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EXCERPTA LIVIANA.

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HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF THE

CONGREGATIONAL LIBRARY OF BOSTON

JAN 4 1937

Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1831, by Hilliard & Brown, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

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PREFACE.

THIS selection from the History of Livy is published with particular reference to those Colleges and higher schools, in which the first Five Books have hitherto formed a part of the course of Latin studies. The editor, by his experience as an instructer in Harvard University, was led to observe that the volume in common use, though it contains some of the finest passages of this writer, is yet in great part uninteresting to young students. To such, many of the details, which are necessary to the completeness of the Roman annals, prove wearisome from their similarity, if not from their want of importance. And to say nothing of the injustice done to the author by taking arbitrarily the first five books of a History of infinite variety, and consisting, as he wrote it, of at least one hundred and forty books (from thirty-five of which we still have a choice), justice is thus hardly rendered to those who may never have an opportunity to read more of the work than is comprehended in their early studies, or whose reading of the whole may depend on the impression given by this part.

Until he had principally made this selection, the editor was unable to learn that any book, having the same object, had been published; nor is he yet aware that any such is in use in Great Britain or in the South of Europe; but the kindness of friends has furnished him with two, published in Germany in the course of the last century.* Of these,

* Livius pro Prima Classe Gymnasiorum Scholarumque Latinarum ita excerptus, ut intra Anni Spatium prælegi possit, et simul Historia in Connexione cum Fide, Ingenio, Stiloque Livii gustentur. A M. MARTINO

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