Piso in the first decade, i. 55, ii. 32,
&c.). It is very rarely that Livy explicitly tells us whom he has
selected as his chief source (e.g. Fabius xxii. 7; Polybius xxxiii.
10). By a careful analysis, however, of those portions of his work
which admit of a comparison with the text of his acknowledged
authorities (e.g. fourth and fifth decades, see H. Nissen,
_Untersuchungen_, Berlin, 1863), and elsewhere by comparing his
version with the known fragments of the various annalists, and with
what we are told of their style and method of treatment, we are able
to form a general idea of his plan of procedure. As to the first
decade, it is generally agreed that in the first and second books, at
any rate, he follows such older and simpler writers as Fabius Pictor
and Calpurnius Piso (the only ones whom he there refers to by name),
to whom, so far as the first book is concerned, Niebuhr (_Lectures_,
p. 33) would add the poet Ennius. With the close of the second book or
the opening of the third we come upon the first traces of the use of
later authors. Valerius Antias[3] is first quoted in iii. 5, and signs
of his handiwork are visible here and there throughout the rest of the
decade (vii. 36, ix. 27, x. 3-5). In the fourth book the principal
authority is apparently Licinius Macer, and for the period following
the sack of Rome by the Gauls Q. Claudius Quadrigarius, whose annals
began at this point in the history. We have besides a single reference
(vii. 3) to the antiquarian Cincius, and two (iv. 23, x. 9) to Q.
Aelius Tubero, one of the last in the list of annalists. Passing to
the third decade, we find ourselves at once confronted by a question
which has been long and fully discussed--the relation between Livy and
Polybius. Did Livy use Polybius at all, and, if so, to what extent?
Polybius.
It is conceded on all hands that Livy in this decade makes
considerable use of other authorities than Polybius (e.g. Fabius xxii.
7; Caelius Antipater xxi. 38, 46, 47, xxii. 31, &c.), that he only
once mentions Polybius (xxx. 45), and that, if he used him, he did so
to a much less extent than in the fourth and fifth decades, and in a
very different manner. It is also agreed that we can detect in Livy's
account of the Hannibalic war two distinct elements, derived
originally, the one from a Roman, the other from a non-Roman source.
But from these generally accepted premises two opposite conclusions
have been drawn. On the one hand, it is maintained (e.g. by Lachmann,
C. Peter, H. Peter, _Hist. Rom. Relliq._) that those parts of Livy's
narrative which point to a non-Roman authority (e.g. Hannibal's
movements prior to his invasion of Italy) are taken by Livy directly
from Polybius, with occasional reference of course to other writers,
and with the omission (as in the later decades) of all matters
uninteresting to Livy or his Roman readers, and the addition of
rhetorical touches and occasional comments. It is urged that Livy, who
in the fourth and fifth decades shows himself so sensible of the great
merits of Polybius, is not likely to have ignored him in the third,
and that his more limited use of him in the latter case is fully
accounted for by the closer connexion of the history with Rome and
Roman affairs, and the comparative excellence of the available Roman
authorities, and, lastly, that the points of agreement with Polybius,
not only in matter but in expression, can only be explained on the
theory that Livy is directly following the great Greek historian. On
the other hand, it is maintained (especially by Schwegler, Nitzsch,
and K. Böttcher) that the extent and nature of Livy's agreement with
Polybius in this part of his work point rather to the use by both of a
common original authority. It is argued that Livy's mode of using his
authorities is tolerably uniform, and that his mode of using Polybius
in particular is known with certainty from the later decades.
Consequently the theory that he used Polybius in the third decade
requires us to assume that in this one instance he departed widely,
and without sufficient reason, from his usual course of procedure.
Moreover, even in the passages where the agreement with Polybius is
most apparent, there are so many discrepancies and divergencies in
detail, and so many unaccountable omissions and additions, as to
render it inconceivable that he had the text of Polybius before him.
But all these are made intelligible if we suppose Livy to have been
here following directly or indirectly the same original sources that
were used by Polybius. The earliest of these original sources was
probably Silenus, with whom may possibly be placed, for books xxi.
xxii., Fabius Pictor. The latter Livy certainly used directly for some
parts of the decade. The former he almost as certainly knew only at
second hand, the intermediate authority being probably Caelius
Antipater. This writer, who confined himself to a history of the
Second Punic War, in seven books, is expressly referred to by Livy
eleven times in the third decade; and in other passages where his name
is not mentioned Livy can be shown to have followed him (e.g. xxii. 5,
49, 50, 51, xxiv. 9). In the latter books of the decade his chief
authority is possibly Valerius Antias.
In the fourth and fifth decades the question of Livy's authorities
presents no great difficulties, and the conclusions arrived at by
Nissen in his masterly _Untersuchungen_ have met with general
acceptance. These may be shortly stated as follows. In the portions of
the history which deal with Greece and the East, Livy follows
Polybius, and these portions are easily distinguishable from the rest
by their superior clearness, accuracy and fulness. On the other hand,
for the history of Italy and western Europe he falls back on Roman
annalists, especially, it seems, on Claudius Quadrigarius and Valerius
Antias--a most unfortunate choice--and from them too he takes the
annalistic mould into which his matter is cast.
Critical method.
Livy's general method of using these authorities was certainly not
such as would be deemed satisfactory in a modern historian. He is
indeed free from the grosser faults of deliberate injustice and
falsification, and he resists that temptation to invent, to which "the
minds of authors are only too much inclined" (xxii. 7). Nor is he
unconscious of the necessity for some kind of criticism. He
distinguishes between rumour and the precise statements of recognized
authorities (cf. xxi. 46, v. 21, vii. 6). The latter he reproduced in
the main faithfully, but with a certain exercise of discretion. Where
they disagreed, he calls attention to the fact, occasionally
pronouncing in favour of one version rather than another (ii. 41, xxi.
46) though often on no adequate grounds, or attempting to reconcile
and explain discrepancies (vi. 12, 38). Where he detects or suspects
the insertion of fabulous matter he has no scruple in saying so. Gross
exaggerations, such as those in which Valerius Antias indulged, he
roundly denounces, and with equal plainness of speech he condemns the
family vanity which had so constantly corrupted and distorted the
truth. "I suppose," he says (viii. 40), "that the record and memorial
of these matters hath been depraved and corrupted by these funeral
orations of praises, ... while every house and family draweth to it
the honour and renown of noble exploits, martial feats and dignities
by any untruth and lie, so it be colourable." The legendary character
of the earliest traditions he frankly admits. "Such things as are
reported either before or at the foundation of the city, more
beautiful and set out with poets' fables than grounded upon pure and
faithful records, I mean neither to aver nor disprove" (_Praef._); and
of the whole history previous to the sack of Rome by the Gauls (390
B.C.) he writes that it was obscure "both in regard of exceeding
antiquity, and also for that in those days there were very few
writings and monuments, the only faithful safeguard and true
remembrancers of deeds past; and, besides, whatsoever was registered
in the commentaries of the priests and in other public or private
records, the same for the most part, when the city was burned,
perished withal." Further than this, however, Livy's criticism does
not go. Where his written authorities are not palpably inconsistent
with each other or with probability he accepts and transcribes their
record without any further inquiry, nor does he ever attempt to get
behind this record in order to discover the original evidence on which
it rested. His acceptance in any particular case of the version given
by an annalist by no means implies that he has by careful inquiry
satisfied himself of its truth. At the most it only presupposes a
comparison with other versions, equally second-hand, but either less
generally accepted or less in harmony with his own views of the
situation; and in many cases the reasons he gives for his preference
of one account over another are eminently unscientific. Livy's
history, then, rests on no foundation of original research or even of
careful verification. It is a compilation, and even as such it leaves
much to be desired. For we cannot credit Livy with having made such a
preliminary survey of his authorities as would enable him to determine
their relations to each other, and fuse their various narratives into
a consistent whole. It is clear, on the contrary, that his circle of
authorities for any one decade was a comparatively small one, that of
these he selected one, and transcribed him with the necessary
embellishments and other slight modifications until impelled by
various reasons to drop him. He then, without warning, takes up
another, whom he follows in the same way. The result is a curious
mosaic, in which pieces of all colours and dates are found side by
side, and in which even the great artistic skill displayed throughout
fails to conceal the lack of internal unity. Thus many of Livy's
inconsistencies are due to his having pieced together two versions,
each of which gave a differently coloured account of the same event.
Mommsen (_Rom. Forschungen_, ii.) has clearly shown that this is what
has happened in his relation of the legal proceedings against the
elder Africanus in book xxxviii.; and in the story of the first
secession, as he tells it, the older version which represented it as
due to political and the later which explained it by economical
grievances are found side by side. Similarly a change from one
authority to another leads him not unfrequently to copy from the
latter statements inconsistent with those he took from the former, to
forget what he has previously said, or to treat as known a fact which
has not been mentioned before (cf. ii. 1, xxxiv. 6, and Weissenborn's
_Introduction_, p. 37). In other cases where the same event has been
placed by different annalists in different years, or where their
versions of it varied, it reappears in Livy as two events. Thus the
four campaigns against the Volsci (ii. 17 seq.) are, as Schwegler
(_R.G._ i. 13) rightly says, simply variations of one single
expedition. Other instances of such "doublettes" are the two single
combats described in xxiii. 46 and xxv. 18, and the two battles at
Baecula in Spain (xxvii. 18 and xxviii. 13). Without doubt, too, much
of the chronological confusion observable throughout Livy is due to
the fact that he follows now one now another authority, heedless of
their differences on this head. Thus he vacillates between the
Catonian and Varronian reckoning of the years of the city, and between
the chronologies of Polybius and the Roman annalists.