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Livy

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Livy
Titus Livius (fictitious portrait)
Titus Livius (fictitious portrait)
Occupationhistorian
GenreHistory
SubjectHistory, biography, oratory
Literary movementGolden Age of Latin

Titus Livius (59 BC – AD 17[1]), known as Livy in English, was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own time.

Life

Dates

The authority supplying the information from which possible vital data on Livy can be deduced is Eusebius of Caesaria, an early Christian-era bishop. One of his works was an epitome (or summary) of world history in ancient Greek, termed the Chronikon, dating from the early 4th century. This work was lost except for fragments (mainly excerpts), but not before it had been translated in whole and in part by various authors such as St. Jerome. The entire work survives in Armenian. St. Jerome wrote in Latin. Fragments in Syriac exist.[2]

Eusebius' work consists of two books, the Chronographia, a summary of history in annalist form, and the Chronikoi Kanones, tables of years and events. St. Jerome translated the tables into Latin as the Chronicon, probably adding some information of his own from unknown sources. Livy's dates appear in Jerome's Chronicon.

The main problem with the information given in the MSS is that between them they often give different dates for the same events or different events, do not include the same material entirely and reformat what they do include. A date may be in AUC or in Olympiads or in some other form, such as age. These variations may have occurred through scribal error or scribal license. Some material has been inserted under the aegis of Eusebius.

The topic of manuscript variants is a large and specialized one, on which authors of works on Livy seldom care to linger. As a result standard information in a standard rendition is used, which gives the impression of a standard set of dates for Livy. There are no such dates. A typical presumption is of a birth in the 2nd year of the 180th Olympiad and a death in the first year of the 199th Olympiad, which are coded 180.2 and 199.1 respectively.[3] All sources use the same first Olympiad, 776/775-773/772 BC by the modern calendar. By a complex formula (made so by the 0 reference point not falling on the border of an Olympiad) these codes correspond to 59 BC for the birth, 17 AD for the death. In another manuscript the birth is in 180.4, or 57 BC.[4]

Native city

Livy was a native of Patavium, the modern Padua.

Works

Main article: Ab Urbe condita

He wrote in a mixture of annual chronology and narrative—often having to interrupt a story to announce the elections of new consuls as this was the way that the Romans kept track of the years.

Livy wrote the majority of his works during the reign of Augustus. However, he is often identified with an attachment to the Roman Republic and a desire for its restoration. Since the later books discussing the end of the Republic and the rise of Augustus did not survive, this is a moot point. Certainly Livy questioned some of the values of the new regime but it is likely that his position was more complex than a simple "republic/empire" preference. Augustus does not seem to have held these views against Livy, and entrusted his great-nephew, the future emperor Claudius, to his tutelage. His effect on Claudius was apparent during the latter's reign, as the emperor's oratory closely adheres to Livy's account of Roman history.

A number of Roman authors used Livy, including Aurelius Victor, Cassiodorus, Eutropius, Festus, Florus, Granius Licinianus and Orosius. Julius Obsequens used Livy, or a source with access to Livy, to compose his De Prodigiis, an account of supernatural events in Rome, from the consulship of Scipio and Laelius to that of Paulus Fabius and Quintus Aelius.

A digression in Book 9, Sections 17–19, suggests that the Romans would have beaten Alexander the Great if he lived longer and turned west to attack the Romans, making this the oldest known alternate history.[5]

Reception

Livy's work met with instant acclaim. His books were published in sets of ten, although when entirely completed, his whole work was available for sale in its entirety. His highly literary approach to his historical writing renders his works very entertaining, and they remained constantly popular from his own day, through the Middle Ages, and into the modern world. Dante speaks highly of him in his poetry, and Francis I of France commissioned extensive artwork treating Livian themes; Niccolò Machiavelli's work on republics, the Discourses on Livy is presented as a commentary on the History of Rome. That he was chosen by Rome's first emperor to be the private tutor to his eventual successor indicates Livy's renown as a great writer and sage. As topics from his history appear to have been used for writing topics in Roman schools, it is more than likely that his works, or sections, were used as textbooks. The two ten-book sets that remained popular throughout the millennia are the first ten books, describing the founding of Rome and its conquest of Italy, and the third set of ten books (XXI to XXX) recounting the war with Hannibal, which he himself indicates is his greatest theme. He can be looked upon as the prose counterpart of Vergil in Golden Age Latin literature.

Notes

  1. ^ Ronald Syme, following G. M. Hirst, has argued for 64 BC–AD 12
  2. ^ Fotheringham (1905), P. 1.
  3. ^ "St. Jerome ( Hieronymus ): Chronological Tables - for Olympiads 170 to 203 [= 100 B.C. - 36 A.D.]". Attalus.org. Retrieved 14 August 2009.
  4. ^ Livius, Titus; Seeley, John Robert (Contributor) (1881). Livy, Book 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 1. {{cite book}}: |first2= has generic name (help)
  5. ^ Dozois, Gardner; Schmidt, Stanley, eds. (1998). Roads Not Taken: Tales of Alternate History. New York: Del Rey. pp. 1–5. ISBN 978-0345421944.

Bibliography

  • Burck, Erich (1934). Die Erzählungskunst des T. Livius. Berlin: Weidmann.
  • Fotheringham, John Knight (1905). The Bodleian Manuscript of Jerome's Version of the Chronicles of Eusebius. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
  • Syme, Ronald, “Livy and Augustus”, HSCP 64 (1959), 27-87 = Roman Papers I (ed. E. Badian, Oxford, 1979), 400-454.
  • Walsh, P. G., "Livy", ch.V (pp.115-142) in T. A. Dorey (ed.) Latin Historians (London, 1966)
  • Dorey, T. A. (ed.) Livy (London & Toronto, 1971)
  • Luce, T. J., Livy. The Composition of His History (Princeton University Press, 1977)
  • Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth, Antony, eds. (2003). The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198606413.
  • Feldherr, Andrew (1998). Spectacle and Society in Livy's History. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520210271.
  • Jaeger, Mary (1997). Livy's Written Rome. University of Michigan Press. ISBN B000S73SBI. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  • Kraus, C. S.; Woodman, A. J. (2006). Latin Historians. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199222933.
  • Mackail, J. W. (2008). Latin Literature. BiblioLife. ISBN 978-0554321998.
  • Miles, Gary B. (1995). Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801484261.
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Livy".
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