Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Our mission here
is always to take a monumental topic, crack open
the source material, and really pull out those
surprising facts that just make you feel instantly
well -informed. And today, we are definitely
tackling a monumental one. We are. We're strapping
in for a long, fascinating ride through the origins
of Rome, and our guide is the man who literally
wrote the book on it. Titus Livius, or as most
of us know him, Livy. And that's really the perfect
place to start because we're talking about the
ultimate historical epic. This is the history
that shaped how Rome saw its own glory from,
you know, the famous myth of Romulus and Remus
with the wolf. Right, the founding myth itself.
All the way up to the age of the emperor, specifically
the reign of Augustus. So we're not just, you
know. Analyzing an old book today, this deep
dive is about the man himself, the political
pressures, the personal biases, and even the
dramatic search for his lost work. Because Libby
wasn't just some scribe sitting in the forum.
He was a provincial, a philosophical writer,
and he was living through absolute chaos. He
designed his huge work, Ab Urba Candida, with
a very specific moral purpose in mind. Precisely.
Ab Urbi Candida from the founding of the city
is just an astonishing piece of work. The scale
is immense. It's one of the most complete narratives
we have, even if it is, let's say, dramatically
embellished at times. I think that's a fair description.
But to really get it, you have to understand
the man's contradictions. Yeah. Titus Livius,
this fiercely proud man from Patavium who becomes
the official storyteller for the very emperor
who ended the republic he so admired. And that
tension is the thread we're going to be pulling
on today. Okay, let's unpack that provincial
identity because it's so key. For the man who
became the defining historian of Rome, he was
fundamentally an outsider. He really was. He
was born Titus Livius in Patavium, which is a
modern Padua in northern Italy, probably around
59 BC. And we need to spend a minute on Patavium
because this wasn't just some sleepy little town
on the frontier. Oh, not at all. You have to
understand, at the time Livy was born, it was
a major economic powerhouse. Our sources are
clear on this. It was the second wealthiest city
on the entire Italian peninsula. Second only
to Rome itself. Second only to Rome. So it had
influence, it had a huge amount of resources,
and a very wealthy, established upper class.
So Livy wasn't born into poverty, but he was
born a long way from the center of power. And
Patavium was the largest city in Cisalpine Gaul,
right? Yes. And the status of that whole region
was changing. dramatically right when he was
growing up. During his lifetime, it was formally
merged into Italy proper. And crucially, its
inhabitants, its wealthy inhabitants, were given
full Roman citizenship. A change brought in by
Julius Caesar, mostly. Mostly by Caesar, yeah.
And this created this sort of unique identity.
You're a full Roman citizen, but you still have
this fierce loyalty to your region and a very
distinct set of values. And the sources are so
clear that Livy never, ever let go of that. He
was always proud of Patavian. So what were those
values? What made Patavian so distinct? The city
was famous for its conservative values, both
in morality and in politics. Think of it as a
contrast to the perceived corruption and complexity
of Rome during the late Republic. Right. Patavian
was known for this sort of sturdy, almost old
-fashioned Republican virtue. Things like frugality,
duty, political independence. And that morality,
that focus on integrity, that becomes the foundation
for the virtues he writes about in his history,
doesn't it? It's the absolute foundation. He's
basically projecting the ideals of his hometown
onto Rome's heroic past. And those ideals were
put to the test when he was young. His teenage
years, the 40s BC, that was the height of the
Roman civil wars. It must have been chaos. Total
chaos. And it prevented him from getting that
traditional Roman education. What do you mean?
Well, there's this amazing story involving a
man named Asinius Polio. He is the governor of
Cisalpine Gaul, and he was aligned with Mark
Antony. Okay. So Polio tries to lean on Batavium's
immense wealth to fund Antony's war effort against
the Senate. He's trying to get this rich conservative
city to back a faction that many saw as, well,
autocratic. Exactly. And Batavia resisted. But
it's how they resisted that's so interesting.
It wasn't an open revolt. No, it was this quiet,
powerful defiance. The wealthy citizens just
refused to contribute the money and weapons.
They didn't fight. They just went into hiding.
Making it impossible for Polio to collect. Right.
And Polio gets so frustrated that he does something
incredibly desperate. He tries to bribe their
slaves to reveal where their masters are hiding.
Wow. Turning slaves against masters. That's a
massive social taboo, especially in a conservative
place like that. A huge gamble. And it failed.
Completely. The city's social structure held.
Instead of betraying their masters, the citizens
who were in hiding, they rallied and formally
pledged their allegiance to the Senate. The anti
-Antony faction. Yeah, anti -Antony faction.
Okay. So right there in his formative years,
Libby sees his hometown. actively choose the
side of the old republic over this emerging imperial
power. That has to leave a mark, watching your
city stand its ground like that. And you mentioned
the civil wars probably disrupted his education.
For sure. He would have missed out on that standard
higher education in Rome or the tour of Greece
that was so common for a young man of his class.
So he was educated, obviously, but not in that
traditional mold. He's clearly educated in philosophy
and rhetoric. You can see it in his writing.
But that finishing school experience was likely
derailed by the war. And this all leads to a
very specific personal slight that followed him
for years. The Padavenity comment. The Padavenity
slight, yes. From the very same Asinius Polio,
years later. The governor who was snubbed by
the city? The very same. He derisively commented
on Livy's Latin, calling it Padovinity, suggesting
it was full of, you know, provincialisms that
sophisticated Romans would look down on. But
was it really about his grammar or was this just
a political jab? I think the consensus is that
it was almost entirely political. It was Polio's
bad feelings about Batavium's refusal to help
him all those years ago. It wasn't a critique
of syntax. It was a way of saying, you may be
a famous historian in Rome now, but you're still
just a boy from that stubborn town up north.
A constant reminder of his outsider status. Always.
And yet he moves to Rome in the 30s BC, and he
does become established. But here's another key
detail. He never held public office. No, never
a senator, never served in the army. And that's
crucial. Why? Because it gave him a kind of freedom
that was rare for Roman historians. He had his
own money, likely inherited from his wealthy
family. He didn't need a political appointment
or a patron to survive. He was an independent
scholar. Completely. Yeah. Which allowed him
to spend decades of his life just writing this
one massive work. But that independence maybe
had a downside, at least in terms of historical
detail, like his military knowledge. That's a
great point. Scholars have pointed out that his
accounts of battles sometimes contain, well,
elementary mistakes, you know, errors in deployment
or topography. He was a scholar, not a soldier.
Exactly. This focus was on the moral courage,
the heroism, not the gritty logistics of the
battlefield. And just to round out his personal
story, he was married, had a family, and eventually
he went home. Yes, a very traditional Roman family
life. He had at least one daughter who married
a rhetorician and a son who wrote a book on geography.
And then after all those years in Rome... Writing
its history, he died back in his home city of
Batavium in AD 17. The provincial patriot right
to the end. Which brings us to the great work
itself. Yes. Ab Urbi Candida from the founding
of the city. Livy's only surviving work. And
it's just hard to overstate the scope of this
thing. It's a leviathan. I mean, we're talking
about a history that starts with the earliest
legends, before the traditional 753 B .C. founding
date. And it goes all the way up to the death
of Emperor Augustus in A .D. 14. It was originally
142 books, right? 142. And tragically, only 35
survive in their entirety today. It's a devastating
loss. But what we do have gives us our main account
of some critical periods, especially the Second
Punic War. His version of Hannibal's campaigns
is just foundational. It is. But what's really
crucial to understand is that Livy had a very
clear personal mission statement right there
in his preface. He says he's not doing this for
fame. What was his goal then? He says he doesn't
care if his own name remains in darkness, as
long as his work helps to preserve the memory
of the deeds of the world's preeminent nation.
That is the language of a moral historian. He's
not just recording events. He's building a monument.
He's building a moral foundation for the new
age. So how did that mission affect his view
of historical accuracy? That's the million -dollar
question. It is. And the answer is complicated.
He's writing hundreds, sometimes thousands of
years after the events he's describing. He's
relying on older, often contradictory sources.
So he's not an archivist in the modern sense.
Not at all. His commitment wasn't to dry, factual
chronology. It was to moral instruction. He would
choose the version of the story that was the
most heroic, the most eloquent, or the one that
taught the best lesson. And his narrative was
just so compelling that for many Romans, it became
the truth. He created the definitive popular
version of their history. He absolutely did.
He built the narrative framework of what it meant
to be Roman duty, courage, devotion to the state.
His work was less a history book and more a patriotic
textbook. We should also remember he wrote other
things, too. He wasn't just a historian. That's
right. The great history overshadows everything.
But we know he wrote philosophical dialogues,
probably modeled on Cicero. He also wrote an
essay as a letter to his son. So he was deeply
engaged in the philosophical debates of his time.
Yes. And Seneca the Younger gives us a great
insight here. He said Libby's dialogues were
so good they could be classified as history and
philosophy. It just confirms that Livy saw his
job as exploring these deep questions about human
nature and society. History was just his main
tool. Okay, so let's pivot to something really
unexpected. One of the strangest long -term influences
of his work was on a scientific debate about
the origins of the Etruscans. This is one of
my favorite examples of his influence. It shows
how a single... almost throwaway line in his
massive text could shape scholarship for centuries.
His book became the basis for the northern theory
of where the Etruscans came from. How? It's in
a passage where he's talking about the Alpine
tribes, a group called the Rady. And he just
suggests, sort of as a side comment, that the
Rady were undoubtedly of the same kind as the
Etruscans. So he's drawing a direct ancestral
line between this sophisticated ancient civilization,
the Etruscans, and these rough mountain tribes
to the north. He is. And he probably based it
on some old local stories or maybe a linguistic
similarity he'd heard about. But he adds this
little caveat that makes the theory so powerful.
What's the caveat? He notes that the Rady had
become so primitive because of their remote location
that they only retained a trace of their Etruscan
origins in their language. And even that was
corrupted. Ah, so that explains the cultural
difference while keeping the link. Exactly. And
when scholars in the Renaissance and later started
digging into the mystery of Etruscan origins,
which we still debate today, they seized on this
single statement from Livy. Because if Livy said
it, it must have some weight. Immense weight.
Scholars like Carl Offred Miller used this line
as the core evidence for a northern migration
theory, that the Etruscans came down from the
Alps. Livy's authority basically chopped up that
entire school of thought for hundreds of years.
So we have this philosopher historian, this provincial
patriot, writing this epic moral narrative, and
now he lands in the most politically dangerous
place imaginable, the court of the emperor Augustus.
And this is where his skill really shines. His
relationship with Augustus and the whole Julio
-Claudian family was, well, exceptional. He was
a genuine friend of the emperor. And it was a
friendship that worked both ways, presumably.
Oh, for sure. Livy got protection. He got access.
And Augustus, he got the ultimate historical
validation for his new regime. You have to remember,
Augustus had won the civil wars, but he needed
legitimacy. He had to frame the empire not as
a destruction of the republic, but as its righteous
fulfillment. And Livy's history delivered exactly
that. It wasn't just a history. It was promotion.
The sources are explicit that he wrote with embellished
accounts of Roman heroism specifically to promote
the new Augustan government. He made the transition
from republic to empire seem righteous and inevitable.
It's historical legitimation at its finest. He
basically takes the stern. moral virtues of the
early republic, the values of his hometown, Patavium,
and argues that those values led directly to
the peace and greatness of the Augustan age.
It's a brilliant move. He makes the new empire
feel ancient and virtuous. Masterful rhetorical
politics. But this brings us to that amazing
contradiction, the thing that shows just how
complex this friendship was, the Pompeianus paradox.
Yes, this is where it gets really, really interesting.
How can you praise the virtues of the dead republic
while being best friends with the man who killed
it? The answer comes from the historian Tacitus,
writing a century later. It does. Tacitus tells
us this incredible anecdote. That Augustus himself
had a nickname for Livy. He called him Pompeianus.
Let's just pause on that. Pompeianus. As in Pompey
the Great. Neus Pompeius. Augustus' ultimate
rival. The man he defeated in a brutal civil
war to gain soul power. And the emperor is calling
his favorite historian Pompey's man. That is
an astonishing level of confidence. It's unbelievable.
And the reason Augustus gave him that nickname
was because Livy's history contained such a strong,
powerful, panegyric, a formal praise for Pompey.
Which is the last thing you'd expect. You'd think
he'd have to downplay Augustus' old enemies.
But he did the opposite. And if you think back
to his identity, it makes perfect sense. His
hometown, Batavium, was fiercely pro -Pompey.
Livy was just staying true to his conservative
Republican roots. He was honoring a great defender
of the traditional republic. Even though he was
on the losing side. And what's truly remarkable
is what Tacitus says next. He confirms that this
nickname was no obstacle to their friendship.
That's the aha moment. It shows that either Augustus
was so secure in his power that he could afford
to joke about it. Or that Livy's skill. And his
overall value to the regime's narrative was so
immense that a little praise for Pompey was a
price worth paying. It suggests this really nuanced,
sophisticated relationship. Livy somehow manages
to keep his reputation for eloquence and truthfulness,
as Tacitus put it. While writing the official
history of the new regime, it's an incredible
balancing act. And his influence didn't stop
there. He was actively mentoring the next generation
of the imperial family. Yes, the source confirms
that Livy personally encouraged Augustus' grandnephew,
the young boy who would one day become the Emperor
Claudius, to start writing history. So he wasn't
just a chronicler of the past. He was shaping
the intellectual future of the dynasty. He was
deeply embedded, the defining intellectual voice
of the age, right at the center of power. It's
amazing to think that Livy wasn't just influential
later on. He was a full -blown celebrity in his
own lifetime. A massive celebrity. Yeah. Which
makes the fact that we lost so much of his work
even more tragic. Let's talk about his immediate
reception. His history was in huge demand from
the moment it came out. The anecdotes about his
fame are just incredible. Pliny the Younger tells
this one story that really gives you a sense
of it. I think I know the one you mean. He says
Livy was so famous that a man traveled all the
way from Cadiz which is in modern Spain, the
absolute edge of the known world. Right. All
the way to Rome and back for the sole purpose
of meeting him. He didn't come to see the Senate
or to trade. He came for a celebrity meet and
greet with an author. That's the ancient equivalent
of a fan flying across the world just for a five
minute chat with their favorite writer. It's
incredible. And because he was so famous, so
accepted, his work became the source for basically
every historian who came after him. He set the
canon. You see his influence everywhere, from
writers who summarize Roman history like Florus
and Eutropius, to Christian chroniclers like
Orosius, who are trying to make sense of Rome's
pagan past. Even in really specific niche works.
For sure. A writer named Julius Obsequens compiled
this book called De Prodigius, which was a list
of all the supernatural events and omens in Roman
history. And where did he get his information?
He had to rely on Livy, or a source who had access
to Livy. Livy's narrative was the recognized
authority on everything that had ever happened.
from battles to miracles. But the very things
that made it so popular, its fame and its enormous
length, are what led to its loss in the Middle
Ages. How did we lose over 100 books? It was
a problem of pure practicality. Ab Urb Candida
was gigantic. Copying all 142 books by hand onto
scrolls was incredibly expensive and time -consuming.
And then you had to store them all. It required
a huge amount of library space, which was a rare
commodity. And a very rare commodity, especially
during the more chaotic centuries of the Middle
Ages. So what happened was people started relying
on summaries instead. Epitomies. Exactly. They
were shorter, cheaper, and easier to copy and
store. And once the Summers became popular enough,
the incentive to copy the massive original work
just disappeared. The full manuscript stopped
being copied and the ones that existed were lost
to time, to fires, to neglect. And it became
one of the greatest cultural losses of the ancient
world. So then you fast forward to the Renaissance
and scholars suddenly realize how much of Rome's
story is just gone. And it sparks this intense
revival, a kind of historical treasure hunt.
The recovery of lost classical texts was a central
project of the Renaissance, and Livy was the
top prize. They were trying to find manuscripts
hidden away in monastery libraries all over Europe.
A frantic, high -stakes search. And it commanded
serious money. You told me about that incredible
anecdote with the poet Beccadelli. Oh, it's just
amazing. The poet Antonio Beccadelli sold his
country home, a massive asset, just to buy one
copied manuscript of Livy. He traded his house
for a book. It just shows the insane cultural
value they placed on his words. And it wasn't
just eccentric poets. Major figures were involved.
The great humanist Petrarch launched his own
searches. Pope Nicholas V made it a papal mission
to find the missing books. It was seen as a quest
to recover the very soul of Rome. And this recovery
didn't just affect literature. It shaped political
thought. Hugely. Dante had praised Livy centuries
before. Later, King Francis I of France commissioned
all this art based on Livian themes of heroism
and Roman virtue. But the biggest influence on
Western political thought has to be Niccolo Machiavelli.
Without a doubt. Machiavelli's most important
work on governance, The Discourses on Livy, is
literally a commentary on Livy's history. He's
using Livy's stories about the Roman Republic
to build his own theories on how states work.
He's extracting these practical, sometimes ruthless
lessons on modern statecraft directly from Livy's
moralizing tales. It's a foundational text of
political science. And to wrap this up, there's
that one last heartbreaking anecdote from Walter
Scott. It's just a stunning detail. Scott reports
it as a true story from the 1715 Jacobite uprising
in Scotland. A Scotsman involved in the rebellion
gets captured, but then he managed to escape.
He's free. He got away clean. But he doesn't
run. He doesn't. He lingered near the place of
his captivity. Why? Because he was hoping to
get back his most prized possession, his favorite
copy of Titus Livius. And that hesitation got
him recaptured. And executed. He literally died
for his love of a book written nearly 2 ,000
years earlier. It's an almost unbelievable testament
to the power of Levy's writing. So we've established
his huge influence, his celebrity, but now we
have to deal with a fundamental problem that
all classical scholars face. Which is that for
all his fame, we aren't even 100 % certain about
the basic dates of his life. Exactly. The data
is, let's say, a little bit shaky. So where does
our information for his birth and death even
come from? Primarily from one source. a summary
of world history written by a bishop named Eusebius
of Caesarea in the early 4th century AD. The
work is called the Chronicon. And the problem,
as is so often the case, is that we don't have
the original. We don't. The original Greek is
mostly lost. We rely almost entirely on translations
and fragments, mainly St. Jerome's Latin translation.
So we're already dealing with copy, a translation.
A translation that was also supplemented with
new material by Jerome. And this is where the
problem of variation comes in. What do you mean
by that? Well, when you look at the different
surviving manuscripts of Jerome's Chronicon,
which are copies of copies of copies, they often
have different dates for the same events. The
material isn't exactly the same. And they were
juggling different dating systems too, right?
Yes, which made errors almost inevitable. A scribe
might be converting a date from the Roman ab
herb candida system to the Greek Olympiad system,
or just noting a person's age, any little miscalculation.
Gets copied into the next version and becomes
locked in as a fact in that manuscript tradition.
Precisely. Which means, as the sources say, there
is no such date as a single universally accepted
standard date for Libby's life. That's a really
important thing for us to remember. So much of
ancient history is about probability, not absolute
certainty. It is. So if there's no certainty,
what is the accepted scholarly consensus that
we use today? The working consensus is based
on analyzing the Olympiad codes in the manuscripts.
The codes 180 .2 for his birth and 199 .1 for
his death are the ones most scholars rely on.
And when you calculate those out, they correspond
to a birth in 59 BC and a death in 8017. Which
is the timeline we've been using. It is. But
we have to be honest and acknowledge that other
manuscripts exist. For example, one gives a different
code that would place his birth in 57 BC. So
there's always that little question mark. Always.
It's kind of a perfect metaphor, isn't it? The
man who solidified Rome's legendary past has
a personal timeline. That is itself a fragile
narrative, pieced together from fragments centuries
after he died. It's a reminder of how history
itself works. At the end of the day, the story
of Titus Livius is just this incredible masterclass
in influence and, frankly, political survival.
He lived this fascinating, contradictory life.
the fiercely patriotic provincial who brings
the moral virtues of his hometown right into
the heart of the new imperial court. He becomes
the emperor's favorite historian, yet he's still
championing the ethos of the republic that the
emperor defeated. And his history was so much
more than a simple chronicle. It was a moral
argument. carefully built to showcase Roman heroism
and justify Augustus's new order by making it
seem like the natural, virtuous endpoint of the
Republic. And that central tension, the one we
see in the Pompeianus Paradox, that's his real
legacy, isn't it? I think so. His ability to
praise the vanquish, to praise Pompeii and still
be close friends with the Victor Augustus, says
everything about his rhetorical skill and his
political genius. His work ensured that the memory
of the Republic's virtues, the very ideals Augustus
had to crush to gain power actually survived.
They were preserved right there in the official
history commissioned by the emperor himself.
Which leaves us with that critical question that
Tacitus hinted at. What does it really take for
a historian to maintain both eloquence and truthfulness
while writing for the very power structure that
destroyed the era he most admired? That is the
core tension. And it's a question that feels
deeply relevant for us today. When we look at
our own times of great political change, you
have to wonder how the historical accounts being
written right now, the journalism, the biographies,
how will they be judged in 500 years? Will future
historians see our chroniclers as truth tellers
or as clever Pompeiani praising the old order
while serving the new? Will the narrative they
create about our present moment be seen as fact
or as a masterful justification for the powers
that be? Something to ponder as we think about
the enduring power of history and the people
who write it.