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- Herausgeber: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
Livy wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled Ab Urbe Condita, ''From the Founding of the City''. Seneca the Younger gives brief mention that he was also known as an orator and philosopher and had written some treatises in those fields from a historical point of view. Livy also produced other works, including an essay in the form of a letter to his son, and numerous dialogues, most likely modelled on similar works by Cicero.
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THE COMPLETE WORKS OF TITUS LIVIUS PATAVINUS
HISTORY OF ROME
Illustrated
Livy wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled Ab Urbe Condita, ''From the Founding of the City''.
Seneca the Younger gives brief mention that he was also known as an orator and philosopher and had written some treatises in those fields from a historical point of view.
Livy also produced other works, including an essay in the form of a letter to his son, and numerous dialogues, most likely modelled on similar works by Cicero.
THE TRANSLATIONS
HISTORY OF ROME
Translated by B. O. Foster (Books 1 to 22) and William A. McDevitte (Books 23 to Fragments)
Ab urbe condita libri, Livy’s only surviving work, was commenced midway through the historian’s career, c. 27 BC, and completed when he left Rome for Padua in old age, following the death of Augustus, during the reign of Tiberius. It is a monumental history of ancient Rome, spanning the time from the stories of Aeneas, the earliest legendary period, before the city’s founding in c. 753 BC, to Livy’s own times in the reign of the emperor Augustus, up to 9 BC, finishing with the death of Drusus. The Latin title can be literally translated as “Books since the city’s founding”. Less literally in English, it is now known as ‘History of Rome’. Sadly only 25% of the work survives, though summaries of the missing books have survived from antiquity. Books 11 to 20 and books 46 to 140 are lost, leaving only 35 books extant, with 105 lost in total.
The first book of Ab urbe condita libri starts with Aeneas landing in Italy and the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, culminating with Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus being elected as consuls in 502 BC according to Livy’s own chronology (509 BCE according to more traditional chronology). There are a number of chronologies; these two dates represent an approximate range. Books 2 to 10 deal with the history of the Roman Republic to the Samnite Wars, while books 21 to 45 concern the Second Punic War and finish with the war against Perseus of Macedon. Books 46 to 70 deal with the time up to the Social War in 91 BC. Book 89 includes the dictatorship of Sulla in 81 BC and book 103 contains a description of Julius Caesar’s first consulship. Book 142 concludes with the death of Nero Claudius Drusus in 9 BC. Though the first ten books concern a period of over 600 years, once Livy started writing about the 1st century BC, he devoted almost a whole book to each year.
Livy’s style can be viewed as a mixture of annual chronology and narrative, where he often interrupts a story to announce the elections of new consuls. His history therefore is an expansion of the fasti, the official public chronicle kept by the magistrates, which was a primary source for Roman historians. Those who seem to have been more influenced by the method have been termed annalists. Nevertheless, Livy was criticised for contradicting himself in his History and for becoming repetitious and verbose in the later books. One particular infamous digression in Book 9 suggested that the Romans would have beaten Alexander the Great if he had lived longer and had turned west to attack the Romans, causing much wry amusement for modern critics.
The first five books of the Ab urbe condita libri were published between 27 and 25 BC. Livy continued to work on the project for much of the rest of his life, publishing new material by popular demand. This necessity explains why the work falls naturally into 12 packets, mainly groups of 10 books, or decades, sometimes of five books (pentads) and the rest without any packet order. The scheme of dividing it entirely into decades is a later innovation of copyists. The second pentade was not released until c. 9 BC, some 16 years following the first pentade.
The subject material of Livy’s history can vary from mythical or legendary stories at the beginning to detailed and authentic accounts of apparently real events toward the end of the great work. He himself noted the difficulty of finding information about events some 700 years or more removed from the author. Of his material on early Rome he said, “The traditions of what happened prior to the foundation of the City or whilst it was being built, are more fitted to adorn the creations of the poet than the authentic records of the historian.” Nonetheless, according to the tradition of history writing at the time, Livy felt compelled to relate what he read without passing judgement as to its truth or untruth. One of the problems of modern scholarship is to ascertain where in the work the line is to be drawn between legends and true historic events. The traditional modern view is that buildings, inscriptions, monuments and libraries prior to the sack of Rome in 387 BC by the Gauls under Brennus were destroyed by that sack and made unavailable to Livy and his sources. His credible history therefore is likely to begin with that date.
Ab urbe condita libri was enormously successful. Livy became so famous that a man from Cadiz reportedly travelled to Rome just to see the historian and once he had met with him, returned home. The popularity of the work continued through the entire classical period. A number of Roman authors used Livy as a basis for their own works, including Aurelius Victor, Cassiodorus, Eutropius, Festus, Florus, Granius Licinianus and Orosius.
PREFACE
THE Latin text of this volume has been set up from that of the ninth edition (1908) of Book I., and the eighth edition (1894) of Book II., by Weissenborn and Müller, except that the Periochae have been reprinted from the text of Rossbach (1910). But the spelling is that adopted by Professors Conway and Walters in their critical edition of Books I.-V. (Oxford, 1914), which is the source also of a number of readings which differ from those given in the Weissenborn-Müller text, and has furnished, besides, the materials from which the textual notes have been drawn up. I have aimed to indicate every instance where the reading printed does not rest on the authority of one or more of the good MSS., and to give the author of the emendation. The MSS. are often cited by the symbols given in the Oxford edition, but for brevity’s sake I have usually employed two of my own, viz. ω and ς. The former means “ such of the good MSS. as are not cited for other readings,” the latter “one or more of the inferior MSS. and early printed editions.” Anyone who wishes more specific information regarding the source of a variant will consult the elaborate apparatus of the Oxford text, whose editors have placed all students of the first decade under lasting obligations by their thorough and minute report of the MSS. With the publication of their second volume there will be available for the first time an adequate diplomatic basis for the criticism of Books I.-X.
I have utilized throughout the translations by Philemon Holland, George Baker, and Canon Roberts, and have occasionally borrowed a happy expression from the commentaries of Edwards, Conway, and others, mentioned in the introduction. The unpretentious notes in the college edition of my former teacher, the late Professor Greenough, have been particularly useful in pointing out the significance of the word-order.
Acknowledgments are also due to my colleagues, Professors Fairclough, Hempl, Cooper, and Briggs, and to Professor Noyes of the University of California, each of whom has given me some good suggestions.
B. O. F. Stanford University, California. 1919.
BOOK I
Translated by B. O. Foster
1. Whether I am likely to accomplish anything worthy of the labour, if I record the achievements of the Roman people from the foundation of the city, I do not really know, nor if I knew would I dare to avouch it; [2] perceiving as I do that the theme is not only old but hackneyed, through the constant succession of new historians, who believe either that in their facts they can produce more authentic information, or that in their style they will prove better than the rude attempts of the ancients. [3] Yet, however this shall be, it will be a satisfaction to have done myself as much as lies in me to commemorate the deeds of the foremost people of the world; and if in so vast a company of writers my own reputation should be obscure, my consolation would be the fame and greatness of those whose renown will throw mine into the shade. [4] Moreover, my subject involves infinite labour, seeing that it must be traced back above seven hundred years, and that proceeding from slender beginnings it has so increased as now to be burdened by its own magnitude; and at the same time I doubt not that to most readers the earliest origins and the period immediately succeeding them will give little pleasure, for they will be in haste to reach these modern times, in which the might of a people which has long been very powerful is working its own undoing. [5] I myself, on the contrary, shall seek in this an additional reward for my toil, that I may avert my gaze from the troubles which our age has been witnessing for so many years, so long at least as I am absorbed in the recollection of the brave [6] days of old, free from every care which, even if it could not divert the historian’s mind from the truth, might nevertheless cause it anxiety.
[7] Such traditions as belong to the time before the city was founded, or rather was presently to be founded, and are rather adorned with poetic legends than based upon trustworthy historical proofs, I purpose neither to affirm nor to refute. It is the privilege of antiquity to mingle divine things with human, and so to add dignity to the beginnings of cities; [8] and if any people ought to be allowed to consecrate their origins and refer them to a divine source, so great is the military glory of the Roman People that when they profess that their Father and the Father of their Founder was none other than Mars, the nations of the earth may well submit to this also with as good a grace as they submit to Rome’s dominion. [9] But to such legends as these, however they shall be regarded and judged, I shall, for my own part, attach no great importance. Here are the questions to which I would have every reader give his close attention — what life and morals were like; through what men and by what policies, in peace and in war, empire was established and enlarged; then let him note how, with the gradual relaxation of discipline, morals first gave way, as it were, then sank lower and lower, and finally began the downward plunge which has brought us to the present time, when we can endure neither our vices nor their cure.
[10] What chiefly makes the study of history wholesome and profitable is this, that you behold the lessons of every kind of experience set forth as on a conspicuous monument; from these you may choose for yourself and for your own state what to imitate, from these mark for avoidance what is shameful in the conception and shameful in the result. [11] For the rest, either love of the task I have set myself deceives me, or no state was ever greater, none more righteous or richer in good examples, none ever was where avarice and luxury came into the social order so late, or where humble means and thrift were so highly esteemed and so long held in honour. [12] For true it is that the less men’s wealth was, the less was their greed. Of late, riches have brought in avarice, and excessive pleasures the longing to carry wantonness and licence to the point of ruin for oneself and of universal destruction.
But complaints are sure to be disagreeable, even when they shall perhaps be necessary; let the beginning, at all events, of so great an enterprise have none. [13] With good omens rather would we begin, and, if historians had the same custom which poets have, with prayers and entreaties to the gods and goddesses, that they might grant us to bring to a successful issue the great task we have undertaken.
1. First of all, then, it is generally agreed that when Troy was taken vengeance was wreaked upon the other Trojans, but that two, Aeneas and Antenor, were spared all the penalties of war by the Achivi, owing to long-standing claims of hospitality, and because they had always advocated peace and the giving back of Helen. [2] They then experienced various vicissitudes. Antenor, with a company of Eneti who had been expelled from Paphlagonia in a revolution and were looking for a home and a leader — for they had lost their king, Pylaemenes, at Troy — came to the inmost bay of the Adriatic. [3] There, driving out the Euganei, who dwelt between the sea and the Alps, the Eneti and Trojans took possession of those lands. And in fact the place where they first landed is called Troy, and the district is therefore known as Trojan, while the people as a whole are called the Veneti. [4] Aeneas, driven from home by a similar misfortune, but guided by fate to undertakings of greater consequence, came first to Macedonia; thence was carried, in his quest of a place of settlement, to Sicily; and from Sicily laid his course towards the land of Laurentum. This place too is called Troy. [5] Landing there, the Trojans, as men who, after their all but immeasurable wanderings, had nothing left but their swords and ships, were driving booty from the fields, when King Latinus and the Aborigines, who then occupied that country, rushed down from their city and their fields to repel with arms the violence of the invaders. From this point the tradition follows two lines. Some say that Latinus, having been defeated in the battle, made a peace with Aeneas, and later an alliance of marriage. [6] Others maintain that when the opposing lines had been drawn up, Latinus did not wait for the charge to sound, but advanced amidst his chieftains and summoned the captain of the strangers to a parley. [7] He then inquired what men they were, whence they had come, what mishap had caused them to leave their home, and what they sought in landing on the coast of Laurentum. [8] He was told that the people were Trojans and their leader Aeneas, son of Anchises and Venus; that their city had been burnt, and that, driven from home, they were looking for a dwelling-place and a site where they might build a city. Filled with wonder at the renown of the race and the hero, and at his spirit, prepared alike for war or peace, he gave him his right hand in solemn pledge of lasting friendship. [9] The commanders then made a treaty, and the armies saluted each other. Aeneas became a guest in the house of Latinus; there the latter, in the presence of his household gods, added a domestic treaty to the public one, by giving his daughter in marriage to Aeneas. [10] This event removed any doubt in the minds of the Trojans that they had brought their wanderings to an end at last in a permanent and settled habitation. [11] They founded a town, which Aeneas named Lavinium, after his wife. In a short time, moreover, there was a male scion of the new marriage, to whom his parents gave the name of Ascanius.
2. War was then made upon Trojans and Aborigines alike. Turnus was king of the Rutulians, and to him Lavinia had been betrothed before the coming of Aeneas. Indignant that a stranger should be preferred before him, he attacked, at the same time, both Aeneas and Latinus. [2] Neither army came off rejoicing from that battle. The Rutulians were beaten: the victorious Aborigines and Trojans lost their leader Latinus. [3] Then Turnus and the Rutulians, discouraged at their situation, fled for succour to the opulent and powerful Etruscans and their king Mezentius, who held sway in Caere, at that time an important town. Mezentius had been, from the very beginning, far from pleased at the birth of the new city; he now felt that the Trojan state was growing much more rapidly than was altogether safe for its neighbours, and readily united his forces with those of the Rutulians. [4] Aeneas, that he might win the goodwill of the Aborigines to confront so formidable an array, and that all might possess not only the same rights but also the same name, called both nations Latins; and from that time on the Aborigines were no less ready and faithful than the Trojans in the service of King Aeneas. [5] Accordingly, trusting to this friendly spirit of the two peoples, which were growing each day more united, and, despite the power of Etruria, which had filled with the glory of her name not only the lands but the sea as well, along the whole extent of Italy from the Alps to the Sicilian Strait, Aeneas declined to defend himself behind his walls, as he might have done, but led out his troops to battle. [6] The fight which ensued was a victory for the Latins: for Aeneas it was, besides, the last of his mortal labours. He lies buried, whether it is fitting and right to term him god or man, on the banks of the river Numicus; men, however, call him Jupiter Indiges.
3. Ascanius, Aeneas’ son, was not yet ripe for authority; yet the authority was kept for him, unimpaired, until he arrived at manhood. Meanwhile, under a woman’s regency, the Latin State and the kingdom of his father and his grandfather stood unshaken — so strong was Lavinia’s character — until the boy could claim it. [2] I shall not discuss the question — for who could affirm for certain so ancient a matter? — whether this boy was Ascanius, or an elder brother, born by Creusa while Ilium yet stood, who accompanied his father when he fled from the city, being the same whom the Julian family call lulus and claim as the author of their name. [3] This Ascanius, no matter where born, or of what mother — it is agreed in any case that he was Aeneas’ son — left Lavinium, when its population came to be too large, for it was already a flourishing and wealthy city for those days, to his mother, or stepmother, and founded a new city himself below the Alban Mount. [4] This was known from its position, as it lay stretched out along the ridge, by the name of Alba Longa. From the settlement of Lavinium to the planting of the colony at Alba Longa was an interval of some thirty years. [5] Yet the nation had grown so powerful, in consequence especially of the defeat of the Etruscans, that even when Aeneas died, and even when a woman became its regent and a boy began his apprenticeship as king, neither Mezentius and his Etruscans nor any other neighbours dared to attack them. [6] Peace had been agreed to on these terms, that the River Albula, which men now call the Tiber, should be the boundary between the Etruscans and the Latins. [7] Next Silvius reigned, son of Ascanius, born, as it chanced, in the forest. He begat Aeneas Silvius, and he Latinus Silvius. By him several colonies were planted, and called the Ancient Latins. [8] Thereafter the cognomen Silvius was retained by all who ruled at Alba. From Latinus came Alba, from Alba Atys, from Atys Capys, from Capys Capetus, from Capetus Tiberinus. [9] This last king was drowned in crossing the River Albula, and gave the stream the name which has been current with later generations. Then Agrippa, son of Tiberinus, reigned, and after Agrippa Romulus Silvius was king, having received the power from his father. Upon the death of Romulus by lightning, the kingship passed from him to Aventinus. This king was buried on that hill, which is now a part of the City of Rome, and gave his name to the hill. [10] Proca ruled next. He begat Numitor and Amulius; to Numitor, the elder, he bequeathed the ancient realm of the Silvian family. Yet violence proved more potent than a father’s wishes or respect for seniority. Amulius drove out his brother and ruled in his stead. [11] Adding crime to crime, he destroyed Numitor’s male issue; and Rhea Silvia, his brother’s daughter, he appointed a Vestal under pretence of honouring, her, and by consigning her to perpetual virginity, deprived her of the hope of children.
