Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/751

 L I V Y 727 other forms of literature might be thought unbecoming to the dignity of a free-born citizen, this was never so with history. On the contrary, men of high rank and tried statesmanship were on that very account thought all the fitter to write the chronicles of the state they had served. And history in Rome never lost either its social prestige or its intimate and exclusive connexion with the fortunes of the Eoman people. It was well enough for Greeks to busy themselves with the manners, institutions, and deeds of the &quot; peoples outside.&quot; The Roman historians, from Fabius Pictor to Tacitus, cared for none of these things. This exclusive interest in Rome was doubtless encouraged by the peculiar characteristics of the history of the state. The Roman annalist had not, like the Greek, to deal with the varying fortunes and separate doings of a number of petty communities, but with the continuous life of a single city. Xor was his attention drawn from the main lines of political history by the claims of art, literature, and philo sophy, for just as the tie which bound Romans together was that of citizenship, not of race or culture, so the history of Rome is that of the state, of its political constitution, its wars and conquests, its military and administrative system. Livy s own circumstances were all such as to render these views natural to him. He began fo write at a time when, after a century of disturbance, the mass of men had been contented to purchase peace at the price of liberty. The present was at least inglorious, the future doubtful, and many turned gladly to the past for consolation. This retrospective tend ency was favourably regarded by the Government. It was the policy of Augustus to obliterate all traces of recent revolution, and to connect the new imperial regime as closely as possible with the ancient traditions and institu tions of Rome and Italy. The JEneid of Virgil, the Fasti of Ovid, suited well with his own restoration of the ancient temples, his revival of such ancient ceremonies as the Ludi Saiculares, his efforts to check the un-Roman luxury of the day, and his jealous regard for the purity of the Roman stock. And, though we are nowhere told that Livy under took his history at the emperor s suggestion, it is certain that Augustus read parts of it with pleasure, and even honoured the writer with his assistance and friendship. Livy was deeply penetrated with a sense of the greatness of Rome. From first to last its majesty and high destiny are present to his mind. vEneas is led to Italy by the fates that he may be the founder of Rome (i. 1 ; comp. i. 4, &quot; debebatur fatis tanta3 origo urbis &quot;). Romulus after his ascension declares it to be the will of heaven that Rome should be mistress of the world ; and Hannibal marches into Italy, that he may &quot;set free the world&quot; from Roman rule. But, if this ever-present consciousness often gives dignity and elevation to his narrative, it is also re sponsible for some of its defects. It leads him occasionally into exaggerated language (e.g., xxii. 3,&amp;gt;, &quot;nullius usquam terrarum rei cura Romanes effugiebat &quot;), or into such mis- statements as that in xxi. 99, where he explains the course taken by the Romans in renewing war with Carthage by saying that &quot; it seemed more suitable to the dignity of the Roman people.&quot; Often his jealousy for the honour of Rome makes him unfair and one-sided. In all her wars not only success but justice is with Rome (e.g., the war with Perseus of Macedon; see Cobet in Mnemosyne for 1881). When Hieronymus of Syracuse deserts Rome for Hannibal, Livy says nothing of the complaints against Rome, by which, according to Polybius, he justified his change of policy. To the same general attitude is also due the omission by Livy of all that has no direct bearing on the fortunes of the Roman people. &quot; I have resolved,&quot; he says (xxxix. 48), &quot; only to touch on foreign affairs so far as they are bound up with those of Rome.&quot; The opera tions of the Rhodians in Asia Minor (197 B.C., xxxiii. 20) he curtly dismisses in a sentence, that he may pass &quot; ad ea qute propria Romani belli sunt ;&quot; and so again (xli. 25) &quot; it is not worth my while to recount in detail the wars of foreigners with each other ; it is as much and more than I can do to record the doings of the Roman people.&quot; As the result, we get from Livy very defective accounts even of the Italic peoples most closely connected with Rome. Of the past history and the internal condition of the more distant nations she encountered he tells us little or nothing, even when he found such details carefully given by Polybius. Scarcely less strong than his interest in Rome is his interest in the moral lessons which her history seemed to him so well qualified to teach. This didactic view of history was a prevalent one in antiquity, and it was con firmed no doubt by those rhetorical studies which in Rome as in Greece formed the chief part of education, and which taught men to look on history as little more than a store house of illustrations and themes for declamation. But it suited also the practical bent of the Roman mind, with its comparative indifference to abstract speculation or purely scientific research. It is in the highest degree natural that Livy should have sought for the secret of the rise of Rome, not in any large historical causes, but in the moral qualities of the people themselves, and that he should have looked upon the contemplation of these as the best remedy for the vices of his own degenerate days. It is possible too that the simplicity and even austerity of manners for which Padua was afterwards celebrated may have charac terized its citizens in Livy s time, and that he was thus especially fitted to appreciate the purity, reverence, and loyalty of early Roma But, whatever the cause, there is no doubt of the fact. He is never tired of insisting on the virtues of past days, or of contrasting them with the vices of the present. He dwells with delight on the un selfish patriotism of the old heroes of the republic. In those times children obeyed their parents, the gods were still sincerely worshipped, poverty was no disgrace, sceptical philosophies and foreign fashions in religion and in daily life were unknown. But this ethical interest is closely bound up w-ith his Roman sympathies. His moral ideal is no abstract one, and the virtues he praises are those which in his view made up the truly Roman type of character. &quot; Minime Romani ingenii homo &quot; is the sentence of con demnation he passes (xxii. 58) on a Roman soldier who broke faith with Hannibal. Camillus is praised as &quot; vir ac vere Romanus &quot; (xxii. 14); &quot; to do and to suffer bravely&quot; is Roman (ii. 12). The prominence thus given to the moral aspects of the history tends to obscure in some de gree the true relations and real importance of the events narrated, but it does so in Livy to a far less extent than in some other writers. He is much too skilful an artist either to resolve his history into a mere bundle of examples, or to overload it, as Tacitus is sometimes inclined to do, with reflexions and axioms. The moral he wishes to enforce is usually either conveyed by the story itself, with the aid perhaps of a single sentence of comment, or put as a speech into the mouth of one of his characters (e.g., xxiii. 49; the devotion of Decius, viii. 10, comp. vii. 40 ; and the speech of Camillus, v. 54) ; and what little his narrative thus loses in accuracy it gains in dignity and warmth of feeling. In his portraits of the typical Romans of the old style, such as Q. Fabius Maximus, in his descriptions of the unshaken firmness and calm courage shown by the fathers of the state in the hour of trial, Livy is at his best ; and he is so largely in virtue of his genuine appreciation of character as a powerful force in the affairs of men. This enthusiasm for Rome and for Roman virtues is, moreover, saved from degenerating into gross partiality by the genuine candour of Livy s mind and by his wide sympathies with every thing great and good. Seneca has