It was probably about the time of the battle of Actium that Livy
established himself in Rome, and there he seems chiefly to have resided
until his retirement to Padua shortly before his death. We have no
evidence that he travelled much, though he must have paid at least one
visit to Campania (xxxviii. 56), and he never, so far as we know, took
any part in political life. Nor, though he enjoyed the personal
friendship and patronage of Augustus (Tac. _Ann._ iv. 34) and stimulated
the historical zeal of the future emperor Claudius (Suet. _Claud._
xli.), can we detect in him anything of the courtier. There is not in
his history a trace of that rather gross adulation in which even Virgil
does not disdain to indulge. His republican sympathies were freely
expressed, and as freely pardoned by Augustus. We must imagine him
devoted to the great task which he had set himself to perform, with a
mind free from all disturbing cares, and in the enjoyment of all the
facilities for study afforded by the Rome of Augustus, with its liberal
encouragement of letters, its newly-founded libraries and its brilliant
literary circles. As his work went on, the fame which he had never
coveted came to him in ample measure. He is said to have declared in one
volume of his history that he had already won glory enough, and the
younger Pliny (_Epist._ ii. 3) relates that a Spaniard came all the way
from Gades merely to see him, and, this accomplished, at once returned
home satisfied. The accession of Tiberius (A.D. 14) materially altered
for the worse the prospects of literature in Rome, and Livy retired to
Padua, where he died. He had at least one son (Quintil. x. 1. 39), who
also was possibly an author (Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ i. 5. 6), and a
daughter married to a certain L. Magius, a rhetorician of no great merit
(Seneca, _Controv._ x. 29. 2). Nothing further is known of his personal
history.
_Analysis of the History._--For us the interest of Livy's life centres
in the work to which the greater part of it was devoted, the history of
Rome from its foundation down to the death of Drusus (9 B.C.). Its
proper title was _Ab urbe condita libri_ (also called _historiae_ and
_annales_). Various indications point to the period from 27 to 20 B.C.,
as that during which the first decade was written. In the first book
(19. 3) the emperor is called Augustus, a title which he assumed early
in 27 B.C., and in ix. 18 the omission of all reference to the
restoration, in 20 B.C., of the standards taken at Carrhae seems to
justify the inference that the passage was written before that date. In
the epitome of book lix. there is a reference to a law of Augustus which
was passed in 18 B.C. The books dealing with the civil wars must have
been written during Augustus's lifetime, as they were read by him (Tac.
_Ann._ iv. 34), while there is some evidence that the last part, from
book cxxi. onwards, was published after his death A.D. 14.
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