when he died at Patavium, his native city, in the seventy-sixth year of his age.

Livy did not enter on the composition of his colossal history till he had reached the middle period of life, for there is a passage in the 19th chapter of book i. which plainly refers to the closing of the temple of Janus by Augustus in 29 B.C., when Livy was thirty years of age. We can, moreover, fix the writing of this book before 25 B. C., because in that year the temple was again shut for the second time in the reign of Augustus; and yet Livy, in the passage already mentioned, speaks of its having been closed only once after the Actian war. From the time when Livy commenced his history, he no doubt laboured constantly at its composition. It was probably published in parts, as each book or decade was finished; and whilst the work was proceeding, the author's fame gradually spread over the world. An instance of Livy's celebrity is mentioned by Pliny (Epist. ii. 3), who tells us that a Spaniard travelled from Gades (Cadiz) to Rome solely for the purpose of seeing the author of the great history, and returned as soon as he had satisfied his curiosity. Livy's work is an admirable digest of all the materials existing for a history of Rome. His purpose in undertaking it (and this very purpose shows us his own beautiful and amiable character) was to draw, with all the charms which his artistic skill and delicate taste could give, a complete picture of the history of the Roman people, and of the laudable or blameworthy peculiarities of its prominent personages, that thereby he might inflame the patriotic feelings of his countrymen, and contribute to the instruction and entertainment of the world at large. Livy generally looks at a historical event or character from a moral point of view: he wishes to excite our admiration of the great, love of the good, and hatred of the bad; he feels a proud pleasure in describing the power of the Romans, or the purity of manners by which they were at first distinguished; and the history of the early ages of the state seems even to have consoled him for the wickedness and wretchedness which he had seen and felt during the time of the civil wars, when the republic was overthrown. In consequence of such feelings, he was in principle a republican; but, restrained by law and habit, he was a decided conservative, and therefore could not look without sorrow even upon the happy results which had followed the dictator Caesar's demolition of the antiquated aristocratic constitution of the republic. It was on this ground that Augustus reproachfully called him a Pompeian, without, however, withdrawing from him his esteem and favour. This conservatism, and habitual admiration of the olden

*Tacitus, Annal. iv. 34.

times above the modern, merely because they were the olden times, are exhibited by Livy in the early parts of his work, especially in his description of the contests between the patricians and plebeians—that is, particularly in books ii.—vi. Livy's partiality to the patricians in this part of the history may be blamed with more justice than his liking for Pompey, the defender of the old republic against the monarchy which Caesar was threatening. His conservatism, however, never leads him to wink at cruelty and baseness, or to conceal or mis-state facts. History, as he obtained it from the various sources to which he resorted, was to him a sacred thing. He was by no means a searcher into history, though he does not scruple, on occasion, to tell his readers of his assiduity in this respect. For a thorough inquisition into historical points he was naturally unfitted, being possessed neither of the restless activity of a Cato nor of the deep antiquarian spirit of a Varro. His sources were not the documents of the olden time, which were still preserved in the Italian cities, among those tribes which are now extinct, but the works of the Roman annalists, Fabius Pictor, M. Cato, Calpurnius Piso, Sempronius Tuditanus, Cn. Gellius, Valerius Antias, and Licinius Macer. From these he chose his materials, and their diversities of statement he endeavoured to settle, exercising indeed the judgment of a man of sense, but no strict and independent criticism. Whatever presented itself to him as a correct statement of a fact, he received, even though doubts of its truth might arise. To this we must attribute his mention every year of the prodigies which had been reported and set down in the annals of the pontifex maximus. Implicit belief in these was a characteristic feature of the earlier ages, but a sensible and active-minded historian would certainly have passed them over with silent contempt. A doubt of the truth of the early history of Rome, according to the ordinary traditions, seems never to have occurred to him. The first sketch of great events in Roman history by a contemporary was made so late as the time of the Punic wars; and the history of the kings, and of the early ages of the republic, resting merely on oral tradition and popular belief, was grossly falsified through the conviction entertained by the Romans of their invincibility and greatness. By this prejudice Livy was as much enchained as his predecessors, the annalists. This part of his history, and indeed the history of Rome in general, have therefore afforded to acute critics rich fields for conjectures and corrections. Livy's great desire seems to be, to bring out clearly what he considers to be the characteristics of great and leading men. For this end the speeches which he puts in the mouths of statesmen and generals are particularly useful. According to the judgment of antiquity, he displays in these orations at once

considerable insight into the characters of public men and political measures, and a remarkable power of eloquent and vigorous expression.* It must here be observed, however, that in the early periods Livy does not give way to his liking for speechmaking. In this respect he is very favourably distinguished from the Greek historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who makes Romulus and Numa deliver long harangues, exhibiting all the art and skill of the most polished rhetoric, and who thereby shows to his readers merely his own want of historical discreetness. Far from attributing such absurdity to Livy, we say this in his praise, that even when he leaves the mists which envelop the history of the first three centuries, he imposes considerable restraint upon his oratory. He brings out in his speeches the political creeds of statesmen as gathered from their actions; and it is indubitable that, in all cases where it was possible, he, like Sallust and Tacitus, consulted the actual published orations of these men, and founding his own upon theirs, endeavoured also to give as much as possible of their style and turn of thought.

Livy made use of the works of such Greeks as wrote on Roman history or events connected with it. Polybius, in particular, was his great authority for the history of the period from the outbreak of the second Punic war, 218 B. C., till the destruction of Corinth and Carthage, 146 B.C. In all the great transactions of that memorable and eventful period Livy depended principally on him, not, however, without frequently amplifying details from Roman annalists, and sometimes, in cases of discrepancy, preferring the authority of an annalist to that of Polybius. In cases of this kind occurring in books xxi. and xxii. we have given in our notes the statement of Polybius.

The best part of Livy's work, considered merely as a literary effort, was doubtless the history of the period from the Gracchi till the death of Caesar; for here there were few historical doubts to solve, all being plain and open. Great deeds and mighty events lay scattered in rich abundance, and the sentiments and characters of the leading men were to be seen vividly impressed upon their published speeches and literary productions, or were at least described in detail in the historical works of their contemporaries. Here a historian skilled in rhetoric and philosophy could bring all his powers of description and narration into full play. There can be no doubt that Quintilian, in ascribing to Livy a lactea ubertas-that is, a rich fulness of beautiful narrative-had reference principally to that part of the history which we have mentioned. Three-fourths of Livy's work, however,

* Quintilian (x. 1) calls Livy in contionibus supra quam enarrari potest eloquentem.

including all the books after the forty-fifth, are lost. Even the first forty-five books, comprehending the period from the building of the city till the conquest of Perseus, king of Macedonia, and the triumph of Æmilius Paullus, 167 B. C., have not come down to us complete, for the second decade (books xi.—xx.), which embraced the time from the termination of the Samnite wars till the commencement of the second Punic, is wanting. But even from what we have, we can perceive the truth of the ancient critic's remark on Livy; we can see the purity of his character in his appreciation of the noble and the base, the fluency, and, frequently, in the description of accessory circumstances, the overcopiousness of his narrative, his correct taste and scrupulous avoidance of all affectation in style. Livy's style is founded on Cicero's, in the same manner as that of Tacitus on Sallust's. Livy's period is expanded, whereas Sallust's is broken up into single short sentences. Livy carries on his periods by the introduction of all kinds of additional circumstances in the form. of accessory sentences, through means of conjunctions with their dependent verbs, and participles in the case of the subjects, and as ablatives absolute. Livy's period is quite peculiar; Cicero's being oratorical, is much more animated and varied. Livy's expands into a quiet, broad, transparent stream, so that in translating into modern languages, which do not make such extensive use of accessory clauses as the Latin, one of his periods must be broken up into three or four moderately-sized sentences. In reference to his employment of particular words, their meanings, and constructions, Livy for the most part followed the general usage of the language. His language, therefore, approaches nearer to that of Cicero than Sallust's does, though the latter was about thirty years older than Livy, and almost a contemporary of the great pater patriae. Sallust formed his style and chose his words according to the earlier Latinity; Livy kept to the language of his contemporaries, as it had been improved by the orators of the Ciceronian period, and modified and polished by the rhetoricians and poets of the Augustan age. This difference between Livy and Sallust in their views of style is shown also by statements which we find in ancient writers. Quintilian (x. 1) relates that Livy, in a letter to his son, commanded him to read principally Demosthenes and Cicero, and other authors only in the degree of their resemblance to these; and Seneca (Controv. 24, 59) mentions that Livy had a poor opinion of Sallust's studied brevity and affectation of archaisms. The discrepancy which exists between the styles of Livy and Cicero, independently of the natural difference of narrative and representation between the historian and the orator, is worthy of remark. This difference is principally to be found in Livy's frequent introduc

tion of poetical words and constructions into his prose: e. g. tempestas for tempus, mortales for homines, letum for nex, degere for vivere, or agere vitam, que-que for et-et; further, in the use of the mere ablative without the preposition in, to express place 'where;' in the pleonastic employment of adverbs with compound verbs, to strengthen the meaning of the preposition contained in the verb; e. g. prius praecipere, ante praeoccupare, retro repetere, rursus repetere, retro redire, pergere porro, inducere exercitum in agrum hostium; in collective nouns in the singular being connected with a predicate in the plural: e. g. omnis multitudo abeunt; ingens turba circumfusi fremebant; clamor concursusque populi, mirantium quid rei esset; Romanorum minus mille interfecti; and lastly, in the use of quam for magis quam; e. g. ipsorum quam Hannibalis interesse. There are other variations between the language of Livy and that of Cicero, which, however, must be attributed to, and are indeed proofs of, the progressive development of Latin syntax. We may mention, as one of these, the use of the future participle active in a hypothetical sense; for example (xxiii. 44) dedituris se Hannibali non fuisse arcessendum Romanum præsidium—that is, if they had been intending to give themselves up to Hannibal,' &c.

Quintilian (i. 9) tells us that Asinius Pollio, the celebrated orator, historian, and poet of the Augustan age, reproached Livy with Patavinitas—that is, a provincial mode of expression in use at Patavium, as distinguished from the standard style of the capital. It is vain for us now to inquire in what this consisted; for though we may be able to state the difference between the style of one author and that of another, we are not in a position to recognise slight dialectic varieties, perhaps merely of pronunciation. Besides, Asinius Pollio, having rather too high an idea of his own abilities, was considerably addicted to speaking slightingly of other distinguished authors. Quintilian informs us (xii. 1. §22) that he even ventured to depreciate Cicero's style. The Patavinity, therefore, may be nothing but a petty spiteful invention.