The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]

With the empire there came a change in the writing of history, inasmuch as freedom of thought and judgment was limited by the despotic rule, and the door was flung open to flattery and calumny; and in individual reigns it might have been dangerous to relate the history of the republic or of former emperors. But these circumstances alone cannot explain the insignificance of historical writing any more than the removal of the centre of politics to the imperial cabinet.

The Romans have really never possessed histories in the true sense of the term, and consequently there was at this period no room for any considerable damage to that species of composition. T. Livius (59 B.C.-17 A.D.) affords distinct evidence of this. In his own time he received unqualified admiration and in subsequent ages his name sheltered itself behind that of history; in the later days of the empire his prestige continually increased, and finally almost the only works in Latin dealing with the period of the republic and the triumvirate, and the beginnings of the Augustan era, are transcripts and excerpts from his writings. Augustus offered no exception to the opinion of the day; although he called him a Pompeian, he not only granted him all conceivable freedom, but on all occasions testified his personal esteem for him. And yet Livy is no historian. He undertook the formidable task of writing a complete history of the Roman state up to his time, but in consequence of its formidable compass the work was necessarily unsuccessful, as older works were often wanting, and Livy had not the ability to turn the existing material to account.

Every Roman historian had great difficulties to encounter with regard to the period of antiquity, and this extended more or less to the time of Sulla. Down to a certain period, patriotism required adherence to a traditional form which could not stand investigation; for other epochs the Greeks, especially Polybius, had formed a conception which had acquired a canonical value. Only critical judgment and a general scheme of treatment on a grand scale could have been effective; but Livy was not the man for this.

To him history was another name for the arranging of annalistic reports which he put together; the most obvious contradictions were rejected, and a certain system introduced into the chronology and adhered to as far as might be without too great scrupulousness; where he had older authors of merit, such as Polybius, to draw upon, his work was benefited; where this was not the case, he did not scruple to combine accounts essentially contradictory. He considered his principal office to be delineation, not arrangement, investigation, and criticism, and the rhetorical elaboration made up, in the eyes of the reader, for the want of exactness and a definite conception.f

MERIVALE’S ESTIMATE OF LIVY

It was in the schools of rhetoric, we may believe, that Livy learned that indifference to historical accuracy, that sacrifice of the substance to the form of truth, which has cast so fatal a shade over the lustre of his immortal work. As a friend of the ancient oligarchy, and an aristocrat in prejudices and temper, it seems improbable that he would have carried his Roman history down to his own times, had he not submitted to throw a veil over his sentiments, and made his book such as Augustus himself might sanction for the perusal of his subjects. The emperor, indeed, is said to have called him a Pompeian, and to have complained of the colours in which he portrayed the men of the opposite side; but this could only have been in jest; the favour in which he was held by the courtiers of the empire, and his being suffered to assist the studies of the young prince, Claudius Germanicus, show that he was not seriously regarded as a disaffected politician. The scorn which Livy heaps on the tribunes and demagogues, and his ignorant contempt for the plebs, evince the leaning of his mind to the side of the nobility. But these are obviously the views of the rhetorician rather than of the historian; and Augustus, tribune and demagogue as he was, could distinguish between the hollow commonplaces of a perverted education and the stern judgment of a genuine conviction. The loss of all the latter portions of this extensive work must be deplored for the number of facts it has swept into oblivion; but the facts would have been valuable rather from the inferences which modern science might deduce from them, than from the light in which the author would himself have placed them. Livy, taking the pen in middle life, and continuing to pour forth his volumes in interminable succession, perhaps to the end of his long career,—for born in the year 59 B.C., he died in 17 A.D.,—left it still apparently unfinished, at the close of his hundred and forty-second book, and with the demise of Drusus Germanicus.[4] It may be conjectured that the latter portions of the work were overtaken by the garrulity of old age, and were suffered to fall into oblivion from their want of political or literary value.

It is in the earlier books, however, that the spirit of Livy found the sphere most congenial to it; the first and third decades, containing the early history of the kings and consuls, and again the grand epic of the war with Hannibal, have always retained their pre-eminence in general esteem as the noblest specimens of narration. The greatest minds of Rome at this period seemed to have kindled with inspiration from the genius of the founder of the empire; and of these Livy at least appears to have conceived unconsciously the idea of attaching his countrymen to the early records of their city, by encircling it with a halo of poetical associations. The imagination of the Romans of that age was inflamed by the conservative reaction which sought to throw a bridge over the chaos of the last century, and revive the sense of national continuity.