Livy - The History of Rome - Books I-V

Rome’s most popular historian was born Titus Livius in Padua in 64 or 59 BC and lived until 17 AD. Unlike most other classic authors whose work has been preserved, Livy never served in high-ranking military or government positions. He devoted his life to writing, his universal history of Rome begins with the foundation myths of Aeneas and Romulus and provides luxuriant coverage to 9 BC. His History of Rome, known as Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City), originally comprised 142 books, the longest of which was about 65 pages. Of these, all or the majority of Books 1-10 and 20-45 survive and are professionally published. As a mark of the esteem in which Livy is held today, all these works are available across 4 books by Penguin Classics, as well as other top imprints. Even the missing volumes are not completely lost, summaries of all but two of the books are available in the Periochae published by Oxford’s World Classics.

Livy approached history as did the other ancients, not simply as a report of events but as a form of classical education for the purpose of developing noble character and practical wisdom. He relied on all the resources he could find, most of which were lost in antiquity. Once the Roman Constitution was established, Livy used the annual election of the two Consuls to accurately determine years in which events occurred, as earlier Greek historians used the number of the Olympics held every four years, or the annual elections of the archons at Athens. Livy incorporated information such as census figures which made his work a unique database for Roman history. The ancient scribes who summarized his now lost books captured this data in their epitomes for each book in the Periochae.

Modern readers enjoy Livy as an excellent writer who delivers history in the fullness of moral judgement, the color of human character, and the vivid description of the world the ancients lived in. In this chapter, we will draw first on two publications from Penguin Classics and a third from Oxford University Press. Livy – the Early History of Rome includes Books I-V, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt (1960), scholar and translator, Introduction by R.M. Ogilvie (1971), Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and Preface and more by S.P. Oakley (2002), Reader in Classics at the University of Reading; Livy – Rome and the Mediterranean includes books XXXI-XLV, translated by Henry Bettenson (1976) Professor of the Classics at Charterhouse, Introduction by A.H. McDonald (1976), Fellow of the British Academy. Livy – Rome’s Mediterranean Empire includes Books XL-XLV and the Periochae, Translation, Introduction and Notes by Jane D. Chaplin, 2007, Professor of Classics at Middlebury College. All materials copyright by authors as dated.

Unlike the Greeks and other even more ancient cultures, Romans did not keep records of their history prior to the fourth and third century BC, but in his introduction to the Early History, Prof. Oglivie makes clear that Livy had access to reliable information and made the best of it to tell the story of the early centuries. Oglivie mentions four sources available to Livy, including Greek records of ancient settlements of Magna Graecia in Italy dating as far back at 750 BC at Cumae, some ancient official documents that had survived, the still-existing institutions and customs, and memories passed down in family traditions. As moderns, we have the evidence of archeology to offer proof of events such as the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC.

Livy in his Preface – Before the foundation explains the reason, he and other historians like Appian and Cassius Dio begin their histories with mentions of Aeneas coming to Italy after the Fall of Troy before he goes on to explain how Romulus killed Remus to gain sole power to found Rome. The following sentiment also provides us with his reasons why he will continue to report prodigies into his own time.

There is no reason, I feel, to object when antiquity draws no hard line between the human and the supernatural: it adds dignity to the past, and, if any nation deserves the privilege of claiming a divine ancestry, that nation is our own….

??????????????? Livy early on at 1.18 projects to the end of his history, to offer parallels with his present and antiquity. One of the oldest Roman traditions was that the so-called ‘gates of war’, the doors of the ancient Temple of Janus would be open during times of war, and only closed when peace had been attained. He reports only two times that the doors have been closed since the reign of Numa, the legendary second king of Rome who had succeeded Romulus and built this temple near the end of the eighth century BC.

… once in the consulship of Manlius at the end of the first war with Carthage and again on the occasion (which we ourselves were allowed by heaven to witness) when after the battle of Actium Augustus Caesar brought peace to the world by land and sea.

??????????????? Displaying his entertaining mastery of language and visual imagery at 2.20, Livy describes the lone hero Horatius facing the attack of the Etruscans, the mysterious ancient kingdom just north of Rome that maintained dominion over the entire peninsula of Italy from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian Sea. This dramatic battle from about 508 BC has been preserved in painting and in the stirring poem by T.B. Macauley “Horatius at the Bridge.” The mighty warrior has ordered his comrades to retreat to safety behind him, he fights on as the demolition squads destroy the enemy’s only path to Rome.

Once more Horatius stood alone; with defiance in his eyes he confronted the Etruscan chivalry, challenging one after another to single combat, and mocking them all as tyrants’ slaves who, careless of their own liberty, were coming to destroy the liberty of others. … The Etruscans could only stare in bewilderment as Horatius, with a prayer to Father Tiber to bless him and his sword, plunged fully armed into the water and swam, through the missiles which fell thick about him, safely to the other side….

??????????????? Livy recorded a story of events soon after the overthrow of the last of the Roman kings that may have contributed to Shakespeare’s play “Coriolanus.” While Plutarch’s work on Coriolanus in his “Parallel Lives” is generally attributed as Shakespeare’s source, Livy’s “Ab Urbe Condita” and Machiavelli’s “Discourses on Livy” were available in Elizabethan England when Shakespeare was writing in the early 17th century. The story is centered on the conflict between the rich of the Senate and the poor class represented by the tribunes of the plebs that was a constant throughout the Roman Republic, even from the earliest years of the fifth century BC. Livy explains this conflict at 2.34 describing a bitter dispute over the price of grain. The tribunes have taken privileges from the Senate, and Marcius Coriolanus declares his resentment of this new power governing Rome in speaking of the tribunes.

If they want grain at the old price, he said, they must give us back our old privileges. What have I done that I should see upstarts from the mob in office? Am I a slave? Have I been ransomed from brigands?

??????????????? Marcius was a great military hero; he had gained the honorable appellation of Coriolanus by leading the army to victory in the war against the Volsci in the siege of Corioli in 493 BC. When he was exiled from Rome, he allied himself with the enemy Volscians and threatened to march on Rome. At this point, we see Livy writing at his dramatic, emotional best as Coriolanus’ wife, two young sons and mother are persuaded to confront him. “Men, it seemed, could not defend the city with their swords; women might better succeed with their tears.” Upon being informed, the general is “profoundly moved” and ran to his mother, only to be rebuffed with her anger at 2.40.

I would know, she said, before I accept your kiss, whether I have come to an enemy or to a son, whether I am here as your mother or as a prisoner of war. Have my long life and unhappy old age brought me to this, that I should see you first as an exile, then the enemy of your country? … When Rome was before your eyes, did not the thought come to you, ‘within those walls is my home, with the gods that watch over it – my mother and my wife and my children’? Ah, had I never borne a child, Rome would not now be menaced; if I had no son, I could have died in a free country!

??????????????? Livy recounts another bloody conflict between the classes and the positions they held in mixed form of government where both the rich had power in the Senate and the plebs had power with the Tribunes. In the memorable words of the Consul Cincinnatus, re-elected because one of the two consuls had just been killed in civil strife, who attacks both side in a furious address. Livy details the mutual bitterness in Roman society.

According to him, it was the feebleness of the senatorial party which had allowed the tribunes to hold office for an indefinite period … to exercise a tyranny fitter for a disorderly household than for the political life of a city like Rome. Courage, constancy, all the virtues which, in civil or military life, were the true glory of manhood, had followed … into banishment. And what, he cried, have we in their stead? The tribunes! Those men of many words, those trouble-mongers and fomenters of political strife, who by underhand methods get themselves elected … and lord it amongst us as irresponsibly as kings!

??????????????? These struggles to settle into a peaceful form of governance continued for the first half century of the Republic, and Livy informs us that representatives are even sent to well-respected Greece about 455 BC “… with instructions to take down in writing the laws of Solon and acquaint themselves with the way of life and the political institutions of other Greek communities.” Given the circumstances, that long-established Greek city-states such Athens, Thebes, Sparta, Corinth, Megara, Argos, and hundreds of others had been battling for centuries, we can imagine how chaotic things were in Rome. But we cannot forget that all of Greece had unified to repel the great kings of Persia in their two invasions of 490 and 480 BC, and at this point in time Athens is forging a sea-going empire over Attica, the islands of the Aegean and parts of Ionia.

??????????????? By 391 BC, Rome is facing a great threat of fearsome foreigners from the north, as he tells us at 5.32.

There is a tradition that it was the lure of Italian fruits and especially of wine, a pleasure then new to them, that drew Gauls to cross the Alps and settle in regions previously cultivated by the Etruscans.

??????????????? At 5.38-39 Livy portrays the first sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC. While much of this ancient history comes from a time before Rome kept written history, these events have been confirmed by archeologists excavating the fire-damaged ruins. When the attack comes, “… not good fortune only, but good generalship was on the barbarian side.” The Roman army lacks all courage and discipline, and half of them flee to the formerly enemy city of Veii. Livy describes the spooky scene the Gauls encounter at Rome.

The Gauls could hardly believe their eyes, so easy, so miraculously swift their victory had been. … the gates stood open, not a sentry was on guard; no soldiers manned the walls. Once more the astonishing truth held them spellbound.

Then news came that the Gauls were at the gates; the anguish of personal bereavement was forgotten in a wave of panic, and all too soon cries like the howling of wolves and barbaric songs could be heard … the old aristocrats who long before had served as consuls or celebrated their Triumphs said that they would die side by side with their humble compatriots … and to commend to the valor of their youth whatever good fortune might yet remain for a city which for three hundred and sixty years had never been defeated.

??????????????? While the survivors retreated to the high and defensible citadel, the situation seemed hopeless. From the Citadel the survivors witnessed the Gauls destroying their city, buildings, homes, women, children, animals, everything in the city of Rome was left in ashes. At one point a few Gauls had found an accessible path to get into the stockaded fort of the Citadel, but the people were saved by the cackling of “Juno’s sacred geese.”

Amidst the devastation, hunger took a great toll on both side, and the invaders were especially beset with disease, coming from a colder climate they would have been susceptible to the malaria common in ancient Rome. But the situation was hopeless, so the Romans agreed to the humiliating solution of paying a ransom of a thousand pounds of gold. The barbarians used unfair weights even then, and when the Romans complained “the insolent barbarian flung his sword into the scale, saying ‘Woe to the vanquished!’ – words intolerable to Roman ears.”

??????????????? ?While this was going on, even in such a crisis, Rome’s miraculous endurance is again in evidence at it would be in many future disasters such as Hannibal’s invasion and destruction of Roman legions in 216 BC. At 5.48-49 we learn that Camillus has been appointed dictator and has been raising troops in Ardea, and he appears on this humiliating scene of weighing the ransom. In the most astonishing reversal of fates Camillus ordered the Gauls to leave and a crushing battle ensued. He exhorted his troops, they responded with a massacre of the barbarians.

It is your duty, he said, to recover your country not by gold but by the sword. You will be fighting with all you love before your eyes: the temples of the gods, your wives and children, the soil of your native land scarred with the ravages of war … Luck had turned at last; human skill, aided by the powers of heaven, was fighting on the side of Rome, and the invaders scattered at the first encounter … A second, more regular, engagement was fought … This time it was bloody and complete: the Gallic camp was taken, and the army annihilated. Camillus returned in triumph to Rome, his victorious troops roaring out their bawdy songs and saluting their commander by the well-merited titles of another Romulus, father of his country and second founder of Rome.

??????????????? Reading passages like this, it is easy to understand why Livy maintains such a revered position as historian of Rome through the ages.