Titus Livius (59 BC – AD 17), 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. He was on familiar terms with the
Julio-Claudian family, advising Augustus'
grandnephew, the future emperor
Claudius,
as a young man not long before 14 AD in a letter to take up the
writing of history. Livy and Augustus' wife,
Livia, were from the same clan in different locations,
although not related by blood.
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 a 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.
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. 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.
Jerome says that Livy was born the same year as
Marcus Valerius Messala
Corvinus and died the same year as
Ovid.
Messala, however, was born earlier, in 64 BC, and Ovid's death,
usually taken to be the same year as Livy's, is more uncertain. As
an alternative view,
Ronald Syme argues
for 64 BC-12 AD as a range for Livy, setting the death of Ovid at
12. A death date of 12, however, removes Livy from Augustus' best
years and makes him depart for Padua without the good reason of the
second emperor,
Tiberius, being not as
tolerant of his republicanism. The contradiction remains; there is
no non-speculative solution.
Background
According
to Jerome and numerous other sources, Livy was a native of
Patavium, the modern Padua
.
Going by name, he belonged to the
Livia
gens, or family, but no
agnomen has survived. His works show that he was
educated in oratory and Greek, which is an indicator of rank,
although the Livii were of
plebeian origin.
Patavium was of multi-ethnic origin (but Livius is a good Roman
name) and did not become a Roman
municipium until 49 BC. Livy was ten years old
then. The Patavians were enrolled in the
Fabii, but perhaps not Romans who already had a good
name, as Livy kept his and without agnomen. Whether the fact that
the emperor Augustus' much loved and respected wife,
Livia, was born into the Roman branch of the
Livia
gens, had anything to do with Augustus' tolerance of Livy's
republican views is not known.
Various authors testify that Livy married and had children.
Quintilian gives a fragment of a letter
from Livy to his son. The same son became a writer considered an
authority by
Pliny the Elder in
Books V and VI of
Natural History.
Seneca the Elder mentions a son-in-law,
Lucius Magius.
Two epitaphs from Padua
are
considered relevant: CIL V 2975 commemorates Titus
Livius, son of Gaius, his two sons: Titus Livius Priscus and Titus
Livius Longus, as well as Livy's wife, Cassia; and CIL V 2865,
marking the resting place of a freedman of Livia Quarta, daughter
of Titus Livius. Evidently the Livii of Padua continued to
reside there and one must presume that after sojourns elsewhere
they came home to die.
At some time early in his career Livy moved to Rome, probably for
his education. A few references in Book I suggest he was at Rome at
or prior to 27 BC, when he began work on his
History of
Rome. It would have been in Rome also that he had or overheard
a conversation with Augustus, who did not acquire that title until
27 BC. In that year, if born in 59 BC, Livy was 32.
Works
Livy's only surviving work is the "History of Rome" (
Ab Urbe Condita), which was his
career from an age in middle life, probably 32, until he left Rome
for Padua in old age, probably after the death of
Augustus in the reign of
Tiberius. When he began this work he was already
past his youth; presumably, events in his life prior to that time
had led to his intense activity as a historian.
Seneca the Younger gives brief mention
that he was also known as an orator and philosopher and had written
some treatises in those fields from a historical point of
view.
Reception
Livy's
History of Rome was in demand from the publication
of the first packet.
Livy became so famous that a man from
Cadiz
travelled to Rome just to see him, and once he had
seen, returned home. The popularity of the work continued
through the entire classical period. 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.
Livy wrote during the reign of
Augustus,
who came to power after a civil war with generals and consuls
claiming to be defending the
Roman
Republic, such as
Pompey. Patavium had
been pro-Pompey. To clarify his status, the victor of the civil
war, Octavian Caesar, had wanted to take the title
Romulus
(the first king of Rome) but in the end accepted the senate
proposal of
Augustus. He did not abolish the republic de
facto but adapted its institutions into the empire.
Livy's enthusiasm for the republic is evident from the first
pentade of his work, and yet the
Julio-Claudian family (the imperial family)
were as much fans of Livy as anyone. He could not have been an
advocate of any sort of sedition in favor of restoring the
republic; he would have been put on trial for treason and executed,
as many had been and would be. He must have been viewed as a
harmless and relevant advocate of the ancient morality, which was a
known public stance of the citizens of Patavium. His relationship
to Augustus is defined primarily by a passage from
Tacitus in which
Cremutius Cordus is put on trial for his
life for offenses no worse than Livy's and defends himself
face-to-face with the frowning
Tiberius as
follows:
"I am said to have praised Brutus and Cassius, whose
careers many have described and no one mentioned without
eulogy.
Titus Livius, pre-eminently famous for eloquence and
truthfulness, extolled Cneius Pompeius in such a panegyric that
Augustus called him Pompeianus, and yet this was no obstacle to
their friendship.
To avoid conviction, while waiting for a verdict Cordus committed
suicide by self-starvation. His worst fears were realized in
absentia: his books were sentenced to be burned by the
aediles, but they performed the task without zeal and
many escaped. Livy's reasons for returning to Padua after the death
of Augustus (if he did) are unclear, but the circumstances of
Tiberius' reign certainly allow for speculation.
During the Middle Ages interest in Livy fell off. Due to the length
of the work the literate class were already reading summaries
rather than the work itself, which was tedious to copy, expensive,
and required a lot of storage space. It must have been during this
period, if not before, that MSS began to be lost without
replacement.
The
Renaissance was a time of intense
revival; the population discovered that Livy was being lost and
large amounts of money changed hands in the rush to collect Livy
manuscripts. The poet, Beccadelli, sold a country home for the
money to purchase one manuscript copied by Poggio.
Petrarch and
Pope
Nicholas V launched a search for the now missing books.
Laurentius Valla published an emended text initiating the field of
Livy scholarship.
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. Respect for Livy rose
to lofty heights.
After a few thousand years of Livy being studied by the schoolboys
of every western population, moderns have developed their own views
of Livy and his place in the ancient world, which were not current
in ancient times. For example, one text on western civilization
pronounces: "Livy was the prose counterpart of
Vergil", as both have been standard in the study of
Golden Age Latin literature. Golden Age Latin was not known as such
in classical times and the ancient reader could choose from a
vastly larger bibliography; but in fact, private reading was a
privilege of the literate few, who had the wealth to buy
manuscripts or have them copied and had the time for library
research. Public readings of works, however, were common and were
the main way in which an author became known.
Notes
- Foster (1874), p. xii, citing Suetonius, Claudius, xli.
- Fotheringham (1905), P. 1.
- Kraus (1994), p.1, citing several articles by Syme.
- Foster (1874), pp. ix-x.
- Foster (1874), p. xii, citing Quintilian VIII.2.18.
- Foster (1874) p. xiii, citing Seneca, Controversiae,
X.Preface.2.
- Foster (1874), pp. xii-xiii.
- Pliny the Younger, Epistles,
II.3.
- Annales IV.34.
- Foster (1874), p. xxiv.
- Foster (1874), p. xxiv.
Bibliography
Additional reading
External links