The Historians' History of the World 06

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