Livy was a native of Patavium (modern
Padua, Italy) in
Cisalpine Gaul. He was married and had at least two children. He died in his native town, some record as A.D. 11 or A.D. 16-17.
The title of his most famous work,
Ab Urbe Condita ("From the Founding of the City"), expresses the scope and magnitude of Livy's undertaking. He wrote in a mixture of annual
chronology and
narrative—often having to interrupt a story to announce the elections of new
consuls as this was the way that the Romans kept track of the years. Livy claims that lack of historical data prior to the sacking of Rome in
387 BC by the
Gauls made his task more difficult.
Livy wrote the majority of his works during the reign of
Augustus. However, he is often identified with an attachment to the
Roman Republic and a desire for its restoration. Since the later books discussing the end of the
Republic and the rise of Augustus did not survive, this is a moot point. Certainly Livy questioned some of the values of the new regime but it is likely that his position was more complex than a simple 'republic/empire' preference. Augustus does not seem to have held these views against Livy, and entrusted his great-nephew, the future emperor
Claudius, to his tutelage. His effect on Claudius was apparent during the latter's reign, as the emperor's oratory closely adheres to Livy's account of Roman history.
Livy's writing style was poetic and archaic in contrast to Caesar's and Cicero's styles. Also, he often wrote from the Roman's opponent's point of view in order to accent the Romans' virtues in their conquest of Italy and the Mediterranean. In keeping with his poetic tendencies, he did little to distinguish between fact and fiction. Although he frequently plagiarized previous authors, he hoped that moral lessons from the past would serve to advance the Roman society of his day.
Livy's work was originally composed of 142 books, of which only 35 are
extant; these are 1-10, and 21-45 (with major
lacunae in 40-45). A fragmentary
palimpsest of the 91st book was discovered in the
Vatican Library in
1772, containing about a thousand words, and several papyrus fragments of previously unknown material, much smaller, have been found in Egypt since 1900, most recently about forty words from book 11, unearthed in the 1980s. Livy was abridged, in antiquity, to an
epitome, which survives for Book I, but was itself abridged into the so-called
Periochae, which is simply a list of contents, but which survives. An epitome of books 37-40 and 48-55 was also uncovered at
Oxyrhynchus. So we have some idea of the topics Livy covered in the lost books, if often not what he said about them.
A number of Roman authors used Livy, including
Aurelius Victor, Cassiodorus, Eutropius, Festus, Florus, Granius Licinianus and
Orosius. Julius Obsequens used Livy, or a source with access to Livy, to compose his
De Prodigiis, an account of
supernatural events in Rome, from the consulship of
Scipio and
Laelius to that of
Paulus Fabius and
Quintus Aelius.
A
digression in book 9, sections 17-19 suggests that the Romans would have beaten
Alexander the Great if he lived longer and turned west to attack the Romans, making this the oldest known
alternate history.
