Latin
Lines 1.23-1.26
Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, Livy 1.23-26
Not analysed yet
The sheer scope of the undertaking was formidable. It presupposed the composition of three books a year on average. Two stories reflect the magnitude of the task. In his letters the statesman Pliny the Younger records that Livy was tempted to abandon the enterprise but found that the task had become too fascinating to give it up; he also mentions a citizen of C�diz who came all the way to Rome for the sole satisfaction of gazing at the great historian.
Livy's historical approach
The project of writing the history of Rome down to the present day was not a new one. Historical research and writing had flourished at Rome for 200 years, since the first Roman historian Quintus Fabius Pictor. There had been two main inspirations behind itantiquarian interest and political motivation. Particularly after 100 BC, there developed a widespread interest in ancient ceremonies, family genealogies, religious customs, and the like. This interest found expression in a number of scholarly works: Titus Pomponius Atticus, Cicero's friend and correspondent, wrote on chronology and on Trojan families; others compiled lengthy volumes on Etruscan religion; Marcus Terentius Varro, the greatest scholar of his age, published the encyclopaedic work Divine and Human Antiquities . The standard of scholarship was not always high, and there could be political pressures, as in the attempt to derive the Julian family to which Julius Caesar belonged from the legendary Aeneas and the Trojans; but the Romans were very conscious and proud of their past, and an enthusiasm for antiquities was widespread.
Previous historians had been public figures and men of affairs. Fabius Pictor had been a praetor, the elder Cato had been consul and censor, and Sallust was a praetor. So, too, many prominent statesmen such as Sulla and Caesar occupied their leisure with writing history. For some it was an exercise in political self-justification (hence, Caesar's Gallic War and Civil War ); for others it was a civilized pastime. But all shared a common outlook and background. History was a political study through which one might hope to explain or excuse the present.