The Project Gutenberg EBook of Roman History, Books I-III, by Titus Livius
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Title: Roman History, Books I-III
Author: Titus Livius
Release Date: January 25, 2004 [EBook #10828]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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ROMAN HISTORY
By
Titus Livius
Translated by
John Henry Freese, Alfred John Church, and William Jackson Brodribb
With a Critical and Biographical Introduction and Notes by Duffield
Osborne
Illustrated
1904
LIVY'S HISTORY
Of the lost treasures of classical literature, it is doubtful whether
any are more to be regretted than the missing books of Livy. That
they existed in approximate entirety down to the fifth century, and
possibly even so late as the fifteenth, adds to this regret. At the
same time it leaves in a few sanguine minds a lingering hope that some
unvisited convent or forgotten library may yet give to the world a
work that must always be regarded as one of the greatest of Roman
masterpieces. The story that the destruction of Livy was effected by
order of Pope Gregory I, on the score of the superstitions contained
in the historian's pages, never has been fairly substantiated, and
therefore I prefer to acquit that pontiff of the less pardonable
superstition involved in such an act of fanatical vandalism. That the
books preserved to us would be by far the most objectionable from
Gregory's alleged point of view may be noted for what it is worth in
favour of the theory of destruction by chance rather than by design.
Here is the inventory of what we have and of what we might have had.
The entire work of Livy--a work that occupied more than forty years
of his life--was contained in one hundred and forty-two books, which
narrated the history of Rome, from the supposed landing of AEneas,
through the early years of the empire of Augustus, and down to the
death of Drusus, B.C. 9. Books I-X, containing the story of early
Rome to the year 294 B.C., the date of the final subjugation of the
Samnites and the consequent establishment of the Roman com
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