CHAPTER VIREPUBLICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND LIVY

The Romans, like all builders of empires, were avid readers and writers of history. Their first two epics were the stories of the growth of Rome; the numerous autobiographies of the Republican period were the politicalapologiaeof public men like Marius, Sulla, Scaurus, and Lucullus, who had given all their time to the affairs of state; before Livy composed his great work, at least a score of historians had written bulky accounts, now all lost, of the whole or some part of Rome’s amazing story. Now that we have only fragments left of that splendid historical library it is easy to fall into serious misconceptions regarding the ideals and aims of those who wrote the nation’s history. To these errors the Middle Ages contributed not a little by canonizing all the ancient authorities so that when modern historical criticism came into vogue the reaction against authority went too far and skepticism overleaped the mark. Furthermore, a group of modern critics, who know little about the past, impressed by the absence of rationalism in the medieval writers, have invented a theory of progress which denies all intelligence to human beings who lived before the eighteenth century. A recent book, misnamedThe Making of the Modern Mind, actually begins its account with the dark ages, therebysucceeding fairly well in creating an impression of consistent progress, but it wholly neglects the great civilization which had reached the heights and fallen before the period discussed. One might with equal fairness write a biography of Ruskin by ignoring his creative early period and beginning with his emergence from his mental coma during his old age.

As archaeological discoveries at Rome are confirming much of the tradition which Mommsen and his successors rejected, it is becoming necessary for us to revise our conception of the methods of the early Roman historians. We now know that in its essentials the traditional picture of a large and prosperous Rome at the end of the regal period is correct.[1]We know something of its extensive walls, of its imposing temples, and of its far-reaching commerce. We are gaining no little respect for Livy’s conception of a strong Sabine element in Rome, of the participation of Latins and Etruscans in the revolutionary wars that ended the regal period, and of a temporary weakening of Rome in the early decades of the Republic, when the Latins gained their independent status and the Sabellic tribes threatened the existence of the Latin League. If Mommsen were writing today, he would certainly accept a large part of early political history, for he himself in hisStaatsrechtrehabilitated much of the constitutional history which he had previously excluded from his volumes. I do not mean that weare ever going to reinstate the embroidery of fictitious battle-scenes and long senatorial debates woven from family legends into the accounts of the early period. Livy himself, who has left us the best account of this picturesque tradition, warns the reader adequately when he explains why he has freely included legend in the first part of his work. But with the archaeological evidence before us, it is now possible to estimate what knowledge of the earlier Republican period was available to the annalists and to judge from this what use they made of their knowledge. We know, for example, that they had access to large collections of laws, senatus consulta, treaties, and priestly annals, and that they drew the correct inferences from the extensive remains of the city about them, a city which did not greatly change its ancient aspect until after the Second Punic War. The fact that in the attempt to synchronize the consular list with temple records which did not quite accord, they fell into a slight discrepancy of a few years in the chronology of the early period does not materially affect its value.

Various recent books on historiography[2]make little or no reference to these revisions of our knowledge. They are being written as though nothing had been discovered since Wachsmuth and the early critical work of Pais. What is equally disturbing, they continue to assume that Roman senators like Fabius and Cato, who constantly had to consult Rome’s laws and treaties in order to direct senatorial debate on intricate matters of international relations, immediately forgot the value of facts when theyundertook to write history. It is no longer justifiable, however, to group all Roman annalists together in one category. If the early annals of Rome tell practically the same story as the remains, there must have been a great difference between the statesmen who first recorded the facts and the romancers of Sulla’s day who wrote popular books for the purpose of entertainment.

We may classify the historical writers of the Republic into three distinct groups with reference to their methods and their employment of their sources. In the century before Gaius Gracchus, we know of some eight statesmen who told the story of Rome from the beginning up to their own day. These are Fabius Pictor, senator and pontifex, who had served in the army in 225 B.C., L. Cincius Alimentus, a praetor and general in the Hannibalic war, Cato, consul and censor, C. Acilius, a senator, Postumius Albinus, a consul, Cassius Hemina, Fabius Servilianus, consul and commentator on pontifical law, Calpurnius Piso, consul, censor, and reformer of the courts, and Sempronius Tuditanus, a jurist, who while consul conquered Histria. They all wrote at a time when there were few “general readers,” and their works were in the main intended for the information of magistrates, senators, jurists, and a small circle of readers closely connected with the ruling classes. These men were all thoroughly acquainted with Rome’s laws and treaties.

After the Gracchan revolution we find a decided change in the tone and purpose of history. The democratic upheaval had enlarged the circle of readers by bringing large masses into the politicalarena, and had created a demand for histories that were more easy to read and more sympathetic toward the aspirations of the common people. In addition, a diffusion of the knowledge of Greek, which made available the colorful histories that Alexandrian culture had produced, and which fostered a taste for a more florid style in written and spoken Latin, tended to turn readers away from the dry factitive annals of the preceding century and to encourage professional writers to satisfy the new taste. The first story-teller to meet the new demand was apparently Cn. Gellius of the Gracchan age, who seems to have filled in the meager outline of early Republican history with an abundance of interesting legends. The period that had been covered in seven rolls by the sober Piso required ninety-seven in the library that Gellius produced.

This feat marks an epoch in Roman historiography. Where Gellius found all his material we are not told, but we may surmise with some degree of accuracy. He seems not to have added much to the legends of the regal period, for even the earlier annalists had, with due warning to the reader, repeated the household tales of that epoch. Most of the padding appears in the section devoted to the first two centuries of the Republic. In this portion the older statesmen-historians had shown their restraint by excluding oral tradition and confining themselves practically to the bare statements found in the priestly annals and in the archives. Piso, for instance, gave only two books to the two hundred years from 500 to 300 B.C., an average of about twelve lines a year. He apparently adheredclosely to archival material. Gellius devoted about twenty books to this period. To do so he must have consulted heads of old families and gathered up all the colorful stories they had to tell of their ancestors for the period before the Third Samnite War. After him Sempronius Asellio and Claudius Quadrigarius, although both were popularizers, nevertheless reverted to a conservative treatment of the semi-historical period, but Valerius Antias of the Sullan age, the most successful of the romancing historians, followed the dangerous example of Gellius. It seems to have been his ambition to retell in a more persuasive form all the more interesting tales collected by Gellius. Thereafter it was quite impossible to satisfy the general taste in history without including the legendary stories of the middle period. It was this group, writing for a large semi-educated public, and providing patriotic, dramatic, and attractive volumes—in which vivid pen-pictures served the purpose of modern colored illustrations—that destroyed the taste for the sober old annals.

During the same period and catering to the same taste, many histories of special periods and propagandizing biographies appeared. Caelius Antipater, a professional writer, produced a history of the Second Punic War in which dramatic composition and stylistic values counted for more than accuracy. He wrote not for the information of statesmen but rather for the delectation of the young and the leisured dilettanti. Some of the autobiographies and histories of the time were produced by important statesmen, but their value was in many cases marred by a willingness to cater to the lower critical standardsof the day and no less by a desire to excuse their political behavior at a time when factional strife had raised dangerous animosities. Fannius, indeed, seems to have written with some sobriety regarding his part in the Gracchan struggle, but Aemilius Scaurus, Sulla, Marius, and Catulus pleaded their cases with more or less open partisanship. Of similar tendency, though more restrained, were men like Licinius Macer, Cornelius Sisenna, and Sallust, who, having engaged in the factional struggles of their day, wrote history with a political bias, and furthermore, heeded the new demand for stylistic attractiveness to the extent of disregarding now and then the requirements of accuracy.

The third group of writers, the professional researchers, appears during the Ciceronian period. As the first extension of a superficial culture had created a demand for easy and interesting general histories, so the spread of a more thorough education produced a class of readers who became suspicious of popular accounts and demanded solider works on special topics. Furthermore, the increasing number of writers desired reference books that presented details in more compendious and reliable form than did the voluminous histories of the Sullan age. It was in response to such demands that dry antiquarians now wrote their crabbed commentaries and encyclopaedias. Aelius Stilo, best known for his grammatical work, also delved in the sources of political history. Varro, his pupil, compiled reference books on Roman law, on religious institutions, on the Romantribus, and on geography. The great jurist Sulpicius wrote commentaries on the TwelveTables and a history of the praetorian edicts. Licinius Macer[3]and Aelius Tubero attempted to find new archival materials in the priestly offices and financial bureaus, various men made up convenientlibri magistratuum, and even Cicero so far entered the field of the specialist as to write a history of Roman oratory, in the preparation of which he read hundreds of orations. Such special studies naturally did not supplant the popular accounts—in fact a score of less serious writers were busy at the same time—but their influence upon historiography was abiding. Livy, for example, not only used their digests of material but learned from them to be skeptical of the Sullan romancers and to respect the data provided by the early annalists whose books were no longer in general circulation. Hence, while endeavoring to create a great work of art that might supplant the most fascinating of his predecessors, he also attained to a higher standard of accuracy than his rivals.

In this brief sketch of Republican historiography it becomes apparent that it is in the second period, the time of popularization and of Hellenistic influence, that the historical conscience weakened. We must now revert to the earlier annalists to see how they worked and to understand how it was that they succeeded in preserving the essential basis of facts that modern discoveries are verifying. The field covered by these annalists may be divided into three parts: (a) the regal period (largely legendary); (b) the first two centuries of the Republic (500-280 B.C.), for which some archival materials existed;and (c) the period after 280 B.C., in which archival material could safely be supplemented by reports of eyewitnesses, partly Greek, and later by the native written records. Critics of the nineteenth century popularized the view that Fabius Pictor must have worked with unsafe conceptions of history because he told several of the early legends in full. This criticism misses a vital distinction which the Romans themselves recognized. The early annalists knew that the regal period provided no reliable sources, but, with due warning to the reader, they reported the legends for what they might be worth. Fabius[4]seems to have been rather meticulous in giving these exactly as he had heard them without any attempt to rationalize them, for Dionysius enjoys pointing out their unplausible elements. Where we must test the scientific attitude of the early annalists is in their treatment of the second and third periods.

As regards the second period, we have seen that Piso, the last of the group—whose statements are as full as any—has in this portion an average of only about twelve lines per year. There is for this second period no trace of legendary material in the fragments of any of the earliest historians, and we can well understand why Cicero constantly compares the oldest accounts with the wiryAnnales Maximi, why Dionysius says that in this portion they touched only upon outstanding facts, and whyAsellio complains that no annalists before him had adequately discussed the causes of the events which they recorded.

The archives had some material of value for the whole of these two centuries. The high priests’ tablets of the Regia, though originally intended only as a record of sacrifices to be performed, contained many noteworthy items because the pontifex was usually one of the most distinguished statesmen and accordingly interpreted political events as of sacred importance. Each year’s tablet included the names of the consuls, and contained references to the declarations of war, to victories, defeats, famines, pestilences, destructive fires, earthquakes, and eclipses, or other events that had called for expiations or thank-offerings. We are told that when the contents of theAnnales Maximiwere published about the Gracchan time they filled eighty volumes. Since the period covered was nearly four centuries we may assume on the average a volume, presumably of about a thousand lines, for every five years, or about two hundred lines a year. If only a tenth of the material was of interest to an historian these annals would still contain enough to fill the earlier books of a writer like Piso. In the Capitoline temple were stored almost all of Rome’s treaties, engraved upon bronze or stone. Since Rome’s fetial customs were carefully observed during the long period of expansion, these treaties provided a dependable record of her external history. Before Vespasian’s reign, as we happen to hear, three thousand of these documents had accumulated. In Fabius’ day, judging from the extent of Rome’s federation, we maysafely assume at least a hundred. In the temple of Saturn were kept the laws passed by the centuriate assembly, in the temple of Ceres the important decrees of the senate. There were also temple records, inscriptions upon public buildings and, furthermore, independent local records in Rome’s various colonies, which in some measure provided a check for those at Rome. And finally the existence of the old walls and temples up to the time of these historians furnished visible evidence of what Rome’s ancient culture was like.

We are, of course, constantly told that the Gallic fire of 387 B.C. probably destroyed the old temples together with their records. This is one of the assumptions that archaeology has disproved.[5]We now possess a fairly complete analysis of Rome’s building materials and we have discovered that in almost every instance the old walls of the ancient temples remained standing into the late Republic and their materials—being consecrated—were used again in the reconstruction of those temples after the use of concrete had been discovered (about 150 B.C.). The original Capitoline temple with all its treaties survived till Sulla’s day; the Regia, in which the pontifical tablets were stored, remained intact till after the tablets were published; the original temple of Saturn with its valuable archives stood till it was rebuilt after Caesar’s death; the temple of Castor survived till it was rebuilt in 117 B.C., and we know from Pliny that Ceres’ temple, where the senate’s decrees were kept, remained intact till the Augustan period. If the Gauls spared the templesin fear of divine vengeance—the Celts and early Romans were equally religious—they would probably spare the consecrated contents. There is no longer any excuse for repeating the unfounded conjecture that all of the early Republican archives were destroyed in the Gallic fire. The places in which they were kept certainly survived and the fact that the early annalists to a remarkable extent stand the test of modern investigation indicates that some of the archives also survived.

Whether or not such material existed in the temples would, however, be a futile question, if, as Mommsen held, the Roman historians neglected to consult their archives. It is certainly true that after the Sullan period we hear little of research among original documents. But quite apart from the decay of historical standards, it is obvious that the desired materials were then largely accessible in published form. After the Sullan day every few years brought out new biographies and contemporary histories which incorporated from daily observation the facts of interest. Such sources became very numerous and men no longer needed to go to the archives for the kind of material that was wanted in popular histories. Hence it became customary to turn to books rather than to stored documents.

The situation had been wholly different during the century before the Gracchi. Then published source-books were just beginning to be made, and there were no convenient libraries of extensive histories. There may have been an anonymous digest of the priestly tablets before Fabius, but of this we are not sure. A complete edition was not made tillthe Gracchan period. An old code of sacred rules existed under the name ofJus Papirianum, and Sextus Aelius (consul in 198) had put out an edition of the Twelve Tables with a commentary and a list of thelegis actiones. That was all. And yet senators were expected to know all the important documents that might be involved in senatorial debate. As Cicero[6]puts the matter in hisDe Legibus(III, 41), “It is necessary for a senator to know the commonwealth—completely I mean—to know its military and financial resources, what allies, “friends,” and subjects it has, and the laws, terms, and treaties by which each attained to its position, and he must also know the parliamentary rules of the senate and the history of Rome.” To attain to such command of the archival material in the early days necessitated much first-hand study and doubtless the making of individual digests. We are reminded of the medieval law-men of Iceland who conducted the “thing” in the period when no written codes existed and when they were compelled to keep all the laws and precedents at the command of their memories. Such senatorial practice was a preparation for historical composition which was very different from that attained by the professional writers of a later period. To assume that Fabius did not know thesource-material because Livy seldom refers to original documents is to misunderstand the diverse methods that obtained in each man’s day.

Roman historians of course knew the worth of Fabius Pictor. Livy went to him to check up extravagant statements; Dionysius refers to his conciseness and accuracy; Cicero, whose historical material in theDe Republicaand theDe Legibuswas based upon Fabius, vouched for his lack of rhetorical adornment, and Polybius followed him closely in the story of early Rome, in the first ten and last two years of the First Punic War, and in the Roman sections of the period from 241 to the end of the Second Punic War. The most meticulous of historians, Polybius, criticized Fabius only on the score of patriotic bias when giving generalized judgments on recent events. Polybius was of course a foreigner who could readily detect the nationalistic flavor, and after observing the aberrations of history during the world war we can readily comprehend that Fabius may have failed in objectivity in writing of the wars in which he took an active part. But there is no reason for supposing that he did not set himself a high standard in recording the actual events of Roman history.

Polybius has received very great praise for his insistence upon accuracy. Professor Shotwell[7]ends an enthusiastic chapter with the sentence: “But as long as history endures the ideals of Polybius will be an inspiration and guide.” The praise is deserved, especially when we remember that Polybius had behind him in Greece nearly two centuries ofextravagant rhetorical history. But when we ask how it happened that he turned his back upon all that tradition, no explanations are offered. It is not an adequate interpretation to say that by living in banishment he was removed from the temptations of historians writing the story of their own people, for he usually succeeds in being quite objective even when he writes of the Achaean League. Is it not likely that his contact with matter-of-fact and legal-minded Roman senators induced him to adopt some of their manners and methods? His respect for the integrity, sanity, and uprightness of Roman senators of the Scipionic period he voices repeatedly[8]in contrasting their qualities with the unreliability, astuteness, and fickleness of his countrymen. It is also to be remembered that the first part of his history is based upon Fabius, who therefore was his first preceptor in historical writing. It would seem at least worth considering whether Polybius did not owe some of his qualities as an historian to the fact that he served his apprenticeship in history among the early Roman annalists and that he adapted his work to the public which had been brought up on those matter-of-fact books. At any rate he is well-nigh unique among the Greeks who wrote history after the classical period.

There is of course nothing to indicate that Fabius and his immediate followers were in any sense great historians. Without any literary background, with only such practice in writing as would come from composing state documents, occupied every day with the concerns of a rapidly expandingstate, they recorded only public acts and public discussions. What men did and strove for, outside of the voting, legislating, and fighting groups, was not recorded. Not even within their chosen field does there appear a penetrative analysis of senatorial policy. Fabius, to be sure, enumerated the immediate causes of both of the Punic wars but only with a jurist’s interest in deciding at what point the enemy had committed the breach for which he deserved punishment. As historians these men had the limitations of their qualities and of their occupations. But on the other hand there is no evidence that they knowingly garbled facts.

One may, then, be permitted to object to a common error of judgment regarding the nature of what is called the “scientific method” in ancient history. Students who have to deal with the gullible medieval chronicles seem to assume that historical criticism has but recently succeeded in creating a respect for objectivity and honesty in history, as though the logical processes of the mind were not fully developed in the human race twenty thousand years before the invention of the historical seminar. The incubus of religious authority dominant for centuries in the Middle Ages was a passing phase, as was the overweening respect for dramatic values in the Hellenistic historians and the eagerness to glorify families and the state in the Sullan romancers. But just as Polybius, when transplanted into a soberer atmosphere of action, rid himself with ease of the Hellenistic methods; as Julius Caesar, when occupied with absorbing actualities, could free himself from the habits of his day so far as to recordthe very crimes for which he was being assailed by Cato in the senate; as Ari Frodi in Iceland escaped churchly influence sufficiently to write the history of his island with the same respect for truth that he used when judging a case at the “thing,” so the early statesmen-annalists of Rome, when recording what was available for the historical period of the Republic, employed documents and personal observations with the same meticulous care that they used when presiding as praetors in the courts or when as senators arguing cases of international relations. Their brief historical notes are largely preserved for us in Polybius, in Cicero’sDe Republica, in Diodorus, and in the central skeleton structure of Livy, and the continuous existence of these notes in Roman times kept the legends from ever straying wholly beyond the reach of actuality. This also explains why it is that archaeological knowledge now coming to hand is so frequently found to fit in with what we have been wont to call “tradition.”

The various currents of Roman historiography united in the vast work of Livy, so that, Augustan though he is, he may be taken as a typical product of the several Republican schools. There is no one formula by which the historian may employ Livy without constant caution. Parts contain unadulterated legend, parts that seem at first glance to be sound record are based upon treacherous sources, much is first-rate history; but who has the magic flail that will shell off the husks? There is no more insistent problem in Roman history than the correct use of Livy, for he is, over large areas, our only source, and over periods where he parallels Appianand Cassius Dio he is generally so much sounder than they that he must be threshed through.

In estimating the quality of the thirty-five books extant[9]—unfortunately his early work and not the maturest product of his mind—we must distinguish between the results that are due to his own aims and capacities and those that are due to the nature of his varying sources. Everyone now admits with Tacitus[10]that Livy was scrupulously honest, that he was fair, that he did not permit himself to fabricate—as Caelius and Valerius seem to have done—and that he chose good sources when they were available; but a historian needs more than these virtues. What we miss most in this respect is his failure to go insistently to primary sources. To be sure, it was impossible for a man who set out to write a vast popular history—about three times the size of Gibbon’s great life-work—to delve in the archives. Those documents were not then catalogued and classified as they now are. Cato the younger, for instance, when he needed an abstract of the treasury office for a relatively brief period had to pay his assistants some 30,000 denarii to have it made.[11]Ten times the amount would not have sufficed for Livy’s extensive needs. He accordingly made use of what had been published, such things as theAnnales Maximi, collected down to the Gracchan period, the magisterial lists as they had been revised by various hands, and collections of laws and senatorial decrees that had been madefor the use of lawyers and law-makers. And some of these skeleton bones of history he took from conscientious annalists like Fabius and Piso, who specialized on such matters because they wrote not for the public but for members of the senate and the ruling nobility. Livy’s purpose seems to have been to write a readable and full history of Rome which would displace the unreliable fictionalized history of Valerius Antias by being equally well written but far more reliable. But if he had insisted upon primary sources only he would not have completed one-tenth of his very extensive task. Given his aim and purpose, his duty was to find and exploit the best published documents and histories for each period, and with very few exceptions this is what he did.

It was also his purpose—which a modern historian might well deny himself—to set down the early legends of Rome. Here there were no historical sources, and the question was whether to omit the legends—as Mommsen has done—because they could not be considered worthy of credence, whether to rationalize them and attempt to rescue a kernel of fact as Piso did, and as Pais and Beloch have recently attempted to do, or finally to set them down as found, with a warning that they were legends. Mommsen’s method was facile but we are glad that Livy did not use it. The legends are good literature; they also have a great value in revealing the temper of those who accepted them and passed them to future generations as worth having. Finally they prove upon comparison with archaeological facts to have a sounder basis in fact than Mommsenthought. Even if all their details be legendary, they represent a Rome that could not have been far from the actual state. In fact they prove to be nearer the actuality than the strange and lifeless civilization that Mommsen reconstructed for the early period out of unscientific etymologies and stereotyped conceptions of late legal institutions.

We are also glad that he did not follow Piso’s lead in trying to use them “critically.” Had he done so he would have transmitted them in garbled form and spoiled them, and won nothing in the process. We have learned from recent attempts that this method is a failure. A Charlemagne reconstructed from medieval French epics or a Theodoric shelled out of the Diedrek legend would at best not be accurate history. Thirty years ago our hyper-critical historians tried it, and moved all the early dates of Roman history down a century or two. Archaeology has at least proved this a mistake, and we now are moving the dates back and most of the critics have got into the moving van. After all is said Livy’s method was the soundest. His procedure was the more nearly scientific. It is with exceeding good sense that he says in his preface: “The early stories regarding Rome’s foundation that are handed down to us in poetic romances rather than in sound historical records it is not my intention to support or to refute.” And again in the preface of the sixth book he warns us that very nearly all that he had written in the preceding five books—up to the burning of Rome in 387—rested not on acceptable records but on legend. And even thereafter, throughout his work, whenever for anyincident he is limited to the authors who employed legend he is quick to warn the reader of the nature of the source. These passages show that Livy was a sounder critic of Rome’s legends than Polybius was in respect to Homeric stories. Historians who scold Livy for his preservation of legends have not only missed their value but have misunderstood Livy’s cues.

We have perhaps a fairer quarrel with him for following the Greek custom of inserting fictive speeches in the body of his work. To the modern reader many of them are tedious and create a suspicion of being unreliable. It is never quite safe to quote a line from these speeches as indisputable evidence on any event, though most of them contain the gist of an actual speech delivered on the occasion stated. All we can usually be sure of is that they give Livy’s conception of what was likely to have been said by the speaker in the situation. That is often worth having, for Livy usually knew more of the pertinent conditions than we do and he possessed a sympathetic penetration into pristine characters and events that enabled him to make valuable reconstructions. One has only to read the several speeches attributed to Scipio Africanus to see that they make a consistent and vivid portrait. If we have the patience to read these speeches with Livy’s purpose in mind we shall know how to profit by them. The convention was of course understood, and was no more misleading than the equally artificial convention of modern historians who employ a kind of fictional mind-reading, a “stream of consciousness” device, which may be found on almostany page of Mommsen or De Sanctis. Mommsen could hardly have made a silent character like Caesar real without constantly conjecturing as to his intentions and motives, as when he writes: “Evidently here too it was Caesar’s intention,” or again “When Caesar projected the plan for a new code, it is not difficult to divine his intentions” (and he puts down a page of divining), or again, “So far Caesar might say that his object was attained.” These musings of a great historian of our time are cast in a different form from the invented harangues of Livy and the Greeks, but we read them with the same caution, knowing that they are surmises. The historian, who like Livy and Mommsen must deal with tantalizingly fragmentary sources, must have the liberty to bridge the lacuna by some such method. But we will be on our guard when reading such matter.

Thus far I have spoken of Livy’s work as affected by his aims and methods. What is even more important for the reader who uses Livy is to comprehend the varying quality of the available sources. For the long period before 200 B.C. there was of course no writing of history at Rome. Very meager records existed for most of the obscure period, 500-280, and these had been exploited by Fabius, but they made no story that could be told in a consecutive form. Hence their data were welded together with the help of legend during the second century before Christ. Of the story of the Samnite wars the mere skeleton is all we can accept as firm history. And that was as true before Livy wrote as after. Neither he nor anyone else could mendmatters. For the Pyrrhic and First Punic War the sources were good but the corresponding part of Livy is lost. For books 21-30 the sources were full. Here two responsible participants, Fabius and Cincius, told the story from the Roman viewpoint, while three companions of Hannibal told the same story as they saw it from the Punic camp.[12]Any tendency to exaggerate on either side could at once be checked from the reports that came from the other, and the excellent Greek historian Polybius came soon after and did a great deal of checking. Here Livy had only to be diligent, fair, and honest to be able to write reliably. The third decade of Livy is accordingly as dependable history as we have of any ancient war. It is only in the brief Spanish portion, for which there was no Punic account, and where Polybius himself had written too enthusiastically of Scipio’s work, that we touch quicksands.

Books 31-45 are not quite so firm. The chief difficulty here is that there was no contemporaneous historian at Rome for this period except Cato, who wrote a very brief account of a part of it. Polybius was the first to compose the whole story, but excellent as he was, he came some years after the events, had observed, so far as he did, only from his home in Greece, depended largely upon biased Rhodian writers, and knew so little about Rome’s activities outside of Greece that he omitted much, in fact all of Rome’s internal and western history. Campaigns in Gaul and Spain, for instance, did not get recorded at all until they were well permeatedwith legend, and there was no account available from the opponent’s side. Hence it is that here Livy is of necessity exceedingly uneven, treading on a fairly firm corduroy for most of the important events in Greece, but on a marshy ground of semi-legend when he has to deal with western campaigns. Fortunately the somewhat scanty documents of the state archives had been well culled before him by reliable men like Piso, and these usually kept the legends from dangerous extremes. It is a complete misunderstanding of Livy to suppose that he did not know the weaknesses of Valerius Antias when he used him. Livy knew them all along, but in some portions of this period he had no good source, had nothing available but Valerius and his kind, who had set things down as they heard them, fables and all. Livy’s frequent citation of Valerius Antias does not betoken a gullible love of this writer, but is intended as a danger signal. Here there are several boggy spots. But fortunately the period deals largely with eastern affairs and for that portion the sources were fairly good. It is fair to say that Livy did as well as was to be done in his late day with the material and time available, and that nine-tenths of this portion is acceptable history.

The difficulties that an author of Livy’s day had in dealing with the source-materials may be illustrated by a few examples. Hannibal’s famous route over the Alps is still being discussed, though Hannibal had with him on the journey three Greek reporters who described it. Since they had no maps and no compasses, and names of rivers, tribes, and mountains had little interest for them, their accountswere so confused that Polybius and Caelius, who used them, fell into hopeless confusion. Their routes are quite impossible despite the fact that Polybius claims to have searched for the pass. Livy’s route (from the mouth of the Iserè, to the headwaters of the Durance, thence across the passes and down to Turin) betrays lack of autopsy, but it is apparently based upon an identification of place-names mentioned in the sources by the use of some map of the Allobrogic country made, presumably, during Caesar’s campaigns. Thus by using geographical knowledge recently attained he was able to hit upon a very probable solution that was hidden to earlier writers.

In my second illustration, the account of the Scipionic trials, Livy was less successful.[13]His record of the court procedure in the cases in the 38th book is confused in the extreme; but it is doubtful whether the facts were any longer available. No historian was writing at Rome at the time of the impeachments, and even if there had been one he probably would then have omitted mention of them as being outside the true province of political history. Even Polybius, who was devoted to the fame of the great Scipio, did not give any account of the trials, merely referring to them casually when giving a brief character sketch of Scipio. Nor would there have been any records in the archives, since the trials were not completed and the archives kept only the results of completed decisions. Finally, the affair fell at a time when it was not yet generally customary to publish speeches.The two or three that Livy found seemed to be of dubious authenticity and were harangues that gave but few cues to the real facts. In fact no historian wrote up the affair until long afterwards, when partisan legends, some favorable to the Catonian position, and others to the Scipionic view, had obscured all the facts. It seems today that Livy yielded too much to the pro-Scipionic accounts, thereby undervaluing the opposite views, and many attempts have been made to amend him with the aid of an excursus which he inserted—perhaps in a second edition—and with the help of various casual references. In this affair the facts are now beyond reach and probably were so in Livy’s day. Here, then, Livy did not follow hazy sources from choice. There were apparently no accurate records of the affair available. They were all late, and packed with hearsay partisanship.

Finally, we may well take an instance in which political custom and psychology were misunderstood by his predecessors so as to mislead Livy as well. The Second Macedonian War was brought on by a number of motives: fear of Philip, a desire for revenge, an enthusiasm for the Greek republics which were being oppressed, and other similar factors. The declaration, as such declarations usually are, emphasized not the important psychological imponderables but “the obligations of Rome to her allies.” Now in point of fact there was no legal obligation that had to be heeded, and the states to be aided wereamicibut not permanentsocii. But before any Roman historian—it was fifty years later—undertook to record this war and enumerate its causesthe distinction betweenamiciandsociihad been virtually obliterated and the writers listed the several states associi, though in a strict sense they were not. Had Livy tested these historians by reference to the original treaties in the record office he might have found reason to distrust them. But this of course was not his task. Now it cannot be done, but it seems probable that in this case the historians who first recorded the events were so far removed from them that they failed to comprehend the precise factors that caused that war, explained it in terms comprehensible in their day, and thus misled Livy.

It is my belief that modern emenders and critics who have not sufficiently studied the various sources of Livy have gone too far in assuming that Livy is untrustworthy in any and every portion of his work. When the necessary distinctions have been made we shall learn to use him to better advantage. De Sanctis[14]has shown that Livy’s much criticized account of Hannibal’s march on Rome in 211 B.C. is more reasonable than that of Caelius. Livy’s account of the battle of the Trebia, which was formerly pronounced impossible, becomes lucid if we correct our conceptions of the early geography of the region of Placentia.[15]In 1926 while Beloch was pronouncing the Livian tradition of the third-century Fasti impossible, an Italian scholar was publishing a newly discovered fragment which proved the tradition correct. Beloch had to retract in an appendix of his volume.[16]Editions of the fourth decade ofLivy have regularly tampered with a reference to the building of the Apollo temple in 179 B.C. because they supposed the temple was earlier. A recent examination of the materials of the temple proves Livy’s text correct. We now accept Livy’s statement of Hannibal’s march over the Alps as preferable to that of Polybius, as we know that his topography of New Carthage is better though Polybius had visited the place. By a simple emendation of one word Conway has revealed that Livy was correct about Hannibal’s route into Etruria, though the account has been severely criticized for a century. With Kromayer we also accept his topography of the battle of Cannae and of Metaurus. And so the work of recovery continues. The day is approaching when we shall be able to give Livy his due for a good method, for honesty, and for fairness, as well as for a lucid style.

FOOTNOTES[1]Inez Scott,Early Roman Tradition in the Light of Archaeology, Memoirs Am. Acad. in Rome, VII (1929). The archaeological evidence referred to in this chapter may be found in myRoman Buildings of the Republic(Rome 1924), and in an essay on the “Early Temple of Castor,” Mem. Am. Acad. in Rome, V; a part of this chapter has already appeared in theAm. Hist. Rev.(1927).[2]E.g. Rosenberg,Einleitung und Quellenkunde, and J. T. Shotwell,Introduction to the History of History.[3]See art. “Licinius Macer,” by Münzer,inRealencycl., XIII.[4]Cato’s first three books ofOriginessimilarly recorded the legends of other Italian cities without pretending to judge their historical value, but in his history of his own day he proved himself a very accurate observer. However, he seems to have treated only episodes that interested him. Piso, the last of the early annalists, introduced the unwise method of rationalizing the early myths in order to make them more plausible.[5]Some of the evidence may be found in myRoman Buildings, 53, 78, 83.[6]Cicero, like many a modern statesman, desired a favorable presentation of his deeds in history and biography. However, when it was not a question of his own deeds, his historical ideals were very high. In hisBrutus(292-4) he insists that history requires the same accuracy as testimony given in court under oath. In theDe Oratore(ii. 62-3) he says that the first requirement of the historian is to have courage to tell the whole truth and never to deceive. He consulted the archives even to get an accurate setting for his fictitious dialogues (Ad. Att.xiii. 33, 3; xiii. 3, 3; xii. 5, 3). Some modern critics have found heart to suspect Cicero’s historical ideals because he insisted that history should be well written![7]Op. cit., 201.[8]Polybius VI, 56; XIII, 3; XVIII, 35; XXXII, 8-9.[9]Cf. Klotz, art. “Livius,”inPauly-Wissowa-Kroll, XIII, 816 for a critical bibliography.[10]Tacitus,Ann.7, 34:fidei praeclarus.[11]Plut.Cato minor, 18. On Roman archives see art. “Archive,”inPauly-Wissowa-Kroll, II, 560.[12]Silenus, Sosylus, and Chaireas; Eumachus of Naples may also have been a contemporary. The explicit details of the battles in Campania may well owe something to him.[13]Livy, 38, 50.[14]De Sanctis,Storia dei Romani, III, 2, 338 pp.[15]SeeJour. Roman Studies, 1919, 202.[16]Beloch,Röm. Geschichte, 89, 629.

[1]Inez Scott,Early Roman Tradition in the Light of Archaeology, Memoirs Am. Acad. in Rome, VII (1929). The archaeological evidence referred to in this chapter may be found in myRoman Buildings of the Republic(Rome 1924), and in an essay on the “Early Temple of Castor,” Mem. Am. Acad. in Rome, V; a part of this chapter has already appeared in theAm. Hist. Rev.(1927).

[2]E.g. Rosenberg,Einleitung und Quellenkunde, and J. T. Shotwell,Introduction to the History of History.

[3]See art. “Licinius Macer,” by Münzer,inRealencycl., XIII.

[4]Cato’s first three books ofOriginessimilarly recorded the legends of other Italian cities without pretending to judge their historical value, but in his history of his own day he proved himself a very accurate observer. However, he seems to have treated only episodes that interested him. Piso, the last of the early annalists, introduced the unwise method of rationalizing the early myths in order to make them more plausible.

[5]Some of the evidence may be found in myRoman Buildings, 53, 78, 83.

[6]Cicero, like many a modern statesman, desired a favorable presentation of his deeds in history and biography. However, when it was not a question of his own deeds, his historical ideals were very high. In hisBrutus(292-4) he insists that history requires the same accuracy as testimony given in court under oath. In theDe Oratore(ii. 62-3) he says that the first requirement of the historian is to have courage to tell the whole truth and never to deceive. He consulted the archives even to get an accurate setting for his fictitious dialogues (Ad. Att.xiii. 33, 3; xiii. 3, 3; xii. 5, 3). Some modern critics have found heart to suspect Cicero’s historical ideals because he insisted that history should be well written!

[7]Op. cit., 201.

[8]Polybius VI, 56; XIII, 3; XVIII, 35; XXXII, 8-9.

[9]Cf. Klotz, art. “Livius,”inPauly-Wissowa-Kroll, XIII, 816 for a critical bibliography.

[10]Tacitus,Ann.7, 34:fidei praeclarus.

[11]Plut.Cato minor, 18. On Roman archives see art. “Archive,”inPauly-Wissowa-Kroll, II, 560.

[12]Silenus, Sosylus, and Chaireas; Eumachus of Naples may also have been a contemporary. The explicit details of the battles in Campania may well owe something to him.

[13]Livy, 38, 50.

[14]De Sanctis,Storia dei Romani, III, 2, 338 pp.

[15]SeeJour. Roman Studies, 1919, 202.

[16]Beloch,Röm. Geschichte, 89, 629.

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