Password Please enter your Password. Forgot password? Don't have an account? Sign in via your Institution. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. All rights reserved. Sign in to annotate. Delete Cancel Save. Cancel Save. His master, a Livius, whose name he bears, gave him his liberty, and he imparted instruction in the Greek and Latin languages.
This employment probably gave occasion for histranslation of the Homeric Odyssey into Saturnian metre; in spite of its imperfections, this remained a school-book in Rome for centuries.
In B. According to ancient custom he appeared as an actor in his own pieces. His dramatic compositions, tragedies, and comedies were faithful but undoubtedly imperfect translations of Greek originals. He attempted lyric poetry also, for he was commissioned by the State to write a march in honour of Iuno Regina Scanty remains of his works are all that have come down to us.
He was carefully educated, and betook himself early certainly before 31 B. Even Augustus entertained friendly relations towards him in spite of his openly expressed republican convictions, for which he called him a partisan of Pompey. He does not seem to have taken public office, but to have lived exclusively for literature.
Esteemed by his contemporaries, he died in his native town in 17 A. He must have begun his great historical work between 27 and 25 B. He recounts the history of Rome in books, extending from the foundation of the city whence the title Ab Urbe Condita libri to the death of Drusus 9 A.
His own death must have prevented its continuation to the death of Augustus, as he doubtless proposed. He published his work from time to time, in separate parts. He arranged his material--at least for the first ninety books--as far as possible in decads portions consisting of ten books , and half-decads; the division into decade was however first carried through in the 5th century, probably for convenience of handling so vast a series of books.
There still remain only the first decad to B. We also possess from an unknown pen, summaries periochoe of all the books except and , and a scanty extract from the account of the portents prodigia , which appeared in B. Livy's importance rests more on the magnitude of his patriotic undertaking and the style of his narrative than upon his thoroughness as a historic inquirer.
His preliminary studies were inadequate, and his knowledge of Roman law, and still more of the military system of Rome, was insufficient. He was content to select what seemed to him the most probable and reasonable statement from the authorities which happened to be familiar and accessible to him, without regard to completeness, and without severely scrutinising their value,--a method which necessarily led to numerous inaccuracies and serious errors.
Primarily, his great aim was not critical research into the history of his country. He desired rather by a lively and brilliant narrative, which should satisfy the more exacting taste of the time, to rekindle the flagging patriotism of his countrymen, and to raise his politically and socially degraded contemporaries to the level of their ancestors' exploits.
And his narrative in fact deserves the fullest admiration, especially for its descriptions of events and the actors in them, and for the speeches which are inserted in the work. The latter show his rhetorical training in all its brilliance. His language is choice and tasteful, although in details it marks a decline from the strictly classical standard.
Asinius Pollio, in allusion to the author's birthplace, charged it with a certain patavinitas. This can only mean a provincial departure from the peculiar language of the metropolis, which is to us no longer perceptible. Livy's work enjoyed the greatest renown down to the latest days of Roman literature, and has been the great mine of information for knowledge of the past to all succeeding generations.
Born apparently in Campania, about B. Owing to the license and recklessness with which he incessantly attacked the Roman nobles, especially the Metelli, he was thrown into prison, and though liberated thence by the tribunes of the people, was afterwards banished from Rome. He died in exile at Utica about His poetical account of the first Punic War Bellum Poenicum , written in old age in the Saturnian metre, made him the creator of the Roman national epic.
The work originally formed one continuous whole, but at a later time was divided into seven books by the scholar Octavius Lampadio. The fragments preserved give the impression of its having been little more than a chronicle in verse.
Indeed, even in its plan, it bears a close resemblance to the prose chronicles of the Roman annalists: for here, as there, the real subject of the poem was preceded by an account of the early history of Rome, dating from the flight of Aeneas from Troy.
Naevius also made an important departure in the province of dramatic poetry by creating a national drama. Besides imitations of Greek tragedies, of which seven alone are known by name and by extant fragments, it was he who first attempted to adapt the materials of his country's history to the dramatic form handed down by the Greeks. Thus, in the Romulus or Lupus , he treats of the youth of Romulus and Remus; and, in the play Clastidium , of a contemporary historical event.
Francis Lieber. Boston: B. He introduced upon the Roman stage, dramas after the Grecian model, and, besides several epic poems, wrote a translation of the Odyssey , in the old Saturnine verse. The following article is reprinted from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. William Smith. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company,
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