Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/752

 728 L I V Y described him as &quot; candidissimus omnium magnorum ingeniorum eestimator &quot; (Suasor., vi. 21). Quintilian (x. 1, 101) places him on a level with Herodotus as a writer &quot;clarissimi candoris,&quot; and this candid admiration is not reserved exclusively for Romans. HasdrubaPs devotion and valour at the battle on the Metaurus are described in terms of eloquent praise (xxvii. 49, &quot;there, as became the son of Hamilcar and the brother of Hannibal, he fell fighting &quot;) ; and even in Hannibal, the lifelong enemy of Eome, he frankly recognizes the great qualities that balanced his faults. Nor though his sympathies are unmistakably with the aristocratic party, does he scruple to censure the pride, cruelty, and selfishness which too often marked their conduct (ii. 54 ; the speech of Canuleius, iv. 3 ; of Sextius and Licinius, vi. 36) ; and, though he feels acutely that the times are out of joint, and has apparently little hope of the future, he still believes in justice and goodness. He is often righteously indignant, but never satirical, and such a pessimism as that of Tacitus and Juvenal is wholly foreign to his nature. Though he studied and even wrote on philosophy (Senec., Ep. 100), Livy is by no means a philosophic historian. We learn indeed from incidental notices that he inclined to Stoicism and disliked the Epicurean system. With the scepticism that despised the gods (x. 40) and denied that they meddled with the affairs of men (xliii. 13) he has no sympathy. The immortal gods are everywhere the same (xiii. 3); they govern the world (xxxvii. 45) and reveal the future to men by signs and wonders (xliii. 13), but only a debased superstition will look for their hand in every petty incident (xxvii. 23, &quot;minimis etiam rebus prava religio inserit deos &quot;), or abandon itself to an indiscriminate belief in the portents and miracles in which popular credulity delights (xxviii. 11, xxi. 62, &quot;multa ea hieme prodigia . . . aut quod evenire solet, motis semel in religionem animis, mnlta nunciata et tern ere credita &quot;). 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 (xliii. 13, &quot;et mihi vetustas res scribenti, nescio quo pacto antiquus fit animus &quot;), 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 fato 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 appli cation 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 (xxiv. 25, &quot;aut servit humiliter aut superbe dominatnr &quot;). 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 corrup tion of Roman race and Roman manners by mixture with aliens (xxxix. 3), are all noticed in tones of solemn warn ing. 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 pic ture of the history and working of the Roman constitution, or that his handling of intricate questions of policy is weak and inadequate. 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, inscrip tions, &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 that the breastplate dedicated by Cossus (428 B.C.) was to be seen in his own day in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, nor is there any reason to sup pose that the &quot;libri lintei,&quot; 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 commencement of the 3d 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 authori ties. Many of them he never mentions ; the others (e.g., the libri lintei) he evidently describes at second hand. Anti quarian 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 Ther- mon, the capital of ^Etolia, with Thermopylae (xxxiii. 35), but his accounts of the Roman campaigns against Volsci, ^Equi, 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 respect able names. The majerity 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 short comings 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 his tory, 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 period from the arrival of Evander in Italy down at least to the battle by Lake Trasiinene (217 B.C.). i Out of what materials, then, did he put together his account of