Livy

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 respectable names. The majority 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 shortcomings 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 history, Q. Fabius Pictor, a patrician and a senator, can scarcely have published his annals before the close of the The Annalists. 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 Trasimene (217 B.C.). Out of what materials, then, did he put together his account of 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 Relliquiae, Leipzig, 1870; and C. W. Nitzsch, Röm. Annalistik, Berlin, 1873) 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 Aeneas 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 framework consists of short notices of important events, wars, prodigies, 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 aediles 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 his hand. The manner and spirit in which he effected this combination were no doubt wholly uncritical. Usually he seems to have transferred both annalistic 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 official annalistic notices, supplemented, however, not from tradition, but from his own experience and from contemporary sources. But even here Polybius charges him with favouring Rome 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 subsequent annalists. M. Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.) widened the scope of Roman history so as to include that of the chief Italian cities, and made the first serious attempt to settle the chronology. In his history of the Punic wars Caelius Antipater (c. 130 B.C.) added fresh material, drawn probably from the works of the Sicilian Greek Silenus, while Licinius Macer (70 B.C.) distinguished himself by the use he made of the ancient “linen books.” No doubt, too, the later annalists, at any rate from Caelius Antipater onwards, improved upon Fabius in treatment and style. But in more essential points we 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 reproducing 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. Calpurnius 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 generation. By Caelius 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 ornaments 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 freshness into these dry bones of history. At the same time the political 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 Gracchan age imported 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 ascendancy 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 Cynoscephalae 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 Roman victory over the Macedonians, in which 12,000 of the latter were slain and 2200 taken prisoner, an achievement recorded by no other authority.

Such was the written tradition on which Livy mainly relied. We 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 importance 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 “they say,” “the story goes,” “some think,” or speaks in general terms of “ancient writers” or “my authorities.” 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 decade, 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 portions of his work which admit of a comparison with the text of his acknowledged authorities (e.g. fourth and fifth decades, see H. 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 first 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 (Lectures, 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 Antias3 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 antiquarian Cincius, and two (iv. 23, x. 9) to Q. Aelius 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?

It is conceded on all hands that Livy in this decade makes considerable use of other authorities than Polybius (e.g. Fabius xxii. 7; Caelius Antipater xxi. 38, 46, 47, xxii. 31, &c.), that he only once mentions Polybius (xxx. 45), and that, if he used him, he Polybius. 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 premises two opposite conclusions have been drawn. On the one hand, it is maintained (e.g. by Lachmann, C. Peter, H. Peter, Hist. Rom. Relliq.) that those parts of Livy’s narrative which point to a non-Roman authority (e.g. Hannibal’s movements prior to his invasion of Italy) are taken by Livy directly from Polybius, with occasional reference of course to other writers, and with the omission (as in the later decades) of all matters uninteresting to Livy or his Roman readers, and the addition of rhetorical touches and occasional comments. It is urged that Livy, who in the fourth and fifth decades shows himself so sensible of the great merits of Polybius, is not likely to have ignored him in the third, and that his more limited use of him in the latter case is fully accounted for by the closer connexion of the history with Rome and Roman affairs, and the comparative excellence of the available Roman authorities, and, lastly, that the points of agreement with Polybius, not only in matter but in expression, can only be explained on the theory that Livy is directly following the great Greek historian. On the other hand, it is maintained (especially by Schwegler, Nitzsch, and K. Böttcher) that the extent and nature of Livy’s agreement with Polybius in this part of his work point rather to the use by both of a common original authority. It is argued that Livy’s mode of using his authorities is tolerably uniform, and that his mode of using Polybius in particular is known with certainty from the later decades. Consequently the theory that he used Polybius in the third decade requires us to assume that in this one instance he departed widely, and without sufficient reason, from his usual course of procedure. Moreover, even in the passages where the agreement with Polybius is most apparent, there are so many discrepancies and divergencies in detail, and so many unaccountable omissions and additions, as to render it inconceivable that he had the text of Polybius before him. But all these are made intelligible if we suppose Livy to have been here following directly or indirectly the same original sources that were used by Polybius. The earliest of these original sources was probably Silenus, with whom may possibly be placed, for books xxi. xxii., Fabius Pictor. The latter Livy certainly used directly for some parts of the decade. The former he almost as certainly knew only at second hand, the intermediate authority being probably Caelius Antipater. This writer, who confined himself to a history of the Second Punic War, in seven books, is expressly referred to by Livy eleven times in the third decade; and in other passages where his name is not mentioned Livy can be shown to have followed him (e.g. xxii. 5, 49, 50, 51, xxiv. 9). In the latter books of the decade his chief authority is possibly Valerius Antias.

In the fourth and fifth decades the question of Livy’s authorities presents no great difficulties, and the conclusions arrived at by Nissen in his masterly Untersuchungen have met with general acceptance. These may be shortly stated as follows. In the portions of the history which deal with Greece and the East, Livy follows Polybius, and these portions are easily distinguishable from the rest by their superior clearness, accuracy and fulness. On the other hand, for the history of Italy and western Europe he falls back on Roman annalists, especially, it seems, on Claudius Quadrigarius and Valerius Antias—a most unfortunate choice—and from them too he takes the annalistic mould into which his matter is cast.

Livy’s general method of using these authorities was certainly not such as would be deemed satisfactory in a modern historian. He is indeed free from the grosser faults of deliberate injustice and falsification, and he resists that temptation Critical method. to invent, to which “the minds of authors are only too much inclined” (xxii. 7). Nor is he unconscious of the necessity for some kind of criticism. He distinguishes between rumour and the precise statements of recognized authorities (cf. xxi. 46, v. 21, vii. 6). The latter he reproduced in the main faithfully, but with a certain exercise of discretion. Where they disagreed, he calls attention to the fact, occasionally pronouncing in favour of one version rather than another (ii. 41, xxi. 46) though often on no adequate grounds, or attempting to reconcile and explain discrepancies (vi. 12, 38). Where he detects or suspects the insertion of fabulous matter he has no scruple in saying so. Gross exaggerations, such as those in which Valerius Antias indulged, he roundly denounces, and with equal plainness of speech he condemns the family vanity which had so constantly corrupted and distorted the truth. “I suppose,” he says (viii. 40), “that the record and memorial of these matters hath been depraved and corrupted by these funeral orations of praises, ... while every house and family draweth to it the honour and renown of noble exploits, martial feats and dignities by any untruth and lie, so it be colourable.” The legendary character of the earliest traditions he frankly admits. “Such things as are reported either before or at the foundation of the city, more beautiful and set out with poets’ fables than grounded upon pure and faithful records, I mean neither to aver nor disprove” (Praef.); and of the whole history previous to the sack of Rome by the Gauls (390 B.C.) he writes that it was obscure “both in regard of exceeding antiquity, and also for that in those days there were very few writings and monuments, the only faithful safeguard and true remembrancers of deeds past; and, besides, whatsoever was registered in the commentaries of the priests and in other public or private records, the same for the most part, when the city was burned, perished withal.” Further than this, however, Livy’s criticism does not go. Where his written authorities are not palpably inconsistent with each other or with probability he accepts and transcribes their record without any further inquiry, nor does he ever attempt to get behind this record in order to discover the original evidence on which it rested. His acceptance in any particular case of the version given by an annalist by no means implies that he has by careful inquiry satisfied himself of its truth. At the most it only presupposes a comparison with other versions, equally second-hand, but either less generally accepted or less in harmony with his own views of the situation; and in many cases the reasons he gives for his preference of one account over another are eminently unscientific. Livy’s history, then, rests on no foundation of original research or even of careful verification. It is a compilation, and even as such it leaves much to be desired. For we cannot credit Livy with having made such a preliminary survey of his authorities as would enable him to determine their relations to each other, and fuse their various narratives into a consistent whole. It is clear, on the contrary, that his circle of authorities for any one decade was a comparatively small one, that of these he selected one, and transcribed him with the necessary embellishments and other slight modifications until impelled by various reasons to drop him. He then, without warning, takes up another, whom he follows in the same way. The result is a curious mosaic, in which pieces of all colours and dates are found side by side, and in which even the great artistic skill displayed throughout fails to conceal the lack of internal unity. Thus many of Livy’s inconsistencies are due to his having pieced together two versions, each of which gave a differently coloured account of the same event. Mommsen (Rom. Forschungen, ii.) has clearly shown that this is what has happened in his relation of the legal proceedings against the elder Africanus in book xxxviii.; and in the story of the first secession, as he tells it, the older version which represented it as due to political and the later which explained it by economical grievances are found side by side. Similarly a change from one authority to another leads him not unfrequently to copy from the latter statements inconsistent with those he took from the former, to forget what he has previously said, or to treat as known a fact which has not been mentioned before (cf. ii. 1, xxxiv. 6, and Weissenborn’s Introduction, p. 37). In other cases where the same event has been placed by different annalists in different years, or where their versions of it varied, it reappears in Livy as two events. Thus the four campaigns against the Volsci (ii. 17 seq.) are, as Schwegler (R.G. i. 13) rightly says, simply variations of one single expedition. Other instances of such “doublettes” are the two single combats described in xxiii. 46 and xxv. 18, and the two battles at Baecula in Spain (xxvii. 18 and xxviii. 13). Without doubt, too, much of the chronological confusion observable throughout Livy is due to the fact that he follows now one now another authority, heedless of their differences on this head. Thus he vacillates between the Catonian and Varronian reckoning of the years of the city, and between the chronologies of Polybius and the Roman annalists.

To these defects in his method must be added the fact that he does not always succeed even in accurately reproducing the authority he is for the time following. In the case of Polybius, for instance, he allows himself great freedom in omitting what strikes him as irrelevant, or tedious, or uninteresting to his Roman readers, a process in which much valuable matter disappears. In other cases his desire to give a vividness and point to what he doubtless considered the rather bald and dry style of Polybius leads him into absurdities and inaccuracies. Thus by the treaty with Antiochus (188 B.C.) it was provided that the Greek communities of Asia Minor “shall settle their mutual differences by arbitration,” and so far Livy correctly transcribes Polybius, but he adds with a rhetorical flourish, “or, if both parties prefer it, by war” (xxxviii. 38). Elsewhere his blunders are apparently due to haste, or ignorance or sheer carelessness; thus, for instance, when Polybius speaks of the Aetolians assembling at their capital Thermon, Livy (xxxiii. 35) not only substitutes Thermopylae but gratuitously informs his readers that here the Pylaean assemblies were held. Thanks partly to carelessness, partly to mistranslation, he makes sad havoc (xxxv. 5 seq.) of Polybius’s account of the battle of Cynoscephalae. Finally, Livy cannot be altogether acquitted on the charge of having here and there modified Polybius in the interests of Rome.

Style.—Serious as these defects in Livy’s method appear if viewed in the light of modern criticism, it is probable that they were easily pardoned, if indeed they were ever discovered, by his contemporaries. For it was on the artistic rather than on the critical side of history that stress was almost universally laid in antiquity, and the thing that above all others was expected from the historian was not so much a scientific investigation and accurate exposition of the truth, as its skilful presentation in such a form as would charm and interest the reader. Tried by this standard, Livy deservedly won and held a place in the very first rank. Asinius Pollio sneered at his Patavinity, and the emperor Caligula denounced him as verbose, but with these exceptions the opinion of antiquity was unanimous in pronouncing him a consummate literary workman. The classical purity of his style, the eloquence of his speeches, the skill with which he depicted the play of emotion, and his masterly portraiture of great men, are all in turn warmly commended, and in our own day we question if any ancient historian is either more readable or more widely read. It is true that for us his artistic treatment of history is not without its drawbacks. The more trained historical sense of modern times is continually shocked by the obvious untruth of his colouring, especially in the earlier parts of his history, by the palpable unreality of many of the speeches, and by the naïveté with which he omits everything, however important, which he thinks will weary his readers. But in spite of all this we are forced to acknowledge that, as a master of what we may perhaps call “narrative history,” he has no superior in antiquity; for, inferior as he is to Thucydides, to Polybius, and even to Tacitus in philosophic power and breadth of view, he is at least their equal in the skill with which he tells his story. He is indeed the prince of chroniclers, and in this respect not unworthy to be classed even with Herodotus (Quintilian, x. 1. 101). Nor is anything more remarkable than the way in which Livy’s fine taste and sense of proportion, his true poetic feeling and genuine enthusiasm, saved him from the besetting faults of the mode of treatment which he adopted. The most superficial comparison of his account of the earliest days of Rome with that given by Dionysius shows from what depths of tediousness he was preserved by these qualities. Instead of the wearisome prolixity and the misplaced pedantry which make the latter almost unreadable, we find the old tales briefly and simply told. Their primitive beauty is not marred by any attempt to force them into an historical mould, or disguised beneath an accumulation of the insipid inventions of later times. At the same time they are not treated as mere tales for children, for Livy never forgets the dignity that belongs to them as the prelude to the great epic of Rome, and as consecrated by the faith of generations. Perhaps an even stronger proof of the skill which enabled Livy to avoid dangers which were fatal to weaker men is to be found in his speeches. We cannot indeed regard them, with the Speeches. ancients, as the best part of his history, for the majority of them are obviously unhistorical, and nearly all savour somewhat too much of the rhetorical schools to be perfectly agreeable to modern taste. To appreciate them we must take them for what they are, pieces of declamation, intended either to enliven the course of the narrative, to place vividly before the reader the feelings and aims of the chief actors, or more frequently still to enforce some lesson which the author himself has at heart. The substance, no doubt, of many of them Livy took from his authorities, but their form is his own, and, in throwing into them all his own eloquence and enthusiasm, he not only acted in conformity with the established traditions of his art, but found a welcome outlet for feelings and ideas which the fall of the republic had deprived of all other means of expression. To us, therefore, they are valuable not only for their eloquence, but still more as giving us our clearest insight into Livy’s own sentiments, his lofty sense of the greatness of Rome, his appreciation of Roman courage and firmness, and his reverence for the simple virtues of older times. But, freely as Livy uses this privilege of speechmaking, his correct taste keeps his rhetoric within reasonable limits. With a very few exceptions the speeches are dignified in tone, full of life and have at least a dramatic propriety, while of such incongruous and laboured absurdities as the speech which Dionysius puts into the mouth of Romulus, after the rape of the Sabine women, there are no instances in Livy.

But, if our estimate of the merits of his speeches is moderated by doubts as to his right to introduce them at all, no such scruples interfere with our admiration for the skill with which he has drawn the portraits of the great men who figure in his pages. We may indeed doubt whether in all cases they are drawn with perfect accuracy and impartiality, but of their life-like vigour and clearness there can be no question. With Livy this portrait-painting was a labour of love. “To all great men,” says Seneca, “he gave their due ungrudgingly,” but he is at his best in dealing with those who, like Q. Fabius Maximus, “the Delayer,” were in his eyes the most perfect types of the true Roman.

The general effect of Livy’s narrative is no doubt a little spoilt by the awkward arrangement, adopted from his authorities, which obliges him to group the events by years, and thus to disturb their natural relations and continuity. As the result his history has the appearance of being rather a series of brilliant pictures loosely strung together than a coherent narrative. But it is impossible not to admire the copious variety of thought and language, and the evenly flowing style which carried him safely through the dreariest periods of his history; and still more remarkable is the dramatic power he displays when some great crisis or thrilling episode stirs his blood, such as the sack of Rome by the Gauls, the battle by the Metaurus and the death of Hasdrubal.

In style and language Livy represents the best period of Latin prose writing. He has passed far beyond the bald and meagre diction of the early chroniclers. In his hands Latin acquired a flexibility and a richness of vocabulary unknown to it before. If he writes with less finish and a less perfect rhythm than his favourite model Cicero, he excels him in the varied structure of his periods, and their adaptation to the subject-matter. It is true that here and there the “creamy richness” of his style becomes verbosity, and that he occasionally draws too freely on his inexhaustible store of epithets, metaphors and turns of speech; but these faults, which did not escape the censure even of friendly critics like Quintilian, are comparatively rare in the extant parts of his work. From the tendency to use a poetic diction in prose, which was so conspicuous a fault in the writers of the silver age, Livy is not wholly free. In his earlier books especially there are numerous phrases and sentences which have an unmistakably poetic ring, recalling sometimes Ennius and more often his contemporary Virgil. But in Livy this poetic element is kept within bounds, and serves only to give warmth and vividness to the narrative. Similarly, though the influence of rhetoric upon his language, as well as upon his general treatment, is clearly perceptible, he has not the perverted love of antithesis, paradox and laboured word-painting which offends us in Tacitus; and, in spite of the Venetian richness of his colouring, and the copious flow of his words, he is on the whole wonderfully natural and simple.

These merits, not less than the high tone and easy grace of his narrative and the eloquence of his speeches, gave Livy a hold on Roman readers such as only Cicero and Virgil besides him ever obtained. His history formed the groundwork of nearly all that was afterwards written on the subject. Plutarch, writers on rhetoric like the elder Seneca, moralists like Valerius Maximus, went to Livy for their stock examples. Florus and Eutropius abridged him; Orosius extracted from him his proofs of the sinful blindness of the pagan world; and in every school Livy was firmly established as a text-book for the Roman youth.

Text.—The received text of the extant thirty-five books of Livy is taken from different sources, and no one of our MSS. contains them all. The MSS. of the first decade, some thirty in number, are with one exception derived, more or less directly, from a single archetype, viz., the recension made in the 4th century by the two Nicomachi, Flavianus and Dexter, and by Victorianus. This is proved in the case of the older MSS. by written subscriptions to that effect, and in the case of the rest by internal evidence. Of all these descendants of the Nicomachean recension, the oldest is the Codex Parisinus of the 10th century, and the best the Codex Mediceus or Florentinus of the 11th. An independent value attaches to the ancient palimpsest of Verona, of which the first complete account was given by Mommsen in Abhandl. der preussischen Akad. der Wissenschaften (1868). It contains the third, fourth, fifth and fragments of the sixth book, and, according to Mommsen, whose conclusions are accepted by Madvig (Emend. Livianae, 2nd ed., 1877, p. 37), it is derived, not from the Nicomachean recension, but from an older archetype common to both.

For the third decade our chief authority is the Codex Puteanus, an uncial MS. of the 5th century, now at Paris. For the fourth we have two leading MSS.—Codex Bambergensis, 11th century, and the slightly older Codex Moguntinus, now lost and only known through the Mainz edition of 1518-1519. What remains of the fifth decade depends on the 5th century Laurishamensis or Vindobonensis from the monastery of Lorsch, edited at Basel in 1531.

A bibliography of the various editions of Livy, or of all that has been written upon him, cannot be attempted here. The following may be consulted for purposes of reference; W. Engelmann, Scriptores Latini (8th ed., by E. Preuss, 1882); J. E. B. Mayor, Bibliographical Clue to Latin Literature (1875); Teuffel-Schwabe, History of Roman Literature (Eng. trans.), 256, 257; M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur. ii. 1 (2nd ed., 1899). The best editions of the complete text are those of W. Weissenborn (1858-1862, containing an introductory essay on Livy’s life and writings; new edition by M. Müller, 1902), and J. N. Madvig and J. L. Ussing (1863-1873). The only English translation of any merit is by Philemon Holland (1600).