authority to another leads him not unfrequently to copy from the
latter statements inconsistent with those he took from the former, to
forget what he has previously said, or to treat as known a fact which
has not been mentioned before (cf. ii. 1, xxxiv. 6, and Weissenborn's
_Introduction_, p. 37). In other cases where the same event has been
placed by different annalists in different years, or where their
versions of it varied, it reappears in Livy as two events. Thus the
four campaigns against the Volsci (ii. 17 seq.) are, as Schwegler
(_R.G._ i. 13) rightly says, simply variations of one single
expedition. Other instances of such "doublettes" are the two single
combats described in xxiii. 46 and xxv. 18, and the two battles at
Baecula in Spain (xxvii. 18 and xxviii. 13). Without doubt, too, much
of the chronological confusion observable throughout Livy is due to
the fact that he follows now one now another authority, heedless of
their differences on this head. Thus he vacillates between the
Catonian and Varronian reckoning of the years of the city, and between
the chronologies of Polybius and the Roman annalists.
To these defects in his method must be added the fact that he does not
always succeed even in accurately reproducing the authority he is for
the time following. In the case of Polybius, for instance, he allows
himself great freedom in omitting what strikes him as irrelevant, or
tedious, or uninteresting to his Roman readers, a process in which
much valuable matter disappears. In other cases his desire to give a
vividness and point to what he doubtless considered the rather bald
and dry style of Polybius leads him into absurdities and inaccuracies.
Thus by the treaty with Antiochus (188 B.C.) it was provided that the
Greek communities of Asia Minor "shall settle their mutual differences
by arbitration," and so far Livy correctly transcribes Polybius, but
he adds with a rhetorical flourish, "or, if both parties prefer it, by
war" (xxxviii. 38). Elsewhere his blunders are apparently due to
haste, or ignorance or sheer carelessness; thus, for instance, when
Polybius speaks of the Aetolians assembling at their capital Thermon,
Livy (xxxiii. 35) not only substitutes Thermopylae but gratuitously
informs his readers that here the Pylaean assemblies were held. Thanks
partly to carelessness, partly to mistranslation, he makes sad havoc
(xxxv. 5 seq.) of Polybius's account of the battle of Cynoscephalae.
Finally, Livy cannot be altogether acquitted on the charge of having
here and there modified Polybius in the interests of Rome.
Speeches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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