VOLUME XVI SLICE VII Liquid Gases to Logar (continued 7)

The contributions made by the companies to the public purposes of the state and the city are interesting points in their early history. Their wealth and their representative character made them a most appropriate instrument for the enforcement of irregular taxation. The loan of £21,263, 6s. 8d. to Henry VIII. for his wars in Scotland, in 1544, is believed by Herbert to be the first instance of a pecuniary grant to the crown, but the practice rapidly gained ground. The confiscation of ecclesiastical property at the time of the Reformation affected many of the trusts of the companies; and they were compelled to make returns of their property devoted to religious uses, and to pay over the rents to the crown. In course of time the taxation of the companies became “a regular source of supply to government.” The historians of the city have for the most part described these as unjust and tyrannical exactions, but, looking at the representative and municipal character of the companies, and the purposes to which their contributions were applied, we may regard them as a rough but not unfair mode of taxation. The government, when money was wanted for public works, informed the lord mayor, who apportioned the sums required among the various societies, and issued precepts for its payment. Contributions towards setting the poor to work, erecting the Royal Exchange, cleansing the city ditch, discovering new countries, furnishing military and naval armaments, for men, arms and ammunition for the defence of the city, are among what Herbert calls the sponging expedients of the government. The crown occasionally interfered in a more unjustifiable manner with the companies in the exercise of their patronage. The Stuarts made strenuous efforts to get the control of the companies. Terrified by the proceedings in the quo warranto case, most of the companies surrendered their charters to the crown, but such surrenders were annulled by the act of 2 William and Mary (1690) reserving the judgment in quo warranto against the city. The livery companies now in existence are the following:

Apothecaries. Feltmakers. Needlemakers.

Armourers and Brasiers. Fishmongers. Painters.

Bakers. Fletchers. Pattern Makers.

Barbers. Founders. Pewterers.

Basket Makers. Framework Knitters. Plaisterers.

Blacksmiths. Fruiterers. Playing Card Makers.

Bowyers. Girdlers. Plumbers.

Brewers. Glass Sellers. Poulters.

Broderers. Glaziers. Saddlers.

Butchers. Glovers. Salters.

Carmen. Gold and Silver Wyre-drawers. Scriveners.

Carpenters Goldsmiths. Shipwrights.

Clockmakers. Grocers. Silkthrowsters.

Clothworkers. Gunmakers. Skinners.

Coach and Coach-Harness Makers. Haberdashers Spectacle makers.

Cooks. Horners. Stationers.

Coopers. Innholders. Tallow Chandlers.

Cordwainers. Ironmongers. Tin Plate Workers.

Curriers. Joiners. Turners.

Cutlers. Leathersellers. Tylers and Bricklayers.

Distillers. Loriners. Upholders.

Drapers. Masons. Wax Chandlers.

Dyers. Mercers. Weavers.

Fanmakers. Merchant Taylors. Wheelwrights.

Farriers. Musicians. Woolmen.

Fellowship Porters.

The following are the twelve great companies in order of civic precedence: Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, Skinners, Merchant Taylors, Haberdashers, Salters, Ironmongers, Vintners, Cloth-workers. The “Irish Society” was incorporated in the 11 James I. as “the governor and assistants of the new plantation in Ulster, within the realm of Ireland.” The twelve companies contributed in equal portions the sum of £60,000 for the new scheme, by which it was intended to settle a Protestant colony in the lands forfeited by the Irish rebels. The companies divided the settlement into twelve nearly equal parts, assigning one to each, but the separate estates are still held to be under the paramount jurisdiction of the Irish Society. The charter of the society was revoked by the court of star chamber in the reign of Charles I., but a new one was granted by Charles II., under which the society still acts.

Most of the companies administer charities of large value. Many of them are governors of important schools, e.g. the Skinners have the Tonbridge Grammar School; the Mercers, St Paul’s School; the Merchant Taylors, the school bearing their name, &c. The constitution of the livery companies usually embraces (a) the court, which includes the master and wardens, and is the executive and administrative body; (2) the livery or middle class, being the body from which the court is recruited; and (3) the general body of freemen, from which the livery is recruited. Some companies admit women as freemen. The freedom is obtained either by patrimony (by any person over twenty-one years of age born in lawful wedlock after the admission of his father to the freedom), by servitude (by being bound as an apprentice to a freeman of the company) or by redemption. Admission to many of the companies is subject to the payment of considerable fees. For example, in the Merchant Taylors the fees are—upon taking up the freedom, by patrimony or servitude, £1, 3s. 4d.; by redemption, £84; on admission to the livery, £80, 8s.; on election to the court of assistants, £115, 10s. At one time the position of the livery companies was a subject of much political discussion. Two parties threatened to attack them—on one side those who were anxious for extensive reforms in the municipal organization of London; on the other, those who wished to carry forward the process of inspection and revision of endowments, which had already overtaken the universities, schools and other charities. A Royal Commission was appointed in 1880 to inquire into all the livery companies, into the circumstances and dates of their foundation, the objects for which they were founded, and how far those objects were being carried into effect. A very valuable Report and Appendix (4 vols., 1884) was published, containing, inter alia, information on the constitution and powers of the governing bodies, the mode of admission of members of the companies, the mode of appointment, duties and salaries and other emoluments of the servants of the companies, the property of, or held in trust for, the companies, its value, situation and description. The companies very freely made returns to the commission, the only ones not doing so being the Broderers, Bowyers, Distillers, Glovers, Tin-Plate Workers and Weavers. The Commission estimated the annual income of the companies to be from £750,000 to £800,000, about £200,000 of that amount being trust income, the balance corporate income.

Authorities.—In addition to the Report referred to above the following works may be consulted: H. T. Riley, Memorials of London and London Life (1868); Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 (ed. by Sir N. H. Nicolas and E. Tyrrel, 1827); Munimenta Gildhallae Londiniensis, in Rolls Series, ed. by H. T. Riley (4 vols., 1859-1862); J. Toulmin Smith, English Gilds (published by Early English Text Society), with essay by L. Brentano (1870); W. Herbert, History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies (1837); C. Gross, The Gild Merchant (2 vols., 1890); W. C. Hazlitt, The Livery Companies of the City of London (1892), contains a précis of the Royal Commission; P. H. Ditchfield, The City Companies of London (1904); G. Unwin, The Gilds and Companies of London (1908).

(T. A. I.)

1 Properly the word should be spelled, as it was originally, “mistery;” it comes through the O. Fr. mestier, modern métier, from Lat. ministerium, service, employment, and meant a trade or craft, and hence the plays acted by craftsmen and members of gilds were called “mystery plays” (see Drama). For the word meaning a hidden or secret rite, with which this has so often been confused, see Mystery.

LIVIA DRUSILLA (c. 55 B.C.-A.D. 29), Roman empress, was originally the wife of Tiberius Claudius Nero, by whom she had two sons, Drusus and Tiberius (afterwards emperor). But she attracted the attention of the future emperor Augustus, who in 38 compelled her husband to divorce her and married her himself, having first got rid of his own wife Scribonia. Her two sons, at their dying father’s request, were entrusted to the guardianship of Augustus, to whom she bore no children. Livia was suspected of committing various crimes to secure the throne for Tiberius, whereas Augustus naturally favoured the claims of his blood-relatives. The premature deaths of his nephew Marcellus (whom he had at first fixed upon as his successor) and of his grandsons Gaius and Lucius Caesar, the banishment of his grandson Agrippa Postumus, and even his own death, were attributed to her. But in any case Augustus’s affection for his wife appears to have suffered no diminution up to the last; by his will he declared her and Tiberius (whom he had adopted in A.D. 4) his heirs; Livia inherited a third of his property; she was adopted into the Julian gens, and henceforth assumed the name of Julia Augusta. The senate also elected her chief priestess of the college founded in honour of the deified Augustus. She had now reached the summit of her ambition, and at first acted as joint-ruler with Tiberius. Tiberius, however, soon became tired of the maternal yoke; his retirement to Capreae is said to have been caused by his desire to escape from her. Livia continued to live quietly at Rome, in the full enjoyment of authority, until her death at an advanced age. Tiberius appears to have received the news with indifference, if not with satisfaction; he absented himself from the funeral, and refused to allow her apotheosis; her will was suppressed for a long time and only carried out, and the legacies paid, by Caligula.

See Tacitus, Annals, i. v.; Dio Cassius liii. 33, lv. 14-22, lviii. 2, lix. 2; Suetonius, Tiberius, 50, 51; J. Aschbach, Livia, Gemahlin des Kaisers Augustus (1864); V. Gardthausen, Augustus und seine Zeit, i. 1018 foll., ii. 631 foll.

LIVINGSTON, EDWARD (1764-1836), American jurist and statesman, was born in Clermont, Columbia county, New York, on the 26th of May 1764. He was a great-grandson of Robert Livingston, the first of the family to settle in America (see Livingston, William, below). He graduated at Princeton in 1781, was admitted to the bar in 1785, and began to practise law in New York City, rapidly rising to distinction. In 1795-1801 he was a Republican representative in Congress, where he was one of the leaders of the opposition to Jay’s treaty, introduced the resolution calling upon President Washington for all papers relating to the treaty, and at the close of Washington’s administration voted with Andrew Jackson and other radicals against the address to the president. He opposed the Alien and Sedition Laws, introduced legislation on behalf of American seamen, and in 1800 attacked the president for permitting the extradition by the British government of Jonathan Robbins, who had committed murder on an English frigate, and had then escaped to South Carolina and falsely claimed to be an American citizen. In the debate on this question Livingston was opposed by John Marshall. In 1801 Livingston was appointed U.S. district-attorney for the state of New York, and while retaining that position was in the same year appointed mayor of New York City. When, in the summer of 1803, the city was visited with yellow fever, Livingston displayed courage and energy in his endeavours to prevent the spread of the disease and relieve distress. He suffered a violent attack of the fever, during which the people gave many proofs of their attachment to him. On his recovery he found his private affairs in some confusion, and he was at the same time deeply indebted to the government for public funds which had been lost through the mismanagement or dishonesty of a confidential clerk, and for which he was responsible as district-attorney. He at once surrendered all his property, resigned his two offices in 1803, and removed early in 1804 to Louisiana. He soon acquired a large law practice in New Orleans, and in 1826 repaid the government in full, including the interest, which at that time amounted to more than the original principal.

Almost immediately upon his arrival in Louisiana, where the legal system had previously been based on Roman, French and Spanish law, and where trial by jury and other peculiarities of English common law were now first introduced, he was appointed by the legislature to prepare a provisional code of judicial procedure, which (in the form of an act passed in April 1805) was continued in force from 1805 to 1825. In 1807, after conducting a successful suit on behalf of a client’s title to a part of the batture or alluvial land near New Orleans, Livingston attempted to improve part of this land (which he had received as his fee) in the Batture, Ste Marie. Great popular excitement was aroused against him; his workmen were mobbed; and Governor Claiborne, when appealed to for protection, referred the question to the Federal government. Livingston’s case was damaged by President Jefferson, who believed that Livingston had favoured Burr in the presidential election of 1800, and that he had afterwards been a party to Burr’s schemes. Jefferson made it impossible for Livingston to secure his title, and in 1812 published a pamphlet “for the use of counsel” in the case against Livingston, to which Livingston published a crushing reply. Livingston’s final victory in the courts brought him little financial profit because of the heavy expenses of the litigation. During the war with England from 1812 to 1815 Livingston was active in rousing the mixed population of New Orleans to resistance. He used his influence to secure amnesty for Lafitte and his followers upon their offer to fight for the city, and in 1814-1815 acted as adviser and volunteer aide-de-camp to General Jackson, who was his personal friend. In 1821, by appointment of the legislature, of which he had become a member in the preceding year, Livingston began the preparation of a new code of criminal law and procedure, afterwards known in Europe and America as the “Livingston Code.” It was prepared in both French and English, as was required by the necessities of practice in Louisiana, and actually consisted of four codes—crimes and punishments, procedure, evidence in criminal cases, reform and prison discipline. Though substantially completed in 1824, when it was accidentally burned, and again in 1826, it was not printed entire until 1833. It was never adopted by the state. It was at once reprinted in England, France and Germany, attracting wide praise by its remarkable simplicity and vigour, and especially by reason of its philanthropic provisions in the code of reform and prison discipline, which noticeably influenced the penal legislation of various countries. In referring to this code, Sir Henry Maine spoke of Livingston as “the first legal genius of modern times” (Cambridge Essays, 1856, p. 17). The spirit of Livingston’s code was remedial rather than vindictive; it provided for the abolition of capital punishment and the making of penitentiary labour not a punishment forced on the prisoner, but a matter of his choice and a reward for good behaviour, bringing with it better accommodations. His Code of Reform and Prison Discipline was adopted by Guatemala. Livingston was the leading member of a commission appointed to prepare a new civil code,1 which for the most part the legislature adopted in 1825, and the most important chapters of which, including all those on contract, were prepared by Livingston alone.

Livingston was again a representative in Congress during 1823-1829, a senator in 1829-1831, and for two years (1831-1833) secretary of state under President Jackson. In this last position he was one of the most trusted advisers of the president, for whom he prepared a number of state papers, the most important being the famous anti-nullification proclamation of the 10th of December 1832. From 1833 to 1835 Livingston was minister plenipotentiary to France, charged with procuring the fulfilment by the French government of the treaty negotiated by W. C. Rives in 1831, by which France had bound herself to pay an indemnity of twenty-five millions of francs for French spoliations of American shipping chiefly under the Berlin and Milan decrees, and the United States in turn agreed to pay to France 1,500,000 francs in satisfaction of French claims. Livingston’s negotiations were conducted with excellent judgment, but the French Chamber of Deputies refused to make an appropriation to pay the first instalment due under the treaty in 1833, relations between the two governments became strained, and Livingston was finally instructed to close the legation and return to America. He died on the 23rd of May 1836 at Montgomery Place, Dutchess county, New York, an estate left him by his sister, to which he had removed in 1831. Livingston was twice married. His first wife, Mary McEvers, whom he married on the 10th of April 1788, died on the 13th of March 1801. In June 1805 he married Madame Louise Moreau de Lassy (d. 1860), a widow nineteen years of age, whose maiden name was Davezac de Castera, and who was a refugee in New Orleans from the revolution in Santo Domingo. She was a woman of extraordinary beauty and intellect, and is said to have greatly influenced her husband’s public career.

See C. H. Hunt, Life of Edward Livingston (New York, 1864); Livingston’s Works (2 vols., New York, 1873); and Louise Livingston Hunt, Memoir of Mrs Edward Livingston (New York, 1886).

1 Preliminary work in the preparation of a new civil code had been done by James Brown and Moreau Lislet, who in 1808 reported a “Digest of the Civil Laws now in force in the Territory of Orleans with Alterations and Amendments adapted to the present Form of Government.”

LIVINGSTON, ROBERT R. (1746-1813), American statesman, son of Robert R. Livingston (1718-1775; a justice of the New York supreme court after 1763) and brother of Edward Livingston (see above), was born in New York City, on the 27th of November 1746. He graduated at King’s College, New York (now Columbia University), in 1765, was admitted to the bar in 1773, and for a short time was a law partner of John Jay. In 1773 he became recorder of New York City, but soon identified himself with the Whig or Patriot element there, and was forced to give up this position in 1775. He was a member of the second, third and fourth Provincial Congresses of New York (1775-1777), was a delegate from New York to the Continental Congress in 1775-1777 and again in 1779-1780, and was a member of the committee which drafted the Declaration of Independence. He was prevented from signing that document by his absence at the time to attend a meeting of the fourth New York Provincial Congress, which on the 10th of July became the Convention of the Representatives of the state of New York, and by which at Kingston in 1777 the first state constitution was adopted, Livingston having been a member of the committee that drafted this instrument. He was the first chancellor of the state, from 1777 to February 1801, and is best known as “Chancellor” Livingston. In this capacity he administered the oath of office to Washington at his first inauguration to the presidency, in New York, on the 30th of April 1789. Previously, from October 1781 to June 1783, he had been the first secretary of foreign affairs under the Confederation, and his European correspondence, especially with Franklin, was of the utmost value in accomplishing peace with Great Britain. In 1788 he had been a member of the New York Convention, which ratified for that state the Federal Constitution. He became an anti-Federalist and in 1798 unsuccessfully opposed John Jay in the New York gubernatorial campaign. In 1801, having refused an appointment as secretary of the navy, he became minister to France on President Jefferson’s appointment. He had refused this post when Washington offered it to him in 1794. He arrived in France in November 1801, and in 1803, in association with James Monroe, effected on behalf of his government the purchase from France of what was then known as “Louisiana,” the credit for this purchase being largely his (see Louisiana Purchase). In 1804 Livingston withdrew from public life, and after a year of travel in Europe returned to New York, where he promoted various improvements in agriculture. He did much to introduce the use of gypsum as a fertilizer, and published an Essay on Sheep (1809). He was long interested in the problem of steam navigation; before he went to France he received from the state of New York a monopoly of steam navigation on the waters of the state and assisted in the experiments of his brother-in-law, John Stevens; in Paris he met Robert Fulton, and with him in 1802 made successful trials on the Seine of a paddle wheel steamboat; in 1803 Livingston (jointly with Robert Fulton) received a renewal of his monopoly in New York, and the first successful steam-vessel, which operated on the Hudson in 1807, was named after Livingston’s home, Clermont (N.Y.). He died at Clermont on the 26th of February 1813.

Livingston and George Clinton were chosen to represent New York state in Statuary Hall, in the Capitol, at Washington, D.C.; the statue of Livingston is by E. D. Palmer.

See Frederick de Peyster, Biographical Sketch of Robert R. Livingston (New York, 1876); Robert K. Morton, “Robert R. Livingston: Beginnings of American Diplomacy,” in The John P. Branch Historical Papers of Randolph-Macon College, i. 299-324, and ii. 34-46; and J. B. Moore, “Robert R. Livingston and the Louisiana Purchase,” in Columbia University Quarterly, v. 6 (1904), pp. 221-229.

LIVINGSTON, WILLIAM (1723-1790), American political leader, was born at Albany, New York, probably on the 30th of November 1723. He was the son of Philip Livingston (1686-1749), and grandson of Robert Livingston (1654-1725), who was born at Ancrum, Scotland, emigrated to America about 1673, and received grants (beginning in 1686) to “Livingston Manor” (a tract of land on the Hudson, comprising the greater part of what are now Dutchess and Columbia counties). This Robert Livingston, founder of the American family, became in 1675 secretary of the important Board of Indian Commissioners; he was a member of the New York Assembly in 1711-1715 and 1716-1727 and its speaker in 1718-1725, and in 1701 made the proposal that all the English colonies in America should be grouped for administrative purposes “into three distinct governments.”

William Livingston graduated at Yale College in 1741, studied law in the city of New York, and was admitted to the bar in 1748. He served in the New York legislature (1759-1760), but his political influence was long exerted chiefly through pamphlets and newspaper articles. The Livingston family then led the Dissenters, who later became Whigs, and the De Lancey family represented the Anglican Tory interests. Through the columns of the Independent Reflector, which he established in 1752, Livingston fought the attempt of the Anglican party to bring the projected King’s College (now Columbia University) under the control of the Church of England. After the suspension of the Reflector in 1753, he edited in the New York Mercury the “Watch Tower” section (1754-1755), which became the recognized organ of the Presbyterian faction. In opposition to the efforts of the Anglicans to procure the establishment of an American episcopate, he wrote an open Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord, Bishop of Llandaff (1768), and edited and in large measure wrote the “American Whig” columns in the New York Gazette (1768-1769). In 1772 he removed to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where after 1773 he lived on his estate known as “Liberty Hall.” He represented New Jersey in the first and second Continental Congresses (1774,1775-1776), but left Philadelphia in June 1776, probably to avoid voting on the question of adopting the Declaration of Independence, which he regarded as inexpedient. He was chosen first governor of the state of New Jersey in 1776, and was regularly re-elected until his death in 1790. Loyal to American interests and devoted to General Washington, he was one of the most useful of the state executives during the War of Independence. While governor he was a frequent contributor to the New Jersey Gazette, and in this way he greatly aided the American cause during the war by his denunciation of the enemy and appeals to the patriotism of his countrymen. He was a delegate to the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, and supported the New Jersey small-state plan. In 1754 he joined with his brother, Philip Livingston, his brother-in-law, William Alexander (“Lord Stirling”) and others in founding what is now known as the Society Library of New York. With the help of William Smith (1728-1793), the New York historian, William Livingston prepared a digest of the laws of New York for the period 1691-1756, which was published in two volumes (1752 and 1762). He died at Elizabeth, New Jersey, on the 25th of July 1790.

See Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., Life of William Livingston (New York, 1833); and E. B. Livingston, The Livingstons of Livingston Manor (1910).

His brother, Peter van Brugh Livingston (1710-1792), was a prominent merchant and a Whig political leader in New York. He was one of the founders of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), was a member of the New York Council for some years before the War of Independence, a member and president of the First Provincial Congress of New York (1775), and a member of the Second Provincial Congress (1775-1776).

Another brother, Philip Livingston (1716-1778), was also prominent as a leader of the New York Whigs or Patriots. He was a member of the New York Assembly in 1759-1769, a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, a member of the Continental Congress from 1774 until his death and as such a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and in 1777-1778 was a member of the first state senate.

William’s son, (Henry) Brockholst Livingston (1757-1823), was an officer in the American War of Independence, and was an able lawyer and judge. From 1807 until his death he was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he wrote political pamphlets under the pen-name “Decius.”

LIVINGSTONE, DAVID (1813-1873), Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa, was born on the 19th of March 1813, at the village of Blantyre Works, in Lanarkshire, Scotland. David was the second child of his parents, Neil Livingston (for so he spelled his name, as did his son for many years) and Agnes Hunter. His parents were typical examples of all that is best among the humbler families of Scotland. At the age of ten years David left the village school for the neighbouring cotton-mill, and by strenuous efforts qualified himself at the age of twenty-three to undertake a college curriculum. He attended for two sessions the medical and the Greek classes in Anderson’s College, Glasgow, and also a theological class. In September 1838 he went up to London, and was accepted by the London Missionary Society as a candidate. He took his medical degree in the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow in November 1840. Livingstone had set his heart on China, and it was a great disappointment to him that the society finally decided to send him to Africa. To an exterior in these early years somewhat heavy and uncouth, he united a manner which, by universal testimony, was irresistibly winning, with a fund of genuine but simple humour and fun that would break out on the most unlikely occasions, and in after years enabled him to overcome difficulties and mellow refractory chiefs when all other methods failed.

Livingstone sailed from England on the 8th of December 1840. From Algoa Bay he made direct for Kuruman, Bechuanaland, the mission station, 700 m. north, established by Robert Moffat twenty years before, and there he arrived on the 31st of July 1841. The next two years Livingstone spent in travelling about the country to the northwards, in search of a suitable outpost for settlement. During these two years he became convinced that the success of the white missionary in a field like Africa was not to be reckoned by the tale of doubtful conversions he could send home each year—that the proper work for such men was that of pioneering, opening up and starting new ground, leaving native agents to work it out in detail. The whole of his subsequent career was a development of this idea. He selected the valley of Mabotsa, on one of the sources of the Limpopo river, 200 m. north-east of Kuruman, as his first station. Shortly after his settlement here he was attacked by a lion which crushed his left arm. The arm was imperfectly set, and it was a source of trouble to him at times throughout his life, and was the means of identifying his body after his death. To a house, mainly built by himself at Mabotsa, Livingstone in 1844 brought home his wife, Mary Moffat, the daughter of Moffat of Kuruman. Here he laboured till 1846, when he removed to Chonuane, 40 m. farther north, the chief place of the Bakwain or Bakwena tribe under Sechele. In 1847 he again removed to Kolobeng, about 40 m. westwards, the whole tribe following their missionary. With the aid and in the company of two English sportsmen, William C. Oswell and Mungo Murray, he was able to undertake a journey to Lake Ngami, which had never yet been seen by a white man. Crossing the Kalahari Desert, of which Livingstone gave the first detailed account, they reached the lake on the 1st of August 1849. In April next year he made an attempt to reach Sebituane, who lived 200 m. beyond the lake, this time in company with his wife and children, but again got no farther than the lake, as the children were seized with fever. A year later, April 1851, Livingstone, again accompanied by his family and Oswell, set out, this time with the intention of settling among the Makololo for a period. At last he succeeded, and reached the Chobe (Kwando), a southern tributary of the Zambezi, and in the end of June reached the Zambezi itself at the town of Sesheke. Leaving the Chobe on the 13th of August the party reached Cape Town in April 1852. Livingstone may now be said to have completed the first period of his career in Africa, the period in which the work of the missionary had the greatest prominence. Henceforth he appears more in the character of an explorer, but it must be remembered that he regarded himself to the last as a pioneer missionary, whose work was to open up the country to others.

Having seen his family off to England, Livingstone left Cape Town on the 8th of June 1852, and turning north again reached Linyante, the capital of the Makololo, on the Chobe, on the 23rd of May 1853, being cordially received by Sekeletu and his people. His first object was to seek for some healthy high land in which to plant a station. Ascending the Zambezi, he, however, found no place free from the tsetse fly, and therefore resolved to discover a route to the interior from either the west or east coast. To accompany Livingstone twenty-seven men were selected from the various tribes under Sekeletu, partly with a view to open up a trade route between their own country and the coast. The start was made from Linyante on the 11th of November 1853, and, by ascending the Liba, Lake Dilolo was reached on the 20th of February 1854. On the 4th of April the Kwango was crossed, and on the 31st of May the town of Loanda was entered, Livingstone, however, being all but dead from fever, semi-starvation and dysentery. From Loanda Livingstone sent his astronomical observations to Sir Thomas Maclear at the Cape, and an account of his journey to the Royal Geographical Society, which in May 1855 awarded him its patron’s medal. Loanda was left on the 20th of September 1854, but Livingstone lingered long about the Portuguese settlements. Making a slight détour to the north to Kabango, the party reached Lake Dilolo on the 13th of June 1855. Here Livingstone made a careful study of the hydrography of the country. He “now for the first time apprehended the true form of the river systems and the continent,” and the conclusions he came to have been essentially confirmed by subsequent observations. The return journey from Lake Dilolo was by the same route as that by which the party came, Linyante being reached in the beginning of September.

For Livingstone’s purposes the route to the west was unavailable, and he decided to follow the Zambezi to its mouth. With a numerous following, he left Linyante on the 8th of November 1855. A fortnight afterwards he discovered the famous “Victoria” falls of the Zambezi. He had already formed a true idea of the configuration of the continent as a great hollow or basin-shaped plateau, surrounded by a ring of mountains. Livingstone reached the Portuguese settlement of Tete on the 2nd of March 1856, in a very emaciated condition. Here he left his men and proceeded to Quilimane, where he arrived on the 20th of May, thus having completed in two years and six months one of the most remarkable and fruitful journeys on record. The results in geography and in natural science in all its departments were abundant and accurate; his observations necessitated a reconstruction of the map of Central Africa. When Livingstone began his work in Africa the map was virtually a blank from Kuruman to Timbuktu, and nothing but envy or ignorance can throw any doubt on the originality of his discoveries.

On the 12th of December he arrived in England, after an absence of sixteen years, and met everywhere the welcome of a hero. He told his story in his Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857) with straightforward simplicity, and with no effort after literary style, and no apparent consciousness that he had done anything extraordinary. Its publication brought what he would have considered a competency had he felt himself at liberty to settle down for life. In 1857 he severed his connexion with the London Missionary Society, with whom, however, he always remained on the best of terms, and in February 1858 he accepted the appointment of “Her Majesty’s consul at Quilimane for the eastern coast and the independent districts in the interior, and commander of an expedition for exploring eastern and central Africa.” The Zambezi expedition, of which Livingstone thus became commander, sailed from Liverpool in H.M.S. “Pearl” on the 10th of March 1858, and reached the mouth of the Zambezi on the 14th of May. The party, which included Dr (afterwards Sir) John Kirk and Livingstone’s brother Charles, ascended the river from the Kongone mouth in a steam launch, the “Ma-Robert”; reaching Tete on the 8th of September. The remainder of the year was devoted to an examination of the river above Tete, and especially the Kebrabasa rapids. Most of the year 1859 was spent in the exploration of the river Shiré and Lake Nyasa, which was discovered in September; and during a great part of the year 1860 Livingstone was engaged in fulfilling his promise to take such of the Makololo home as cared to go. In January of next year arrived Bishop C. F. Mackenzie and a party of missionaries sent out by the Universities Mission to establish a station on the upper Shiré.

After exploring the river Rovuma for 30 m. in his new vessel the “Pioneer,” Livingstone and the missionaries proceeded up the Shiré to Chibisa’s; there they found the slave trade rampant. On the 15th of July Livingstone, accompanied by several native carriers, started to show the bishop the country. Several bands of slaves whom they met were liberated, and after seeing the missionary party settled in the highlands to the south of Lake Chilwa (Shirwa) Livingstone spent from August to November in exploring Lake Nyasa. While the boat sailed up the west side of the lake to near the north end, the explorer marched along the shore. He returned more resolved than ever to do his utmost to rouse the civilized world to put down the desolating slave-trade. On the 30th of January 1862, at the Zambezi mouth, Livingstone welcomed his wife and the ladies of the mission, with whom were the sections of the “Lady Nyassa,” a river steamer which Livingstone had had built at his own expense. When the mission ladies reached the mouth of the Ruo tributary of the Shiré, they were stunned to hear of the death of the bishop and one of his companions. This was a sad blow to Livingstone, seeming to have rendered all his efforts to establish a mission futile. A still greater loss to him was that of his wife at Shupanga, on the 27th of April 1862.

The “Lady Nyassa” was taken to the Rovuma. Up this river Livingstone managed to steam 156 m., but farther progress was arrested by rocks. Returning to the Zambezi in the beginning of 1863, he found that the desolation caused by the slave trade was more horrible and widespread than ever. It was clear that the Portuguese officials were themselves at the bottom of the traffic. Kirk and Charles Livingstone being compelled to return to England on account of their health, the doctor resolved once more to visit the lake, and proceeded some distance up the west side and then north-west as far as the watershed that separates the Loangwa from the rivers that run into the lake. Meanwhile a letter was received from Earl Russell recalling the expedition by the end of the year. In the end of April 1864 Livingstone reached Zanzibar in the “Lady Nyassa,” and on the 23rd of July Livingstone arrived in England. He was naturally disappointed with the comparative failure of this expedition. Still the geographical results, though not in extent to be compared to those of his first and his final expeditions, were of high importance, as were those in various departments of science, and he had unknowingly laid the foundations of the British protectorate of Nyasaland. Details will be found in his Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries, published in 1865.

By Sir Roderick Murchison and his other staunch friends Livingstone was as warmly welcomed as ever. When Murchison proposed to him that he should go out again, although he seems to have had a desire to spend the remainder of his days at home, the prospect was too tempting to be rejected. He was appointed British consul to Central Africa without a salary, and government contributed only £500 to the expedition. The chief help came from private friends. During the latter part of the expedition government granted him £1000, but that, when he learned of it, was devoted to his great undertaking. The Geographical Society contributed £500. The two main objects of the expedition were the suppression of slavery by means of civilizing influences, and the ascertainment of the watershed in the region between Nyasa and Tanganyika. At first Livingstone thought the Nile problem had been all but solved by Speke, Baker and Burton, but the idea grew upon him that the Nile sources must be sought farther south, and his last journey became in the end a forlorn hope in search of the “fountains” of Herodotus. Leaving England in the middle of August 1865, via Bombay, Livingstone arrived at Zanzibar on the 28th of January 1866. He was landed at the mouth of the Rovuma on the 22nd of March, and started for the interior on the 4th of April. His company consisted of thirteen sepoys, ten Johanna men, nine African boys from Nasik school, Bombay, and four boys from the Shiré region, besides camels, buffaloes, mules and donkeys. This imposing outfit soon melted away to four or five boys. Rounding the south end of Lake Nyasa, Livingstone struck in a north-north-west direction for the south end of Lake Tanganyika, over country much of which had not previously been explored. The Loangwa was crossed on the 15th of December 1866. On Christmas day Livingstone lost his four goats, a loss which he felt very keenly, and the medicine chest was stolen in January 1867. Fever came upon him, and for a time was his almost constant companion; this, with other serious ailments which subsequently attacked him, and which he had no medicine to counteract, told on even his iron frame. The Chambezi was crossed on the 28th of January, and the south end of Tanganyika reached on the 31st of March. Here, much to his vexation, he got into the company of Arab slave dealers (among them being Tippoo-Tib) by whom his movements were hampered; but he succeeded in reaching Lake Mweru (Nov. 1867). After visiting Lake Mofwa and the Lualaba, which he believed was the upper part of the Nile, he, on the 18th of July 1868, discovered Lake Bangweulu. Proceeding up the west coast of Tanganyika, he reached Ujiji on the 14th of March 1869, “a ruckle of bones.” Livingstone recrossed Tanganyika in July, and passed through the country of the Manyema, but baffled partly by the natives, partly by the slave hunters, and partly by his long illnesses it was not till the 29th of March 1871 that he succeeded in reaching the Lualaba, at the town of Nyangwe, where he stayed four months, vainly trying to get a canoe to take him across. It was here that a party of Arab slavers, without warning or provocation, assembled one day when the market was busiest and commenced shooting the women, hundreds being killed or drowned in trying to escape. Livingstone had “the impression that he was in hell,” but was helpless, though his “first impulse was to pistol the murderers.” The account of this scene which he sent home roused indignation in England to such a degree as to lead to determined and to a considerable extent successful efforts to get the sultan of Zanzibar to suppress the trade. In sickened disgust the weary traveller made his way back to Ujiji, which he reached on the 13th of October. Five days after his arrival in Ujiji he was inspired with new life by the timely arrival of H. M. Stanley, the richly laden almoner of Mr Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald. With Stanley Livingstone explored the north end of Tanganyika, and proved conclusively that the Rusizi runs into and not out of it. In the end of the year the two started eastward for Unyamwezi, where Stanley provided Livingstone with an ample supply of goods, and bade him farewell. Stanley left on the 15th of March 1872, and after Livingstone had waited wearily in Unyamwezi for five months, a troop of fifty-seven men and boys arrived, good and faithful fellows on the whole, selected by Stanley himself. Thus attended, he started on the 15th of August for Lake Bangweulu, proceeding along the east side of Tanganyika. His old enemy dysentery soon found him out. In January 1873 the party got among the endless spongy jungle on the east of Lake Bangweulu, Livingstone’s object being to go round by the south and away west to find the “fountains.” The doctor got worse and worse, and in the middle of April he had unwillingly to submit to be carried in a rude litter. On the 29th of April Chitambo’s village on the Lulimala, in Ilala, on the south shore of the lake, was reached. The last entry in the journal is on the 27th of April: “Knocked up quite, and remain—recover—sent to buy milch goats. We are on the banks of the Molilamo.” On the 30th of April he with difficulty wound up his watch, and early on the morning of the 1st of May the boys found “the great master,” as they called him, kneeling by the side of his bed, dead. His faithful men preserved the body in the sun as well as they could, and, wrapping it carefully up, carried it and all his papers, instruments and other things across Africa to Zanzibar. It was borne to England with all honour, and on the 18th of April 1874, was deposited in Westminster Abbey. His faithfully kept journals during these seven years’ wanderings were published under the title of the Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa, in 1874, edited by his old friend the Rev. Horace Waller. In Old Chitambo’s the time and place of his death are commemorated by a permanent monument, which replaced in 1902 the tree on which his native followers had recorded the event.

In spite of his sufferings and the many compulsory delays, Livingstone’s discoveries during these last years were both extensive and of prime importance as leading to a solution of African hydrography. No single African explorer has ever done so much for African geography as Livingstone during his thirty years’ work. His travels covered one-third of the continent, extending from the Cape to near the equator, and from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Livingstone was no hurried traveller; he did his journeying leisurely, carefully observing and recording all that was worthy of note, with rare geographical instinct and the eye of a trained scientific observer, studying the ways of the people, eating their food, living in their huts, and sympathizing with their joys and sorrows. In all the countries through which he travelled his memory is cherished by the native tribes who, almost without exception, treated Livingstone as a superior being; his treatment of them was always tender, gentle and gentlemanly. By the Arab slavers whom he opposed he was also greatly admired, and was by them styled “the very great doctor.” “In the annals of exploration of the Dark Continent,” wrote Stanley many years after the death of the missionary explorer, “we look in vain among other nationalities for a name such as Livingstone’s. He stands pre-eminent above all; he unites in himself all the best qualities of other explorers. ... Britain ... excelled herself even when she produced the strong and perseverant Scotchman, Livingstone.” But the direct gains to geography and science are perhaps not the greatest results of Livingstone’s journeys. His example and his death acted like an inspiration, filling Africa with an army of explorers and missionaries, and raising in Europe so powerful a feeling against the slave trade that through him it may be considered as having received its deathblow. Personally Livingstone was a pure and tender-hearted man, full of humanity and sympathy, simple-minded as a child. The motto of his life was the advice he gave to some school children in Scotland—“Fear God, and work hard.”

See, besides his own narratives and W. G. Blaikie’s Life (1880), the publications of the London Missionary Society from 1840, the Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, the despatches to the Foreign Office sent home by Livingstone during his last two expeditions, and Stanley’s Autobiography (1909) and How I Found Livingstone (1872).

(J. S. K.)

LIVINGSTONE MOUNTAINS, a band of highlands in German East Africa, forming the eastern border of the rift-valley of Lake Nyasa, at the northern end of the lake. In parts these highlands, known also under their native name of Kinga, present rather the character of a plateau than of a true mountain range, but the latter name may be justified by the fact that they form a comparatively narrow belt of country, which falls considerably to the east as well as to the west. The northern end is well marked in 8° 50′ S. by an escarpment falling to the Ruaha valley, which is regarded as a north-eastern branch of the main rift-valley. Southwards the Livingstone range terminates in the deep valley of the Ruhuhu in 10° 30′ S., the first decided break in the highlands that is reached from the north, on the east coast of Nyasa. Geologically the range is formed on the side of the lake by a zone of gneiss running in a series of ridges and valleys generally parallel to its axis. The ridge nearest the lake (which in Mount Jamimbi or Chamembe, 9° 41′ S., rises to an absolute height of 7870 ft., or 6200 ft. above Nyasa) falls almost sheer to the water, the same steep slope being continued beneath the surface. Towards the south the range appears to have a width of some 20 m. only, but northwards it widens out to about 40 m., though broken here by the depression, drained towards the Ruaha, of Buanyi, on the south side of which is the highest known summit of the range (9600 ft.). North and east of Buanyi, as in the eastern half of the range generally, table-topped mountains occur, composed above of horizontally bedded quartzites, sandstones and conglomerates. The uplands are generally clothed in rich grass, forest occurring principally in the hollows, while the slopes towards the lake are covered with poor scrub. Native settlements are scattered over the whole range, and German mission stations have been established at Bulongwa and Mtandala, a little north of the north end of Nyasa. The climate is here healthy, and night frosts occur in the cold season. European crops are raised with success. At the foot of the mountains on Lake Nyasa are the ports of Wiedhafen, at the mouth of the Ruhuhu, and Old Langenburg, at the north-east corner of the lake.

(E. He.)

LIVIUS ANDRONĪCUS (c. 284-204 B.C.), the founder of Roman epic poetry and drama. His name, in which the Greek Ἀνδρόνικος is combined with the gentile name of one of the great Roman houses, while indicative of his own position as a manumitted slave, is also significant of the influences by which Roman literature was fostered, viz. the culture of men who were either Greeks or “semi-Graeci” by birth and education, and the protection and favour bestowed upon them by the more enlightened members of the Roman aristocracy. He is supposed to have been a native of Tarentum, and to have been brought, while still a boy, after the capture of that town in 272, as a slave to Rome. He lived in the household of a member of the gens Livia, probably M. Livius Salinator. He determined the course which Roman literature followed for more than a century after his time. The imitation of Greek comedy, tragedy and epic poetry, which produced great results in the hands of Naevius, Plautus, Ennius and their successors, received its first impulse from him. To judge, however, from the insignificant remains of his writings, and from the opinions of Cicero and Horace, he can have had no pretension either to original genius or to artistic accomplishment. His real claim to distinction was that he was the first great schoolmaster of the Roman people. We learn from Suetonius that, like Ennius after him, he obtained his living by teaching Greek and Latin; and it was probably as a school-book, rather than as a work of literary pretension, that his translation of the Odyssey into Latin Saturnian verse was executed. This work was still used in schools in the time of Horace (Epp. ii. 1., 69), and, although faultily executed, satisfied a real want by introducing the Romans to a knowledge of Greek. Such knowledge became essential to men in a high position as a means of intercourse with Greeks, while Greek literature stimulated the minds of leading Romans. Moreover, southern Italy and Sicily afforded many opportunities for witnessing representations of Greek comedies and tragedies. The Romans and Italians had an indigenous drama of their own, known by the name of Satura, which prepared them for the reception of the more regular Greek drama. The distinction between this Satura and the plays of Euripides or Menander was that it had no regular plot. This the Latin drama first received from Livius Andronicus; but it did so at the cost of its originality. In 240, the year after the end of the first Punic War, he produced at the ludi Romani a translation of a Greek play (it is uncertain whether a comedy or tragedy or both), and this representation marks the beginning of Roman literature (Livy vii. 2). Livius himself took part in his plays, and in order to spare his voice he introduced the custom of having the solos (cantica) sung by a boy, while he himself represented the action of the song by dumb show. In his translation he discarded the native Saturnian metre, and adopted the iambic, trochaic and cretic metres, to which Latin more easily adapted itself than either to the hexameter or to the lyrical measures of a later time. He continued to produce plays for more than thirty years after this time. The titles of his tragedies—Achilles, Aegisthus, Equus Trojanus, Hermione, Tereus—are all suggestive of subjects which were treated by the later tragic poets of Rome. In the year 207, when he must have been of a great age, he was appointed to compose a hymn of thanksgiving, sung by maidens, for the victory of the Metaurus and an intercessory hymn to the Aventine Juno. As a further tribute of national recognition the “college” or “gild” of poets and actors was granted a place of meeting in the temple of Minerva on the Aventine.

See fragments in L. Müller, Livi Andronici et Cn. Naevi Fabularum Reliquiae (1885); also J. Wordsworth, Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin (1874); Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, bk. iii. ch. 14.

LIVNO, a town of Bosnia, situated on the eastern side of the fertile plain of Livno, at the foot of Mount Krug (6581 ft.). Pop. about 5000. The Dalmatian border is 7 m. W. Livno had a trade in grain, live-stock and silver filigree-work up to 1904, when a fire swept away more than 500 of the old Turkish houses, together with the Roman citadel. Remains prove that Livno occupies the site of a Roman settlement, the name of which is uncertain. The Roman Catholic convent of Gurici is 6 m. S.

LIVONIA, or Livland (Russian, Liflandia), one of the three Baltic provinces of Russia, bounded W. by the Gulf of Riga, N. by Esthonia, E. by the governments of St Petersburg, Pskov and Vitebsk, and S. by Courland. A group of islands (1110 sq. m.) at the entrance of the Gulf of Riga, of which Oesel, Mohn, Runo and Paternoster are the largest, belong to this government. It covers an area of 18,160 sq. m., but of this the part of Lake Peipus which belongs to it occupies 1090. Its surface is diversified by several plateaus, those of Haanhof and of the Livonian Aa having an average elevation of 400 to 700 ft., while several summits reach 800 to 1000 ft. or more. The edges of the plateaus are gapped by deep valleys; the hilly tract between the Dvina and its tributary the Livonian Aa has received, from its picturesque narrow valleys, thick forests and numerous lakes, the name of “Livonian Switzerland.” The plateau of Odenpäh, drained by tributaries of the Embach river, which flows for 93 m. from Lake Virz-yärvi into Lake Peipus, occupies an area of 2830 sq. m., and has an average elevation of 500 ft. More than a thousand lakes are scattered over Livonia, of which that of Virz-yärvi, having a surface of 106 sq. m. (115 ft. above sea-level), is the largest. Marshes and peat-bogs occupy one-tenth of the province. Of the numerous rivers, the Dvina, which flows for 90 m. along its frontier, the Pernau, Salis, Livonian Aa and Embach are navigable.

The Silurian formation which covers Esthonia, appears in the northern part of Livonia, the remainder of the province consisting of Devonian strata. The whole is overlaid with glacial deposits, sometimes 400 ft. thick. The typical bottom moraine, with erratics from Finland, extends all over the country. Glacial furrows, striae and elongated troughs are met with everywhere, running mostly from north-west to south-east, as well as ảsar or eskérs, which have the same direction. Sand-dunes cover large tracts on the shores of the Baltic. No traces of marine deposits are found higher than 100 or 150 ft. above the present sea-level. The soil is not very fertile. Forests cover about two-fifths of the surface. The climate is rather severe. The mean temperatures are 43° F. at Riga (winter 23°, summer 63°) and 40° at Yuriev. The winds are very variable; the average number of rainy and snowy days is 146 at Riga (rainfall 24.1 in.). Fogs are not uncommon.

The population of Livonia, which was 621,600 in 1816, reached 1,000,876 in 1870, and 1,295,231 in 1897, of whom 43.4% were Letts, 39.9% Ehsts, 7.6% Germans, 5.4% Russians, 2% Jews and 1.2% Poles. The estimated pop. in 1906 was 1,411,000. The Livs, who formerly extended east into the government of Vitebsk, have nearly all passed away. Their native language, of Finnish origin, is rapidly disappearing, their present language being a Lettish patois. In 1846 a grammar and dictionary of it were made with difficulty from the mouths of old people. The Ehsts, who resemble the Finns of Tavastland, have maintained their ethnic features, their customs, national traditions, songs and poetry, and their harmonious language. There is a marked revival of national feeling, favoured by “Young Esthonia.” The prevailing religion is the Lutheran (79.8%); 14.3% belong to the Orthodox Greek Church; of the Russians, however, a considerable proportion are Raskolniks (Nonconformists); the Roman Catholics amount to 2.3%, and the Jews to 2%. The Russian civil code was introduced in the Baltic provinces in 1835, and the use of Russian, instead of German, in official correspondence and in law courts was ordered in 1867, but not generally brought into practice.

Nearly all the soil belongs to the nobility, the extent of the peasants’ estates being only 15% of the entire area of the government. Serfdom was abolished in 1819, but the peasants remained under the jurisdiction of their landlords. The class of peasant proprietors being restricted to a small number of wealthy peasants, the bulk have remained tenants at will; they are very miserable, and about one-fourth of them are continually wandering in search of work. From time to time the emigration takes the shape of a mass movement, which the government stops by forcible measures. The average size of the landed estates is 9500 to 11,000 acres, far above the general average for Russia. Agriculture has reached a high degree of perfection on the estates of the landlords. The principal crops are rye, oats, barley, flax and potatoes, with some wheat, hemp and buckwheat. Dairy-farming and gardening are on the increase. Fishing in Lake Peipus gives occupation to nearly 100,000 persons, and is also carried on in the Gulf of Riga and in the rivers. Woollen, cloth, cotton and flax mills, steam flour and saw mills, distilleries and breweries, machinery works, paper mills, furniture, tobacco, soap, candle and hardware works are among the chief industrial establishments. Livonia carries on a large export trade, especially through Riga and Pernau, in petroleum, wool, oilcake, flax, linseed, hemp, grain, timber and wooden wares; the Dvina is the chief channel for this trade.

Education stands on a much higher level than elsewhere in Russia, no less than 87% of the children receiving regular instruction. The higher educational institutions include Yuriev (Dorpat) University, Riga polytechnic and a high school for the clergy.

The government is divided into nine districts, the chief towns of which, with their populations in 1897, are: Riga, capital of the government (282,943); Arensburg, in the island of Oesel (4621); Yuriev or Dorpat (42,421); Fellin (7659); Pernau (12,856); Walk (10,139); Wenden (6327); Werro (4154); and Wolmar (5124). The capital of the government is Riga.

Coins of the time of Alexander the Great, found on the island of Oesel, show that the coasts of the Baltic were at an early period in commercial relation with the civilized world. The chronicle of Nestor mentions as inhabitants of the Baltic coast the Chudes, the Livs, the Narova, Letgola, Semigallians and Korś. It was probably about the 9th century that the Chudes became tributary to the Varangian-Russian states. As they reacquired their independence, Yaroslav I. undertook in 1030 a campaign against them, and founded Yuriev (Dorpat). The Germans first penetrated into Livonia in the 11th century, and in 1158 several Lübeck and Visby merchants landed at the mouth of the Dvina. In 1186 the emissaries of the archbishop of Bremen began to preach Christianity among the Ehsts and Letts, and in 1201 the bishop of Livonia established his residence at Riga. In 1202 or 1204 Innocent III. recognized the order of Brothers of the Sword, the residence of its grand master being at Wenden; and the order, spreading the Christian religion by the sword among the natives, carried on from that time a series of uninterrupted wars against the Russian republics and Lithuania, as well as a struggle against the archbishop of Riga, Riga having become a centre for trade, intermediate between the Hanseatic towns and those of Novgorod, Pskov and Polotsk. The first active interference of Lithuania in the affairs of Livonia took place immediately after the great outbreak of the peasants on Oesel; Olgierd then devastated all southern Livonia. The order, having purchased the Danish part of Esthonia, in 1347, began a war against the bishop of Riga, as well as against Lithuania, Poland and Russia. The wars against those powers were terminated respectively in 1435, 1466 and 1483. About the end of the 15th century the master of the order, Plettenberg, acquired a position of great importance, and in 1527 he was recognized as a prince of the empire by Charles V. On the other hand, the authority of the bishops of Riga was soon completely destroyed (1566). The war of the order with Ivan IV. of Russia in 1558 led to a division of Livonia, its northern part, Dorpat included, being taken by Russia, and the southern part falling under the dominion of Poland. From that time (1561) Livonia formed a subject of dispute between Poland and Russia, the latter only formally abdicating its rights to the country in 1582. In 1621 it was the theatre of a war between Poland and Sweden, and was conquered by the latter power, enjoying thus for twenty-five years a milder rule. In 1654, and again at the beginning of the 18th century, it became the theatre of war between Poland, Russia and Sweden, and was finally conquered by Russia. The official concession was confirmed by the treaty of Nystad in 1721.

See E. Seraphim, Geschichte Liv-, Esth-, und Kurlands (2nd ed., Revel, 1897-1904) and Geschichte von Livland (Gotha, 1905, &c.).

(P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)

LIVY [Titus Livius] (59 B.C.-A.D. 17), Roman historian, was born at Patavium (Padua). The ancient connexion between his native city and Rome helped to turn his attention to the study which became the work of his life. For Padua claimed, like Rome, a Trojan origin, and Livy is careful to place its founder Antenor side by side with Aeneas. A more real bond of union was found in the dangers to which both had been exposed from the assaults of the Celts (Livy x. 2), and Padua must have been drawn to Rome as the conqueror of her hereditary foes. Moreover, at the time of Livy’s birth, Padua had long been in possession of the full Roman franchise, and the historian’s family name may have been taken by one of his ancestors out of compliment to the great Livian gens at Rome, whose connexion with Cisalpine Gaul is well-established (Suet. Tib. 3), and by one of whom his family may have been enfranchized.

Livy’s easy independent life at Rome, and his aristocratic leanings in politics seem to show that he was the son of well-born and opulent parents; he was certainly well educated, being widely read in Greek literature, and a student both of rhetoric and philosophy. We have also evidence in his writings that he had prepared himself for his great work by researches into the history of his native town. His youth and early manhood, spent perhaps chiefly at Padua, were cast in stormy times, and the impression which they left upon his mind was ineffaceable. In the Civil War his personal sympathies were with Pompey and the republican party (Tac. Ann. iv. 34); but far more lasting in its effects was his experience of the licence, anarchy and confusion of these dark days. The rule of Augustus he seems to have accepted as a necessity, but he could not, like Horace and Virgil, welcome it as inaugurating a new and glorious era. He writes of it with despondency as a degenerate and declining age; and, instead of triumphant prophecies of world-wide rule, such as we find in Horace, Livy contents himself with pointing out the dangers which already threatened Rome, and exhorting his contemporaries to learn, in good time, the lessons which the past history of the state had to teach.

It was probably about the time of the battle of Actium that Livy established himself in Rome, and there he seems chiefly to have resided until his retirement to Padua shortly before his death. We have no evidence that he travelled much, though he must have paid at least one visit to Campania (xxxviii. 56), and he never, so far as we know, took any part in political life. Nor, though he enjoyed the personal friendship and patronage of Augustus (Tac. Ann. iv. 34) and stimulated the historical zeal of the future emperor Claudius (Suet. Claud. xli.), can we detect in him anything of the courtier. There is not in his history a trace of that rather gross adulation in which even Virgil does not disdain to indulge. His republican sympathies were freely expressed, and as freely pardoned by Augustus. We must imagine him devoted to the great task which he had set himself to perform, with a mind free from all disturbing cares, and in the enjoyment of all the facilities for study afforded by the Rome of Augustus, with its liberal encouragement of letters, its newly-founded libraries and its brilliant literary circles. As his work went on, the fame which he had never coveted came to him in ample measure. He is said to have declared in one volume of his history that he had already won glory enough, and the younger Pliny (Epist. ii. 3) relates that a Spaniard came all the way from Gades merely to see him, and, this accomplished, at once returned home satisfied. The accession of Tiberius (A.D. 14) materially altered for the worse the prospects of literature in Rome, and Livy retired to Padua, where he died. He had at least one son (Quintil. x. 1. 39), who also was possibly an author (Pliny, Nat. Hist. i. 5. 6), and a daughter married to a certain L. Magius, a rhetorician of no great merit (Seneca, Controv. x. 29. 2). Nothing further is known of his personal history.

Analysis of the History.—For us the interest of Livy’s life centres in the work to which the greater part of it was devoted, the history of Rome from its foundation down to the death of Drusus (9 B.C.). Its proper title was Ab urbe condita libri (also called historiae and annales). Various indications point to the period from 27 to 20 B.C., as that during which the first decade was written. In the first book (19. 3) the emperor is called Augustus, a title which he assumed early in 27 B.C., and in ix. 18 the omission of all reference to the restoration, in 20 B.C., of the standards taken at Carrhae seems to justify the inference that the passage was written before that date. In the epitome of book lix. there is a reference to a law of Augustus which was passed in 18 B.C. The books dealing with the civil wars must have been written during Augustus’s lifetime, as they were read by him (Tac. Ann. iv. 34), while there is some evidence that the last part, from book cxxi. onwards, was published after his death A.D. 14.

The work begins with the landing of Aeneas in Italy, and closes with the death of Drusus, 9 B.C., though it is possible that the author intended to continue it as far as the death of Augustus. The division into decades is certainly not due to the author himself, and is first heard of at the end of the 5th century; on the other hand, the division into libri or volumina seems to be original. That the books were grouped and possibly published in sets is rendered probable both by the prefaces which introduce new divisions of the work (vi. 1, xxi. 1, xxxi. 1) and by the description in one MS. of books cix.-cxvi. as “bellorum civilium libri octo.” Such arrangement and publication in parts were, moreover, common with ancient authors, and in the case of a lengthy work almost a necessity.

Of the 142 libri composing the history, the first 15 carry us down to the eve of the great struggle with Carthage, a period, as Livy reckons it, of 488 years (xxxi. 1); 15 more (xvi-xxx.) cover the 63 years of the two great Punic wars. With the close of book xlv. we reach the conquest of Macedonia in 167 B.C. Book lviii. described the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, 133 B.C. In book lxxxix. we have the dictatorship of Sulla (81 B.C.), in ciii. Caesar’s first consulship (59 B.C.), in cix.-cxvi. the civil wars to the death of Caesar (44 B.C.), in cxxiv. the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi, in cxxxiii. and cxxxiv. the battle of Actium and the accession of Augustus. The remaining eight books give the history of the first twenty years of Augustus’s reign.

Of this vast work only a small portion has come down to modern times; only thirty-five books are now extant (i.-x., xxi.-xlv.), and of these xli. and xliii. are incomplete. The lost books seem to have disappeared between the 7th century and the revival of letters in the 15th—a fact sufficiently accounted for by the difficulty of transmitting so voluminous a work in times when printing was unknown, for the story that Pope Gregory I. burnt all the copies of Livy he could lay his hands on rests on no good evidence. Only one important fragment has since been recovered—the portion of book xci. discovered in the Vatican in 1772, and edited by Niebuhr in 1820. Very much no doubt of the substance of the lost books has been preserved both by such writers as Plutarch and Dio Cassius, and by epitomizers like Florus and Eutropius. But our knowledge of their contents is chiefly derived from the so-called periochae or epitomes, of which we have fortunately a nearly complete series, the epitomes of books cxxxvi. and cxxxvii. being the only ones missing.1 These epitomes have been ascribed without sufficient reason to Florus (2nd century); but, though they are probably of even later date, and are disappointingly meagre, they may be taken as giving, so far as they go, a fairly authentic description of the original. They have been expanded with great ingenuity and learning by Freinsheim in Drakenborch’s edition of Livy.2 The Prodigio of Julius Obsequens and the list of consuls in the Chronica of Cassiodorus are taken directly from Livy, and to that extent reproduce the contents of the lost books. It is probable that Obsequens, Cassiodorus and the compiler of the epitomes did not use the original work but an abridgment.

Historical Standpoint.—If we are to form a correct judgment on the merits of Livy’s history, we must, above all things, bear in mind what his aim was in writing it, and this he has told us himself in the celebrated preface. He set himself the task of recording the history of the Roman people, “the first in the world,” from the beginning. The task was a great one, and the fame to be won by it uncertain, yet it would be something to have made the attempt, and the labour itself would bring a welcome relief from the contemplation of present evils; for his readers, too, this record will, he says, be full of instruction; they are invited to note especially the moral lessons taught by the story of Rome, to observe how Rome rose to greatness by the simple virtues and unselfish devotion of her citizens, and how on the decay of these qualities followed degeneracy and decline.

He does not, therefore, write, as Polybius wrote, for students of history. With Polybius the greatness of Rome is a phenomenon to be critically studied and scientifically explained; the rise of Rome forms an important chapter in universal history, and must be dealt with, not as an isolated fact, but in connexion with the general march of events in the civilized world. Still less has Livy anything in common with the naïve anxiety of Dionysius of Halicarnassus to make it clear to his fellow Greeks that the irresistible people who had mastered them was in origin, in race and in language Hellenic like themselves.

Livy writes as a Roman, to raise a monument worthy of the greatness of Rome, and to keep alive, for the guidance and the warning of Romans, the recollection alike of the virtues which had made Rome great and of the vices which had threatened her with destruction. In so writing he was in close agreement with the traditions of Roman literature, as well as with the conception of the nature and objects of history current in his time. To a large extent Roman literature grew out of pride in Rome, for, though her earliest authors took the form and often the language of their writings from Greece, it was the greatness of Rome that inspired the best of them, and it was from the annals of Rome that their themes were taken. And this is naturally true in an especial sense of the Roman historians; the long list of annalists begins at the moment when the great struggle with Carthage had for the first time brought Rome into direct connexion with the historic peoples of the ancient world, and when Romans themselves awoke to the importance of the part reserved for Rome to play in universal history. To write the annals of Rome became at once a task worthy of the best of her citizens. Though other forms of literature might be thought unbecoming to the dignity of a free-born citizen, this was never so with history. On the contrary, men of high rank and tried statesmanship were on that very account thought all the fitter to write the chronicles of the state they had served. And history in Rome never lost either its social prestige or its intimate and exclusive connexion with the fortunes of the Roman people. It was well enough for Greeks to busy themselves with the manners, institutions and deeds of the “peoples outside.” The Roman historians, from Fabius Pictor to Tacitus, cared for none of these things. This exclusive interest in Rome was doubtless encouraged by the peculiar characteristics of the history of the state. The Roman annalist had not, like the Greek, to deal with the varying fortunes and separate doings of a number of petty communities, but with the continuous life of a single city. Nor was his attention drawn from the main lines of political history by the claims of art, literature and philosophy, for just as the tie which bound Romans together was that of citizenship, not of race or culture, so the history of Rome is that of the state, of its political constitution, its wars and conquests, its military and administrative system.

Livy’s own circumstances were all such as to render these views natural to him. He began to write at a time when, after a century of disturbance, the mass of men had been contented to purchase peace at the price of liberty. The present was at least inglorious, the future doubtful, and many turned gladly to the past for consolation. This retrospective tendency was favourably regarded by the government. It was the policy of Augustus to obliterate all traces of recent revolution, and to connect the new imperial régime as closely as possible with the ancient traditions and institutions of Rome and Italy. The Aeneid of Virgil, the Fasti of Ovid, suited well with his own restoration of the ancient temples, his revival of such ancient ceremonies as the Ludi Saeculares, his efforts to check the un-Roman luxury of the day, and his jealous regard for the purity of the Roman stock. And, though we are nowhere told that Livy undertook his history at the emperor’s suggestion, it is certain that Augustus read parts of it with pleasure, and even honoured the writer with his assistance and friendship.

Livy was deeply penetrated with a sense of the greatness of Rome. From first to last its majesty and high destiny are present to his mind. Aeneas is led to Italy by the Fates that he may be the founder of Rome. Romulus after his ascension declares it to be the will of heaven that Rome should be mistress of the world; and Hannibal marches into Italy, that he may “set free the world” from Roman rule. But, if this ever-present consciousness often gives dignity and elevation to his narrative, it is also responsible for some of its defects. It leads him occasionally into exaggerated language (e.g. xxii. 33, “nullius usquam terrarum rei cura Romanos effugiebat”), or into such mis-statements as his explanation of the course taken by the Romans in renewing war with Carthage, that “it seemed more suitable to the dignity of the Roman people.” Often his jealousy for the honour of Rome makes him unfair and one-sided. In all her wars not only success but justice is with Rome. To the same general attitude is also due the omission by Livy of all that has no direct bearing on the fortunes of the Roman people. “I have resolved,” he says (xxxix. 48), “only to touch on foreign affairs so far as they are bound up with those of Rome.” As the result, we get from Livy very defective accounts even of the Italic peoples most closely connected with Rome. Of the past history and the internal condition of the more distant nations she encountered he tells us little or nothing, even when he found such details carefully given by Polybius.

Scarcely less strong than his interest in Rome is his interest in the moral lessons which her history seemed to him so well qualified to teach. This didactic view of history was a prevalent one in antiquity, and it was confirmed no doubt by those rhetorical studies which in Rome as in Greece formed the chief part of education, and which taught men to look on history as little more than a storehouse of illustrations and themes for declamation. But it suited also the practical bent of the Roman mind, with its comparative indifference to abstract speculation or purely scientific research. It is in the highest degree natural that Livy should have sought for the secret of the rise of Rome, not in any large historical causes, but in the moral qualities of the people themselves, and that he should have looked upon the contemplation of these as the best remedy for the vices of his own degenerate days. He dwells with delight on the unselfish patriotism of the old heroes of the republic. In those times children obeyed their parents, the gods were still sincerely worshipped, poverty was no disgrace, sceptical philosophies and foreign fashions in religion and in daily life were unknown. But this ethical interest is closely bound up with his Roman sympathies. His moral ideal is no abstract one, and the virtues he praises are those which in his view made up the truly Roman type of character. The prominence thus given to the moral aspects of the history tends to obscure in some degree the true relations and real importance of the events narrated, but it does so in Livy to a far less extent than in some other writers. He is much too skilful an artist either to resolve his history into a mere bundle of examples, or to overload it, as Tacitus is sometimes inclined to do, with reflections and axioms. The moral he wishes to enforce is usually either conveyed by the story itself, with the aid perhaps of a single sentence of comment, or put as a speech into the mouth of one of his characters (e.g. xxiii. 49; the devotion of Decius, viii. 10, cf. vii. 40; and the speech of Camillus, v. 54); and what little his narrative thus loses in accuracy it gains in dignity and warmth of feeling. In his portraits of the typical Romans of the old style, such as Q. Fabius Maximus, in his descriptions of the unshaken firmness and calm courage shown by the fathers of the state in the hour of trial, Livy is at his best; and he is so largely in virtue of his genuine appreciation of character as a powerful force in the affairs of men.

This enthusiasm for Rome and for Roman virtues is, moreover, saved from degenerating into gross partiality by the genuine candour of Livy’s mind and by his wide sympathies with every thing great and good. Seneca (Suasoriae vi. 22) and Quintilian (x. 1. 101) bear witness to his impartiality. Thus, Hasdrubal’s devotion and valour at the battle on the Metaurus are described in terms of eloquent praise; and even in Hannibal, the lifelong enemy of Rome, he frankly recognizes the great qualities that balanced his faults. Nor, though his sympathies are unmistakably with the aristocratic party, does he scruple to censure the pride, cruelty and selfishness which too often marked their conduct (ii. 54; the speech of Canuleius, iv. 3; of Sextius and Licinius, vi. 36); and, though he feels acutely that the times are out of joint, and has apparently little hope of the future, he still believes in justice and goodness. He is often righteously indignant, but never satirical, and such a pessimism as that of Tacitus and Juvenal is wholly foreign to his nature.

Though he studied and even wrote on philosophy (Seneca, Ep. 100. 9), Livy is by no means a philosophic historian. We learn indeed from incidental notices that he inclined to Stoicism and disliked the Epicurean system. With the scepticism that despised the gods (x. 40) and denied that they meddled with the affairs of men (xliii. 13) he has no sympathy. The immortal gods are everywhere the same; they govern the world (xxxvii. 45) and reveal the future to men by signs and wonders (xliii. 13), but only a debased superstition will look for their hand in every petty incident, or abandon itself to an indiscriminate belief in the portents and miracles in which popular credulity delights. The ancient state religion of Rome, with its temples, priests and auguries, he not only reverences as an integral part of the Roman constitution, with a sympathy which grows as he studies it, but, like Varro, and in true Stoic fashion, he regards it as a valuable instrument of government (i. 19. 21), indispensable in a well-ordered community. As distinctly Stoical is the doctrine of a fate to which even the gods must yield (ix. 4), which disposes the plans of men (i. 42) and blinds their minds (v. 37), yet leaves their wills free (xxxvii. 45).

But we find no trace in Livy of any systematic application of philosophy to the facts of history. He is as innocent of the leading ideas which shaped the work of Polybius as he is of the cheap theorizing which wearies us in the pages of Dionysius. The events are graphically, if not always accurately, described; but of the larger causes at work in producing them, of their subtle action and reaction upon each other, and of the general conditions amid which the history worked itself out, he takes no thought at all. Nor has Livy much acquaintance with either the theory or the practice of politics. He exhibits, it is true, political sympathies and antipathies. He is on the whole for the nobles and against the commons; and, though the unfavourable colours in which he paints the leaders of the latter are possibly reflected from the authorities he followed, it is evident that he despised and disliked the multitude. Of monarchy he speaks with a genuine Roman hatred, and we know that in the last days of the republic his sympathies were wholly with those who strove in vain to save it. He betrays, too, an insight into the evils which were destined finally to undermine the imposing fabric of Roman empire. The decline of the free population, the spread of slavery (vi. 12, vii. 25), the universal craving for wealth (iii. 26), the employment of foreign mercenaries (xxv. 33), the corruption of Roman race and Roman manners by mixture with aliens (xxxix. 3), are all noticed in tones of solemn warning. But his retired life had given him no wide experience of men and things. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that he fails altogether to present a clear and coherent picture of the history and working of the Roman constitution, or that his handling of intricate questions of policy is weak and inadequate.

Sources.—If from the general aim and spirit of Livy’s history we pass to consider his method of workmanship, we are struck at once by the very different measure of success attained by him in the two great departments of an historian’s labour. He is a consummate artist, but an unskilled and often careless investigator and critic. The materials which lay ready to his hand may be roughly classed under two heads: (1) the original evidence of monuments, inscriptions, &c., (2) the written tradition as found in the works of previous authors. It is on the second of these two kinds of evidence that Livy almost exclusively relies. Yet that even for the very early times a certain amount of original evidence still existed is proved by the use which was made of it by Dionysius, who mentions at least three important inscriptions, two dating from the regal period and one from the first years of the republic (iv. 26, iv. 58, x. 32). We know from Livy himself (iv. 20) that the breastplate dedicated by Aulus Cornelius Cossus (428 B.C.) was to be seen in his own day in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, nor is there any reason to suppose that the libri lintei, quoted by Licinius Macer, were not extant when Livy wrote. For more recent times the materials were plentiful, and a rich field of research lay open to the student in the long series of laws, decrees of the senate, and official registers, reaching back, as it probably did, at least to the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. Nevertheless it seems certain that Livy never realized the duty of consulting these relics of the past, even in order to verify the statements of his authorities. Many of them he never mentions; the others (e.g. the libri lintei) he evidently describes at second hand. Antiquarian studies were popular in his day, but the instances are very few in which he has turned their results to account. There is no sign that he had ever read Varro; and he never alludes to Verrius Flaccus. The haziness and inaccuracy of his topography make it clear that he did not attempt to familiarize himself with the actual scenes of events even that took place in Italy. Not only does he confuse Thermon, the capital of Aetolia, with Thermopylae (xxxiii. 35), but his accounts of the Roman campaigns against Volsci, Aequi and Samnites swarm with confusions and difficulties; nor are even his descriptions of Hannibal’s movements free from an occasional vagueness which betrays the absence of an exact knowledge of localities.

The consequence of this indifference to original research and patient verification might have been less serious had the written tradition on which Livy preferred to rely been more trustworthy. But neither the materials out of which it was composed, nor the manner in which it had been put together, were such as to make it a safe guide. It was indeed represented by a long line of respectable names. The majority of the Roman annalists were men of high birth and education, with a long experience of affairs, and their defects did not arise from seclusion of life or ignorance of letters. It is rather in the conditions under which they wrote and in the rules and traditions of their craft that the causes of their shortcomings must be sought.

It was not until the 6th century from the foundation of the city that historical writing began in Rome. The father of Roman history, Q. Fabius Pictor, a patrician and a senator, can scarcely have published his annals before the close of the The Annalists. Second Punic War, but these annals covered the whole period from the arrival of Evander in Italy down at least to the battle by Lake Trasimene (217 B.C.). Out of what materials, then, did he put together his account of the earlier history? Recent criticism has succeeded in answering this question with some degree of certainty. A careful examination of the fragments of Fabius (see H. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Relliquiae, Leipzig, 1870; and C. W. Nitzsch, Röm. Annalistik, Berlin, 1873) reveals in the first place a marked difference between the kingly period and that which followed the establishment of the republic. The history of the former stretches back into the regions of pure mythology. It is little more than a collection of fables told with scarcely any attempt at criticism, and with no more regard to chronological sequence than was necessary to make the tale run smoothly or to fill up such gaps as that between the flight of Aeneas from Troy and the supposed year of the foundation of Rome. But from its very commencement the history of the republic wears a different aspect. The mass of floating tradition, which had come down from early days, with its tales of border raids and forays, of valiant chiefs and deeds of patriotism, is now rudely fitted into a framework of a wholly different kind. This framework consists of short notices of important events, wars, prodigies, consecration of temples, &c., all recorded with extreme brevity, precisely dated, and couched in a somewhat archaic style. They were taken probably from one or more of the state registers, such as the annals of the pontiffs, or those kept by the aediles in the temple of Ceres. This bare official outline of the past history of his city was by Fabius filled in from the rich store of tradition that lay ready to his hand. The manner and spirit in which he effected this combination were no doubt wholly uncritical. Usually he seems to have transferred both annalistic notices and popular traditions to his pages much in the shape in which he found them. But he unquestionably gave undue prominence to the tales of the prowess and glory of the Fabii, and probably also allowed his own strong aristocratic sympathies to colour his version of the early political controversies. This fault of partiality was, according to Polybius, a conspicuous blot in Fabius’s account of his own times, which was, we are told, full and in the main accurate, and, like the earlier portions, consisted of official annalistic notices, supplemented, however, not from tradition, but from his own experience and from contemporary sources. But even here Polybius charges him with favouring Rome at the expense of Carthage, and with the undue exaltation of the great head of his house, Q. Fabius Cunctator.

Nevertheless the comparative fidelity with which Fabius seems to have reproduced his materials might have made his annals the starting point of a critical history. But unfortunately intelligent criticism was exactly what they never received. It is true that in some respects a decided advance upon Fabius was made by subsequent annalists. M. Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.) widened the scope of Roman history so as to include that of the chief Italian cities, and made the first serious attempt to settle the chronology. In his history of the Punic wars Caelius Antipater (c. 130 B.C.) added fresh material, drawn probably from the works of the Sicilian Greek Silenus, while Licinius Macer (70 B.C.) distinguished himself by the use he made of the ancient “linen books.” No doubt, too, the later annalists, at any rate from Caelius Antipater onwards, improved upon Fabius in treatment and style. But in more essential points we can discern no progress. One annalist after another quietly adopted the established tradition, as it had been left by his predecessors, without any serious alterations of its main outlines. Of independent research and critical analysis we find no trace, and the general agreement upon main facts is to be attributed simply to the regularity with which each writer copied the one before him. But, had the later annalists contented themselves with simply reproducing the earlier ones, we should at least have had the old tradition before us in a simple and tolerably genuine form. As it was, while they slavishly clung to its substance, they succeeded, as a rule, in destroying all traces of its original form and colouring. L. Calpurnius Piso, tribune in 149 B.C. and consul in 133 B.C., prided himself on reducing the old legends to the level of common sense, and importing into them valuable moral lessons for his own generation. By Caelius Antipater the methods of rhetoric were first applied to history, a disastrous precedent enough. He inserted speeches, enlivened his pages with chance tales, and aimed, as Cicero tells us, at not merely narrating facts but also at beautifying them. His successors carried still farther the practice of dressing up the rather bald chronicles of earlier writers with all the ornaments of rhetoric. The old traditions were altered, almost beyond the possibility of recognition, by exaggerations, interpolations and additions. Fresh incidents were inserted, new motives suggested and speeches composed in order to infuse the required life and freshness into these dry bones of history. At the same time the political bias of the writers, and the political ideas of their day were allowed, in some cases perhaps half unconsciously, to affect their representations of past events. Annalists of the Gracchan age imported into the early struggles of patricians and plebeians the economic controversies of their own day, and painted the first tribunes in the colours of the two Gracchi or of Saturninus. In the next generation they dexterously forced the venerable records of the early republic to pronounce in favour of the ascendancy of the senate, as established by Sulla. To political bias was added family pride, for the gratification of which the archives of the great houses, the funeral panegyrics, or the imagination of the writer himself supplied an ample store of doubtful material. Pedigrees were invented, imaginary consulships and fictitious triumphs inserted, and family traditions and family honours were formally incorporated with the history of the state.

Things were not much better even where the annalists were dealing with recent or contemporary events. Here, indeed, their materials were naturally fuller and more trustworthy, and less room was left for fanciful decoration and capricious alteration of the facts. But their methods are in the main unchanged. What they found written they copied; the gaps they supplied, where personal experience failed, by imagination. No better proof of this can be given than a comparison of the annalist’s version of history with that of Polybius. In the fourth and fifth decades of Livy the two appear side by side, and the contrast between them is striking. Polybius, for instance, gives the number of the slain at Cynoscephalae as 8000; the annalists raise it as high as 40,000 (Livy xxxiii. 10). In another case (xxxii. 6) Valerius Antias, the chief of sinners in this respect, inserts a decisive Roman victory over the Macedonians, in which 12,000 of the latter were slain and 2200 taken prisoner, an achievement recorded by no other authority.