knowledge were adequate to his task. TITUS LIVIUS was born at Patavium, the modern Padua, some time between 61 and 57 B.C. Of his parentage and early life nothing is known. It is easy to surmise that he was well born, from his political bias in favour of the aristocratic party, and from the evident fact of his having received a liberal education; yet the former of these arguments is not at all inconsistent with the opposite supposition, and the latter should lead to no very definite conclusion when we remember that in his days few industries were more profitable than the higher education of slaves for the pampered Roman market. Niebuhr infers, from a sentence quoted by Quintilian, that Livy began life as a teacher of rhetoric. However that may be, it seems certain that he came to Rome about 30 B.C., was introduced to Augustus and won his patronage and favour, and after the death of his great patron and friend retired to the city of his birth, where he died, 17 A.D. It is probable that he had fixed the date of the Emperor's death as the limit of his history, and that his own decease cut short his task. No historian ever told a story more delightfully. The available translations leave much to be desired, but to the student of Latin Livy's style is pure and simple, and possesses that charm which purity and simplicity always give. If there is anything to justify the charge of "Patavinity," or provincialism, made by Asinius Pollio, we, at least, are not learned enough in Latin to detect it; and Pollio, too, appears to have been no gentle critic if we may judge by his equally severe strictures upon Cicero, Cæsar, and Sallust. This much we know: the Patavian's heroes live; his events happen, and we are carried along upon their tide. Our sympathies, our indignation, our enthusiasm, are summoned into being, and history and fiction appear to walk hand in hand for our instruction and amusement. In this latter word--fiction--lies the charge most often and most strongly made against him--the charge that he has written a story and no more; that with him past time existed but to furnish materials "to point a moral or adorn a tale." Let us consider to what extent this is true, and, if true, in what measure the author has sinned by it or we have lost.