Hitherto Roman history had been imperfectly treated. It is unfortunate that such crude conceptions of its nature prevailed. Even Cicero says, _opus hoc unum maxime oratorium_. [17] It had been either a register of events kept by aristocratic pontiffs from pride of race, or a series of pictures for the display of eloquence. Neither the flexible imagination, nor the patient sagacity, nor the disinterested view of life necessary for a great historian, was to be found among the Romans. There was no true criticism. For instance, while Juvenal depicts the first inhabitants of the city, according to tradition, as rude marauders, [18] Cicero commends their virtues and extols the wisdom of the early kings as the Athenian orators do that of Solon; and in his _Cato Maior_ makes of the harsh censor a refined country gentleman and a student of Plato! Varro had amassed a vast collection of facts, a formidable array of authorities; Dionysius had spent twenty years in studying the monuments of Rome, and yet had so little intelligence of her past that he made Romulus a philosopher of the Sophistic type! Caesar and Sallust gave true narratives of that which they had themselves known, but they did little more. No ancient writer, unless perhaps Thucydides, has grasped the truth that history is an indivisible whole, and that humanity marches according to fixed law towards a determinate end. The world is in their eyes a stage on which is played for ever the same drama of life and death, whose fate moves in a circle bounded by the catastrophes of cities mortal as their inhabitants, without man's becoming by progress of time either better or more powerful. In estimating, then, the value of Livy's work, we must ask, How far did he possess the qualifications necessary for success? We turn to his preface and find there the moralist, the patriot, and the stylist; and we infer that his fullest idea of history is of a book in which he who runs can read the lesson of virtue; and, if he be a lawgiver, can model his legislation upon its high precedents, and, if he be a citizen, can follow its salutary precepts of conduct. An idea, which, however noble, is certainly not exhaustive. It may entitle its possessor to be called a lofty writer, but not a great historian. This is his radical defect. He treats history too little as a record, too little as a science, too much as a series of texts for edification.