Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/753

 L I V Y 729 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 Rdliquite, Leipsic, 1870 ; and Nitzsch, Rom. Annalistik, Berlin, 1373) 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 JEneas 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 frameVork consists of short notices of important events, wars, pro digies, 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 fediles 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 &quot;his hand. The manner and spirit in which he effected this combination were no doubt wholly uncritical. Usually he seems to have transferred both aunalistic 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 oilicial aimalistic notices, supple mented, however, not from tradition, but from his own experience and from contemporary sources. But even here Polybius charges him with favouring Home 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 subse quent annalists. M. Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.) widened the scope of Eoman history so as to inchide that of the chief Italian cities, and made the first serious attempt to settle the chronology. In his his tory of the Punic wars Crelius Autipater (circa 130 B.C.) added fresh material, drawn probably from the works of the Sicilian Greek Silenus, while Lieiuius Macer (70 B.C.) distinguished himself by the use he made of the ancient &quot;linen books.&quot; No doubt, too, the later annalists, at any rate from Calms Antipater onwards, improved upon Fabius in treatment and style. But in more essen tial points ve 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 reproduc ing 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 they slavishly clung to its substance, they succeeded as a rule in destroying all traces of its original form and colouring. L. Cal- purnius Piso, tribune in 149 B.C. and consul in 133 B.C., prided himself on reducing the old legends to the level of common sense, and importing into them valuable moral lessons for his own gener ation. By Crelius Antipater the methods of rhetoric were first applied to history, a disastrous precedent enough. He inserted speeches, enlivened his pages with chance tales, and aimed, as Cicero tells us, at not merely narrating facts but also at beautifying them. His successors carried still farther the practice of dressing up the rather bald chronicles of earlier writers with all the orna ments of rhetoric. The old traditions were altered, almost beyond the possibility of recognition, by exaggerations, interpolations, and additions. Fresh incidents were inserted, new motives suggested, and speeches composed in order to infuse the required life and fresh ness into these dry bones of history. At the same time the politi cal bias of the writers, and the political ideas of their day were allowed, in some cases perhaps half unconsciously, to affect their representations of past events. Annalists of the Grncchan age im ported into the early struggles of patricians and plebeians the economic controversies of their own day, and painted the first tribunes in the colours of the two Gracchi or of Saturninus. In the next generation they dexterously forced the venerable records of the early republic to pronounce in favour of the ascendency of the senate, as established by Sulla. To political bias was added family pride, for the gratification of which the archives of the great houses, the funeral panegyrics, or the imagination of the writer himself supplied an ample store of doubtful material. Pedigrees were invented, imaginary consulships and fictitious triumphs inserted, and family traditions and family honours were formally incorporated with the history of the state. Things were not much better even where the annalists were dealing with recent or contemporary events. Here indeed their materials were naturally fuller and more trustworthy, and less room was left for fanciful decoration and capricious alteration of the facts. But their methods are in the main unchanged. What they found written they copied ; the gaps they supplied, where personal experience failed, by imagination. No better proof of this can be given than a comparison of the annalist s version of history with that of Polybius. In the fourth and fifth decades of Livy the two appear side by side, and the contrast between them is striking. Polybius, for instance, gives the number of the slain at Cynos- cephalse as 8000 ; the annalists raise it as high as 40,000 (Livy, xxxiii. 10). In another case (xxxii. 6) Valerius Antias, the chief of sinners in this respect, inserts a decisive Eoman victory over the Macedonians, in which 12,000 of the latter were slain and 2200 taken prisoners, an achievement recorded by no other authority. In some parts of these two decades, however, Livy gives us only the annalists story. Of the campaigns in Cisalpine Gaul, Liguria, and Spain, as described by him on their authority, Nissen well remarks (Untersuch., p. 94), &quot;One would think that the Gauls, Liguriaus, and Spaniards were there for the sole purpose of being slaughtered in thousands by the Romans. Year after year they rise in revolt against Rome, lose some 40,000 men in the struggle, and finally submit, only to begin the same game afresh the next year.&quot; Such was the written tradition on which Livy mainly relied. &quot;VVe have next to examine the manner in which he used it, and here we are met at the outset by the difficulty of determining with exactness what authorities he is following at any one time ; for of the import ance of full and accurate references he has no idea, and often for chapters together he gives us no clue at all. More often still he contents himself with such vague phrases as &quot;they say,&quot; &quot;the story goes,&quot; &quot; some think,&quot; or speaks in general terms of &quot; ancient writers&quot; or &quot;my authorities.&quot; Even where he mentions a writer by name, it is frequently clear that the writer named is not the one whose lead he is following at the moment, but that he is noticed incidentally as differing from Livy s guide for the time being on some point of detail (compare the references to Piso in the first de cade, i. 55, ii. 32, &c.). It is very rarely that Livy explicitly tells us whom he has selected as his chief source (e.g., Fabius, xxii. 7 ; Polybius, xxxiii. 10). By a careful analysis, however, of those por tions of his work which admit of a comparison with the text of his acknowledged authorities (e.g., fourth and fifth decades, see Nissen, Untersuchungen, Berlin, 1863), and elsewhere by comparing his version with the known fragments of the various annalists, and with what we are told of their style and method of treatment, we are able to form a general idea of his plan of procedure. As to the first decade, it is generally agreed that in the Erst and second books at any rate he follows such older and simpler writers as Fabius Pictor and Calpurnius Piso (the only ones whom he there refers to by name), to whom, so far as the first book is concerned, Niebuhr (Introd. Lect., p. 33) would add the poet Ennius. With the close of the second book or the opening of the third we come upon the first traces of the use of later authors. Valerius Antias is first quoted in iii. 5, and signs of his handiwork are visible here and there throughout the rest of the decade (vii. 36, ix. 27, x. 3-5). In the fourth book the principal authority is apparently Licinius Macer, and for the period following the sack of Rome by the Gauls Q. Claudius Quadrigarius, whose annals began at this point in the history. We have besides a single reference (vii. 3) to the anti quarian Cincius, and two (iv. 23, x. 9) to Q. yElius Tubero, one of the last in the list of annalists. Passing to the third decade, we find ourselves at once confronted by a question which has been long and fully discussed the relation between Livy and Polybius. Did Livy use Polybius at all, and, if so, to what extent ? (See for details Hiibner, Grundriss zu rorlcsungcn lib. d. Mom. Littcratur- geschichte, p. 195). It is conceded on all hands that Livy in this decade makes con siderable use of other authorities than Polybius (e.g., Fabius, xxii. 7 ; Cailius Antipater, xxi. 3S, 46, 47, xxii. 31, &c.), that he only once mentions Polybius (xxx. 45, &quot;Polybius haudquaquam sper- nendus auctor&quot;), and that, if he used him, he did so to a much less extent than in the fourth and fifth decades, and in a very different manner. It is also agreed that we can detect in Livy s account of the Hannibalic war two distinct elements, derived originally, the one from a Roman, the other from a non-Roman source. But from these generally accepted premisses two opposite conclusions have been drawn. On the one hand, it is maintained (e.g., by Lachmann, C. Peter, H. Peter, Hist. Rom. Rdliq.) that those parts of Livy s narrative which point to a non-Roman authority (e.g. , Hannibal s XIV. 92