Livy’s History of Rome

Also called: Ab Urbe Condita, History of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita Libri

From about 27 BC the historian Livy of Patavium (Padua) wrote the history of Rome from its founding to his own day in 142 books (Ab Urbe Condita, “From the Founding of the City”). Book 1 tells the founding legends from Aeneas to the end of the monarchy. Thirty-five books survive.

From about 27 BC (some date the preface a little earlier) Livy worked for more than forty years on the history of Rome. True to its title, Ab Urbe Condita (“From the Founding of the City”), it began with the arrival of Aeneas and the founding of Rome and ran to the death of Drusus in 9 BC in 142 books. Thirty-five survive — Books 1–10 (to 293 BC) and 21–45 (219–167 BC); the rest are known only from summaries (the Periochae) and quotations.

Book 1 tells Rome’s founding legends — Aeneas, Alba Longa, Romulus and Remus, the Sabine women, Numa, Lucretia — as vivid stories and became the basis of the Roman founding story as later ages knew it. Yet in his preface Livy declares that the traditions of the time before the city’s founding are “more fitting for the tales of poets than for reliable records,” and that he will neither affirm nor refute them. He meant to teach by showing the virtues of the early Romans and their decline.

Livy was close to Augustus, but according to Tacitus Augustus teased him as a “Pompeian” for praising Pompey of the republic. He also encouraged the future emperor Claudius to write history. He died around AD 17 in his home town of Patavium.