These qualifications made, it still remains indisputable that Livy and Tacitus are two of the very foremost historians in the literature of the world. The unpretentious work of Caesar has its claim as well as its intrinsic interest, but it cannot rank with these. Sallust, despite undeniable merits, is placed in a minor rank by the triteness of his ideas and the obviousness of his reflections. But Livy, in virtue of his superb eloquence and unflagging descriptive power, and Tacitus, in virtue of his shrewd insight and vivid presentation in a style inimitable for its sparkling condensation—these will remain for ever admirable, as they were, one or other, admired and followed by Gibbon, Macaulay, or Carlyle. Of the vast work of Livy, written in the reign of Augustus, and entitled _The History of Rome from its Foundation_, we possess but a portion, although that portion is in itself of considerable dimensions. As Latin prose, the style is magnificent in variety and colour. It may be called Gibbon, without Gibbon’s sameness or too frequent ponderousness; Gibbon warmed by patriotic ardour. That it sometimes suggests the poetical is assuredly no drawback to what, after all, is a narrative intended primarily to be read. As sober history it suffers from the shortcoming that Livy hardly concerns himself with the verification and criticism of authorities. He does not wholly emancipate himself from the first type of historian. If Tacitus, a hundred years later, cannot be called credulous, neither can he be called impartial. While we have no right to doubt his moral earnestness, we have reasons for doubting his authority—or his use of his authority—for the motives and conduct of the emperors who reigned before his own time. As with Carlyle, and as with Macaulay, his temperament and views led him to darken all the shades and whiten the brightnesses. But, when we have admitted this, it is impossible to rise from his _Annals_ or _Histories_ of imperial Rome without feeling that men and women and events have been brought before the mind’s eye with a wonderful vividness, nor without remembering many a phrase amazingly packed with meaning. Whatever philosophic criticism may have to say of Livy and Tacitus as history, they possess the essential literary merit, that they captivate.