delights. The ancient state religion of Rome, with its temples, priests and auguries, he not only reverences as an integral part of the Roman constitution, with a sympathy which grows as he studies it, but, like Varro, and in true Stoic fashion, he regards it as a valuable instrument of government (i. 19. 21), indispensable in a well-ordered community. As distinctly Stoical is the doctrine of a fate to which even the gods must yield (ix. 4), which disposes the plans of men (i. 42) and blinds their minds (v. 37), yet leaves their wills free (xxxvii. 45).
But we find no trace in Livy of any systematic application of philosophy 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.
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 The Annalists.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
