We have perhaps a fairer quarrel with him for following the Greek custom of inserting fictive speeches in the body of his work. To the modern reader many of them are tedious and create a suspicion of being unreliable. It is never quite safe to quote a line from these speeches as indisputable evidence on any event, though most of them contain the gist of an actual speech delivered on the occasion stated. All we can usually be sure of is that they give Livy’s conception of what was likely to have been said by the speaker in the situation. That is often worth having, for Livy usually knew more of the pertinent conditions than we do and he possessed a sympathetic penetration into pristine characters and events that enabled him to make valuable reconstructions. One has only to read the several speeches attributed to Scipio Africanus to see that they make a consistent and vivid portrait. If we have the patience to read these speeches with Livy’s purpose in mind we shall know how to profit by them. The convention was of course understood, and was no more misleading than the equally artificial convention of modern historians who employ a kind of fictional mind-reading, a “stream of consciousness” device, which may be found on almost any page of Mommsen or De Sanctis. Mommsen could hardly have made a silent character like Caesar real without constantly conjecturing as to his intentions and motives, as when he writes: “Evidently here too it was Caesar’s intention,” or again “When Caesar projected the plan for a new code, it is not difficult to divine his intentions” (and he puts down a page of divining), or again, “So far Caesar might say that his object was attained.” These musings of a great historian of our time are cast in a different form from the invented harangues of Livy and the Greeks, but we read them with the same caution, knowing that they are surmises. The historian, who like Livy and Mommsen must deal with tantalizingly fragmentary sources, must have the liberty to bridge the lacuna by some such method. But we will be on our guard when reading such matter.