However, now that my other projects are starting to wind down, I’m going to start a long term project, namely reading, albeit in translation, all the remnants of Livy. The scope of what that entails is pictured here (note that I’m not unintentionally skipping books 11-19; those are lost to time. If you have happen to find those books of Livy, you should contact your nearest Classicist so that you can immediately become famous).
Fortunately for me, I’ve already headed in this direction, as I’ve read books 21-30. However, there is a lot more to read. Unfortunately for me, it is quite easy to find Livy boring, as he is quite found of long speeches, whether in the senate or among conspirators, as well as elaborate battle scenes.
That Livy is often boring does not mean that he is not a complex writer or that using his work as evidence for our own history is simple. For example, this is Livy’s account of the year 500/499 BCE “The next consuls were Servius Suplpicius and Manius Tullius. Nothing noteworthy occurred.” (2.19 trans. TJ Luce) In other words, Livy places a lacuna in his text, but it is a lacuna to which he brings attention without explaining why there is a gap. Does he not trust his information? Is there an account that reflects badly on some Roman? These types of questions are compounded by how Livy sometimes does reflect on the nature of the sources that he uses to write his history, such as his account of the consulships of Aulus Postumius and Titus Verginius: “I find that certain sources do not date the battle of Lake Regillus until this year, when Aulus Postumius, because his colleague’s loyalty was suspect, abdicated his consulship, at which a dictator was named. There are so many chronological uncertainites in the history of these eyars, with different authorities giving different lists of magistrates, that the great antiquity of the events and of the sources does not permit to make out which consuls followed which or what events happened in what year.” (2.21 trans. TJ Luce)
These types of comments indicate what kind of sources that Livy drew upon for his history, namely lists of who was magistrate at certain times. Other comments of his suggest that he incorporated other kinds of evidence into his text, such as the stories around the origins of statues and temples. In his description of the war between the Romans and Etruscans after the Romans had exiled Tarquin Superbus, Livy recounts how a Roman woman named Cloelia was a hostage to the Roman king Porsenna. But she then organized her fellow captives and escaped across the Tiber, returning to their families. This escape violated a treaty that the Romans had with the Etruscans, and so they had to return her. Nonetheless, they also wanted to commemorate her courage, and so they made a statue of her on a horse (2.13). When thinking about the historicity of this story, it is important to think about it in reverse. That is, I argue that the statue prompted and perpetuated the story as part of the Roman’s oral culture.