The Historians' History of the World 06

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.

The thanks the race of Romulus owed to Livy, for making them acquainted with their ancestors and proud of their descent, were akin to those which Englishmen acknowledge to the historical dramas of Shakspeare. He took the dry chronicles, in which alone their first affairs were written, drew forth from them the poetic life of half-forgotten traditions, and clothed it again in forms of ideal beauty. His narrative, glowing in all the colours of imagination and fancy, is just as faithful to its authorities as the dramatised histories of the English bard to theirs; indeed, the myths of Romulus and Tarquin cannot lie farther from the truth of facts than the tragedies of Lear and Cymbeline; and when he begins to tread the domain of sober history, his painted Hannibals and Scipios approach as nearly to the men themselves as the Richards and Henrys of our own mighty master.

The charms of Livy’s style became the happy conjunction of circumstances under which he wrote, and combined with it to give him that pre-eminence among Roman historians which he never afterwards lost. Events and characters of deepest interest became immutably fixed in the lines in which he had represented them. Henceforth every Roman received from Livy his first youthful impressions of his country’s career, which thus became graven forever in the mind of the nation. It was in vain that the inaccuracy of these relations, and in many cases their direct falsehood, were pointed out by the votaries of truth, or by jealous and unsuccessful rivals; henceforth it was treason to the majesty of Rome to doubt that Porsenna was driven in confusion from her walls, or that the spoils of the Capitol were wrested again from the triumphant legions of Brennus.g