B. Roman history before Livy

C. The Purposes of Livy’s History

D. Livy’s "Rebuilding" of Rome

E. Refounding the City

2. "The remarkable aspect of Livy’s account of the Regal Period is not his lack of historical merit but the striving to lend the material as much historicity as possible. The central theme of the narrative is that the growth of Rome and the genesis of her institutions was a gradual, piecemeal process that took many centuries." (Luce 1977: 238).

3. Outline of Livy’s Preface, Book I.1. (pp. 33-34 de Selincourt translation)

4. "These, however, are comparatively trivial matters and I set little store by them. I invite the reader’s attention to the much more serious consideration of the kind of lives our ancestors lived, of who were the men, and what the means both in politics and war by which Rome’s power was first acquired and subsequently expanded; I would then have him trace the process of our moral decline, to watch first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them. The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid." (p. 34 de Selincourt translation).

 5. A more literal translation of the Livy’s Preface, end of paragraph 4:

"The following is especially healthful and productive in studying things [that have happened]: for you to fix your gaze upon instances (documenta) of every sort displayed on a shining monument (monumentum); from it you can take things to imitate for yourself and your state (res publica); from it you can take things, foul at their inception and foul in their outcome, to avoid."

6. Monumentum: literally, "what moves or warns the mind". Its range of meaning includes: statue, trophy, memorial of an event, tomb, commemorative public building (e.g. a temple), a token or reminder, a written document, and a work of history.

7. Overview: Livy’s Ab urbe condita consisted of 142 books, covering the years 1200 BC-9 BC.

35 Books survive, along with brief summaries of the lost books. We are reading:

Book I: Pre-foundation (1200-753) and Period of the Kings (753-507)
Book II: The Early Republic (507-468).
Book V: Roman capture of Veii (392); Gauls sack Rome (390); Romans almost move to Veii.

8. Outline of the Roman Kings:

9. "Livy is writing Rome into existence, hill by hill." (Jaeger, quoted in Edwards 1996: 6-7)

10. "All this is not to say that Livy’s critics have been altogether wrong when they castigate him for being careless and indifferent in his analysis of historical evidence. Rather they have in an important sense missed the point of Livy’s text... History in this version remains useful not because it represents accurate reconstructions of past events that can serve as analogies in the present but rather because it perpetuates and interprets the collective memory on which the identity and character of the Roman people depend. This is not the only kind of history, to be sure, but one particularly well suited to a society that regulated itself less by a body of written law than by stories, examples, and wisdom transmitted through a rich array of oral traditions that had only recently begun to be reduced to writing." (Miles 1995: 74).

Jaeger, M.K. "Custodia fidelis memoriae: Livy’s Story of M. Manlius Capitolinus." Latomus 52 (1993).

&endash;&endash;, Livy’s Written Rome. Ann Arbor, 1997.

Kraus, C. "‘No Second Troy’: Topoi and Refoundation in Livy, Book V." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 124 (1994) 267-289.

Luce, T.J. Livy, The Composition of his History. Princeton, 1977.

&endash;&endash;, "Livy, Augustus, and the Forum Augustum" in Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate, edd. Raaflaub and Toher. Berkeley, 1990.

Miles, G. Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome. Ithaca and London, 1995.