When we attentively consider the work of Livy, we find it written in an astonishingly uneven style. The several decades essentially differ from each other, and in the first decade, the first book from the rest. This one is the very perfection of his manner, and shows how matchless he would have been, had his history been more condensed. Throughout the first decade, a high strain of eloquence prevails. In the third, the monotony of the events constantly checks its display; yet beautifully written are the battles on the Trasimene Lake, and at Cannæ. Here, however, is the turning point. In the fourth, the prolixity gains ground more and more, in which traces of extreme old age are to be recognised. The more freely Livy relates, the more beautiful is his composition. The fourth decade is far below the third; in the fourth and fifth he has to a great extent paraphrased Polybius. He could not have chosen better with regard to credibility; but here he is hurried, and it happens also that he contradicts himself, and that, telling the same things twice over, he becomes prolix, which he never is in the first and third decades. But particularly remarkable is the fragment from the ninety-first book; which is written in such a manner, that if it were not inscribed _T. Livî liber XCI_, and that some circumstances bore evidence for it, one would not take it for a work of Livy. Here we understand how the old grammarians could have reproached him with tautology and palilology;[24] here we see how a great writer may become old and garrulous. If the second decade had not been lost also, it would be easy to explain how the later ones have perished, viz. by their being excluded from the grammatical schools. His preface is characteristic, belonging to the worst parts of the whole work, whilst on the contrary the introductions in those great practical historians, Thucydides, Sallust, Tacitus, are masterpieces. This is to be explained from the fact, that Livy began without being conscious of any definite object, and those other writers with a bold stroke of the pencil drew the results of long lucubration.