The Early History of Rome: Books I-V of the Ab Urbe Condita (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) - Softcover

Livy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0760770239 ISBN 13: 9780760770238

Verlag: Barnes & Noble Inc, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Livys Early History of Rome tells of a small monarchical states struggle to survive. It tells the story of the overthrow of the kings and the development of the Roman Republic. It depicts the qualities that allowed the early Romans to overcome internal disputes and foreign enemies and to recover after the nearly total destruction of their city in 390 BC. Livy writes with fairness, humanity, and an irresistible enthusiasm for the courage, honesty, and self-sacrifice that exemplified what it was to be Roman.

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Titus Livius was born in Patavium (modern Padua) in northern Italy around 59 BC. Given that he was able to devote so much of his life to writing history, it is reasonable to suppose that Livys family must have been fairly wealthy. This work, which he called the Ab Urbe Condita-"From the Founding of the City"- took Livy forty years to write.

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From the introduction by Matthew Peacock

The Early History of Rome describes the founding of a small monarchical state in central Italy and its struggle to survive. It tells the story of the overthrow of the kings and of the development of the Roman Republic. It depicts the qualities and organization which allowed the early Romans to overcome internal disputes and foreign enemies and to recover after the nearly total destruction of their city in 390 BC. Livy is the most important source of information we have for the history of early Rome. He writes with fairness, humanity, and an irresistible enthusiasm for the courage, honesty, and self-sacrifice that to him exemplified what it was to be Roman.

Titus Livius was born in Patavium (modern Padua) in northern Italy in 59 BC or slightly earlier. Thanks to the wool trade in particular, in peacetime the town was one of the most prosperous in Italy. Given that he was able to devote so much of his life to writing history, it is reasonable to suppose that Livy’s family must have been fairly wealthy. We cannot be sure exactly when he started writing, though references to contemporary events in book one, section nineteen, seem to show that books one through five were published between about 27 and 25 BC. At this time, Rome was emerging from two decades of bitter civil war and one of Livy’s aims in writing was to remind the Romans of the virtues that had made them great because he believed they were in danger of forgetting them altogether. This work, which he called the Ab Urbe Condita—“From the Founding of the City”—eventually comprised 142 books, covered Roman history down to 9 BC and took Livy forty years to write.

In his preface, Livy writes that Rome had reached the point “when we can endure neither our vices nor their cure.” However, by book nine, he is found saying that Rome “…has defeated a thousand armies and will defeat a thousand more, provided that our love of the peace which we are now enjoying and our concern for civil concord endure for ever.” At the same time as Livy was recreating and preserving the past of Rome in words, Caesar’s adopted son Augustus, victor of the civil wars and emperor in all but name, was rebuilding and ensuring the survival of Rome in reality. Although Livy remained a republican at heart, he may well have gradually or grudgingly come to accept that Rome was recovering under the new monarchical government. He was never an Augustan propagandist—we are told that one of the later books of his history, now lost, praised Brutus and Cassius, Caesar’s murderers—but Livy managed to stay on good terms with Augustus because he shared many of the new regime’s values and objectives. Augustus too wanted to see a rebuilt Rome based on high moral standards, peace at home and success abroad, following in the footsteps of the great Romans of old. After Augustus’ death, however, the transmission of power to the Emperor Tiberius showed once and for all that the monarchy was to be no short-term response to a national emergency. Livy published his final volumes at the beginning of Tiberius’ reign and, it seems, he died soon afterwards.

Livy is often described as a moral (or moralizing) historian. As well as history, he was said by Seneca to have written philosophical dialogues, and if this is true, they might have been in the form of fictional discussions between historical characters. Livy genuinely believed that Rome’s troubles were the result of moral decline from its early high standards. In this volume, particular episodes, such as the Battle of the Allia in book five, or even whole books, such as book three, are structured around expressions of particular virtues (loyalty at the Allia, moderation in book three). Livy offers many lessons about human nature, yet the circumstances of composition, that is the civil wars and the end of political freedom, indicate that the element of escapism in Livy’s history should not be underestimated, especially in the early books.

Much of Livy’s narrative does not contain any obvious moral “message.” His narrative is based on the rhythms of the Roman year. Within the regular business of each year, he often builds up one or more specific episodes. The episodes which do have a particular moral theme are very often those which Livy wants to give the maximum emotional or intellectual appeal. To engage the reader with the story, the full measure of credit or blame is given, but usually through the warmth or coldness of the descriptive language rather than by a direct comment from the author. The duty of a Roman historian was to entertain as well as to instruct and neither of these aims was more important than the other or independent of the other.

Livy was a great admirer of the republican statesman and orator Cicero (106–43 BC), for his prose style in particular. Although Cicero never wrote history himself, beyond the sketch of early Rome in his philosophical work On the Republic, he still argued that history should be written by orators, both for the good of orators, who needed historical examples for their speeches, and for the good of history, which deserved to be written well. Stylistically, Cicero was advocating, no doubt, his own favoured brand of Latin, flowing, reassuring, encouraging, architectural, far removed from the unsettling ferocity of other writers of the period, such as Sallust and, it seems, Pollio, and from the terse, unemotional, logical Latin of men like Brutus. On the other hand, Livy’s Latin is not as formal as Cicero’s. He prefers gentle irony to Cicero’s barbed wit. He is not afraid to use vocabulary that Cicero would have avoided and adopts different registers for different occasions, from the very plain Latin he uses for election results and other public notices, to the highly ornate and impassioned language found in the key episodes and many of his speeches.

Not long before Livy, it may have been the usual practice for historians writing in Latin (unlike Greek) to report people’s words indirectly. Cato said that Minucius Thermus was a liar and a cheat—that is indirect speech. Cato said, “Minucius Thermus, you are a liar and a cheat”—that is direct speech (though Classical Latin did not use quotation marks). Pompeius Trogus, another Augustan historian, therefore criticized Livy and Sallust for including direct speech in their histories at all. Although Livy quite often writes lengthy passages of indirect speech featuring a good deal of rhetorical sophistication, nevertheless direct speech is naturally better at conveying the character of the speaker and he uses its possibilities to the fullest. His speeches were, in fact, later published separately in compendium editions. They often occur in pairs, giving both sides of a debate; the first one will look unanswerable, but Livy, switching sides, will find a way to answer it. Speeches were a way for all historians to clarify issues, feelings, and characters at a particular moment, to add variety to a narrative and to demonstrate their erudition. Thus most of the speeches in Livy have little claim to historical accuracy.

With regard to the sources of information used by Livy, there are two questions to consider. First, by identifying where Livy got his information, we gain some insight to determine how reliable Livy can be expected to be. Second, there is the question of how far other ancient evidence and modern archaeology can be used to gauge how reliable Livy actually is.

Within a year or two of Livy’s finishing his first books, Virgil published the Aeneid, describing the adventures of the refugees from the Trojan War who became the mythical ancestors of the Roman race. The period...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Barnes & Noble Inc
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0760770239
• ISBN 13: 9780760770238
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 448
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar