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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The History of Rome (Vol. 1-4)", Livy offers a comprehensive and engaging narrative chronicling the foundation and early development of Rome, from its mythical roots to the onset of the Second Punic War. Livy's literary style is characterized by its eloquence and rhetorical flourish, blending historical recounting with moral reflection. As a prominent figure in the Latin prose tradition, Livy presents his work as a source of ethical lessons, intertwining the grandeur of Rome's past with a deep analysis of its virtues and vices, illustrating a nuanced understanding of human nature and governance within the broader context of Roman society. Titus Livius, known simply as Livy, was a Roman historian born in 59 BCE, whose life spanned the tumultuous transition from the Roman Republic to the Empire. His historical vision was shaped by the socio-political upheavals of his time, including civil strife and moral decay, leading him to emphasize the importance of Rome's heroic past as a guide for contemporary challenges. Livy's rich background and education fostered a passion for history, compelling him to document Rome's legacy in a manner that resonates with both the intellect and the spirit. "The History of Rome" is a crucial read for anyone interested in the complexities of ancient civilization and its enduring impact on modern societies. Livy's profound insights and narrative mastery offer readers a vivid portrayal of Rome's ascent, making this work not merely a historical record but a timeless reflection on the human condition. For scholars, students, and lovers of history alike, Livy's masterpiece is an essential addition to the study of Western narrative tradition. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The History of Rome (Vol. 1-4)
Table of Contents
Introduction
From a cluster of huts on the Tiber to a power that tests the limits of fortune, Livy charts how a city’s memory forges its character and fate.
As a classic of world literature, The History of Rome endures because it fuses gripping narrative with a sustained meditation on public life. Livy’s pages marry legend and documented history without collapsing their differences, crafting a moral theater in which Roman institutions and character evolve before the reader. His work helped define what a national history can be: capacious, instructive, and dramatic. Subsequent historians measured themselves against his scale and cadence, while political thinkers mined his episodes for lessons about freedom, law, and leadership. The result is a book that continues to shape expectations of historical storytelling and civic reflection.
Titus Livius, known as Livy, was born in Patavium (modern Padua) and lived from 59 BCE to AD 17. Writing in Latin during the reign of Augustus, he composed Ab Urbe Condita, a monumental history of Rome in 142 books, of which only a fraction survive. The History of Rome (Vol. 1–4) presents a substantial portion of the opening movement in accessible English, introducing readers to the early centuries of the city. Livy’s aims included safeguarding the memory of earlier times and inviting judgment about conduct, yet he wrote as a literary historian, organizing events to illuminate character, causation, and choice.
These first volumes move from legendary beginnings through the transition from kingship to a republican order and into the hard schooling of a small community among rival peoples. They sketch how rites, offices, and customs coalesce, how laws adjust to crisis, and how citizens argue about the meaning of liberty. War appears as a recurring test of discipline and resolve, but so do famine, debt, and internal discord. Without dwelling on antiquarian detail, Livy frames these phases as a sequence of formative challenges, each revealing the capacities and limits of Rome’s experiment in shared rule.
Livy wrote at a moment when Romans were renegotiating memory and authority after civil wars, and his purpose is at once commemorative and admonitory. He invites readers to measure present habits against earlier examples, not to imitate mechanically but to reflect on the uses of courage, patience, moderation, and foresight. He is not an archivist compiling data; he is an artist of causation, selecting, arranging, and juxtaposing episodes so that patterns emerge. The History of Rome educates the judgment by lingering on motives, consequences, and the fragile balance between civic concord and ambition.
Methodologically, Livy works within an annalistic framework, proceeding year by year while allowing the narrative to swell around decisive moments. He drew on earlier Roman historians and official records available to him, but he also confronts the opacity of early traditions, signaling uncertainty when accounts diverge. Speeches, omens, and set-piece debates punctuate the chronology, not as stenographic records but as vehicles for exploring choices and values. This blend of inquiry and rhetoric—aware of gaps, yet intent on meaning—helps explain the work’s staying power and guides readers in weighing plausibility, motive, and moral consequence.
His style is measured yet vivid, balancing sweeping panoramas with crisp portraits of magistrates, soldiers, and citizens. He knows how to quicken the pace in crisis and pause for reflection in recovery, and he threads irony, sympathy, and restraint through his accounts. Battles unfold with attention to terrain and morale as much as to arms, while civic procedures and legal innovations receive lucid, compact treatment. Above all, Livy’s narrative voice confers dignity on collective action: assemblies, councils, and households share the stage with celebrated leaders, keeping the city itself—its habits, fears, and hopes—at the center.
Livy’s influence radiated across centuries. Roman and later historians took cues from his scope and structure, while premodern and early modern thinkers, most famously Machiavelli, treated his episodes as laboratories for political analysis. Educators made him a cornerstone of Latin instruction, shaping prose style and moral vocabulary for generations. In the Enlightenment, discussions of republican virtue and imperial expansion often ran through Livian examples, and novelists and dramatists borrowed his scenes of crisis and deliberation. Even when later scholars revised his reconstructions, they did so in conversation with his interpretive choices and his sense of Rome’s civic drama.
In English, editions labeled The History of Rome (Vol. 1–4) commonly gather the opening books of Ab Urbe Condita, offering a coherent initiation into Livy’s world. Readers encounter the foundational stories, the first institutions, and the early rhythms of yearly magistracies and wars, together forming the grammar of the larger work. These volumes foreground the problems that will recur throughout the history—how to constrain power, how to integrate new citizens, how to recover after shock—while displaying the narrative techniques that make Livy compelling. They are both an introduction to Rome and a study in historical imagination.
Themes emerge with clarity: the tension between liberty and authority; the pressure of necessity on law; the place of ritual and oath in sustaining trust; the allure and cost of glory; the interplay of fortune and prudence. Livy treats founding myths not as mere fables but as vehicles for thinking about legitimacy and identity. He shows how institutions harden through crisis and how memory disciplines ambition. The early republic becomes a workshop of citizenship, where competing interests seek accommodation without dissolving common purpose. These concerns speak across time because they arise whenever communities attempt durable self-government.
For contemporary readers, the appeal lies not only in antiquity’s grandeur but in the book’s diagnostic power. One recognizes debates about debt relief, emergency powers, military service, migration, and the claims of tradition. Leaders confronting uncertainty, communities rebuilding trust, and publics disciplining success feel eminently modern. Livy offers neither nostalgia nor cynicism; instead he illuminates trade-offs and risks that attend collective choices. The History of Rome rewards readers who want more than outcomes: it invites them to ask why societies persist, fracture, or renew themselves, and how narrative itself can strengthen or corrode civic understanding.
To enter The History of Rome (Vol. 1–4) is to meet a historian determined to show how a people learned to act together under pressure. The work’s grandeur resides in its moral clarity, its imaginative reconstruction of beginnings, and its insistence that institutions live by the character they cultivate. It endures because it blends story with judgment, spectacle with analysis, drawing readers into questions that remain urgent. As an introduction to Livy’s wider project and as a standalone meditation on civic life, these volumes offer lasting pleasure and instruction, renewing the past as a resource for thought.
Synopsis (Selection)
Livy begins with Rome’s legendary origins, tracing a line from the Trojan hero Aeneas through the kings of Alba Longa to the birth of Romulus and Remus. He recounts the founding of the city on the Palatine, the asylum for newcomers, and the early mingling with neighboring peoples. The abduction of the Sabine women leads to war and then union under a joint rulership. Institutions such as the senate, curiae, and early military organization take shape. The narrative sets the pattern of deeds and customs that, in Livy’s account, underpin Rome’s growth from a small settlement to a community with durable civic forms.
Under the monarchy, successive kings define Rome’s character. Numa Pompilius emphasizes religion and law; Tullus Hostilius revives warfare and destroys Alba Longa; Ancus Marcius expands territory and fortifies civic works. Etruscan influence appears with Tarquinius Priscus, who undertakes major public projects. Servius Tullius institutes the census, tribal divisions, and the centuries, structuring political and military service. Tarquinius Superbus rules tyrannically, culminating in the outrage against Lucretia. The revolt led by Brutus and others expels the king and establishes the consular republic. Early constitutional measures, oaths, and sacred laws aim to prevent a return to monarchy while preserving unity in external threats.
In the first years of the Republic, Rome faces restoration attempts and external pressures. Stories of Horatius defending the bridge, Mucius Scaevola before Porsenna, and Cloelia’s escape accompany the struggle against Etruscan power. Victory at Lake Regillus consolidates dominance over the Latin communities. Internally, indebted plebeians press for relief, leading to the first secession to the Sacred Mount and the creation of tribunes of the plebs. Rome campaigns against the Volsci, Aequi, and Sabines, while recurring dictatorships meet emergencies. The episode of Coriolanus illustrates tensions between military success, civic duty, and popular authority during the Republic’s formative decades.
Demand for written law produces the decemvirate and the Twelve Tables, providing a fixed legal framework. Abuses by a second board, culminating in the case of Verginia, provoke a second secession and the restoration of regular magistracies and appeal rights. Wars continue with Veii, Fidenae, and other neighbors. Social measures slowly adjust inequalities: the Canuleian law permits marriage between orders, and the office of military tribunes with consular power offers an alternative pathway to command. The narrative follows annual magistracies, elections, and levies, tracing how Rome balances internal accommodation with constant campaigning on multiple fronts in central Italy.
The conflict with Veii intensifies, ending with the city’s capture after a protracted siege and mining operations. Camillus plays a leading role in victory and in suppressing a rebellion at Fidenae. Soon after, a Gallic army defeats the Romans at the Allia and enters the city, forcing a defense on the Capitol and a negotiated withdrawal. The rebuilding of Rome proceeds amid debates over relocation, and Camillus is credited with rallying the community. Renewed warfare restores positions against Etruscans and other neighbors. Rome reorders relations with the Latins and Hernici, expands colonies, and consolidates a system of treaties and garrisons to secure its approaches.
Conflicts shift south and east with the Samnite Wars, marked by alternating setbacks and recoveries. The disaster at the Caudine Forks underscores the hazards of mountain campaigning, while later victories broaden Rome’s influence across Campania and Apulia. Operations extend against Etruscans and Umbrians, and new roads and colonies support logistics and control. The Latin War ends with the dissolution of the old league and differentiated settlements with communities. The arrival of Pyrrhus of Epirus introduces Hellenistic warfare to Italy. After costly battles and an expedition to Sicily, he withdraws. Rome’s position is affirmed, and allied arrangements bind most of Italy.
The First Punic War brings prolonged contest with Carthage for Sicily. Rome develops a fleet, adapts to naval combat, and alternates victories and losses at sea and on land, including setbacks from storms and defeats such as at Drepana. Persistence culminates in success off the Aegates Islands, and Carthage cedes Sicily; later, Sardinia and Corsica come under Roman control. In the ensuing decades, Rome fights in Cisalpine Gaul and intervenes in Illyria. Carthage expands in Spain under Hamilcar, Hasdrubal, and Hannibal. The siege of Saguntum and disputes over treaties lead to a renewed conflict between the powers.
Hannibal crosses the Alps and wins early victories at the Ticinus, the Trebia, and Lake Trasimene. Rome appoints Fabius Maximus to pursue a cautious delaying strategy. The defeat at Cannae causes widespread shock and prompts defections among some Italian allies. Nevertheless, the Republic raises new forces, maintains key strongholds, and slowly restores control. In Spain, Roman commanders, and later Publius Cornelius Scipio, erode Carthaginian power. Hasdrubal’s attempt to join his brother ends with his defeat at the Metaurus. Scipio’s successes in Spain and alliance with Numidian leaders enable an African campaign, culminating in victory that imposes terms on Carthage.
With western security improved, Rome turns east. The First Macedonian War overlaps the struggle with Hannibal and ends without a decisive settlement. The Second Macedonian War concludes with victory at Cynoscephalae and proclamations to Greek cities. Conflict with Antiochus of Syria follows, including battles at Thermopylae and Magnesia, and results in a reordering of Asia Minor. Later, Rome fights in Spain and Liguria while monitoring Greek affairs. The Third Macedonian War ends with defeat of Perseus at Pydna and the dissolution of the monarchy. By the close of the narrative, Rome dominates the Mediterranean, administering provinces and alliances established through successive wars.
Historical Context
Livy’s History of Rome Volumes 1 to 4 are set in archaic and early Republican Italy, centering on the city of Rome along the Tiber River in Latium. The narrative spans from mythic prehistory and the Trojan diaspora to the third century BCE, when Rome consolidated dominance in central and southern Italy. The setting includes the seven hills, the Forum, the Capitoline, and sacred sites anchoring civic ritual and memory. Neighboring peoples shape the horizon: Latins, Sabines, Etruscans, Volsci, Aequi, and Samnites. Although written under Augustus, the work’s internal chronology reconstructs the contours of an earlier Italy, where kinship, patronage, and warfare forged institutions and identity.
The place is as much institutional as geographic. Kingship gives way to a magistrate republic; assemblies, priesthoods, and a stratified citizen body interact within the city’s topography. Economic life depends on smallhold agriculture, war booty, and, increasingly, public land. Religion is embedded in politics, with augury, vows, and festivals structuring decision making. Roads and rivers tie Rome to Ostia and inland markets. The time frame includes the Regal Period, the Republic’s formation in 509 BCE, recurring civic crises, and expansion through treaties and conquest. Livy stages these developments against Rome’s neighbors, mapping how local conflicts and alliances in Latium and Etruria become the prelude to Italian hegemony.
The story opens with the Trojan Aeneas, whose landing in Latium, alliance with Latinus, and marriage to Lavinia establish Lavinium and sacral legitimacy. His son Ascanius founds Alba Longa, where a line of Latin kings culminates in Numitor. Amulius’s usurpation and exposure of the twins Romulus and Remus dramatize dynastic violence. Livy integrates the mythic genealogy to situate Roman identity within Mediterranean narratives of migration and piety. The book uses this legendary prelude to explain cults at Lavinium and Roman claims to destiny, while also signaling the importance of pietas, vows, and omen reading that recur as political instruments in subsequent historical episodes.
Romulus founds Rome on 21 April 753 BCE in Roman tradition, choosing the Palatine and delimiting pomerial boundaries through augury. The asylum admits refugees and foreigners, supplying manpower. The abduction of the Sabine women and the ensuing war ending with Titus Tatius’s co-rule dramatize integration through conflict. Early institutions appear: the Senate as a council of elders, the division into curiae, and military organization by tribes. Livy presents Romulus as a martial founder whose violence is harnessed to state creation, and he uses the episode to model Rome’s pattern of absorbing enemies into the citizen body, a theme that anticipates later treaties and grants of status.
The Regal Period articulates civic and religious structures. Numa Pompilius, the second king, organizes priesthoods such as the pontifices, augurs, and fetiales, and institutes rituals that secure the peace of the gods. Tullus Hostilius militarizes the state, notably in the duel of the Horatii and Curiatii and the destruction of Alba Longa. Ancus Marcius founds Ostia at the Tiber’s mouth, linking commerce to empire. Tarquinius Priscus sponsors the Circus Maximus and Cloaca Maxima; Servius Tullius reforms the census and creates the comitia centuriata. Livy’s account presents kings as builders of Rome’s sacred and civic infrastructure, foreshadowing Republican magistrates who inherit and reshape these frameworks.
Tarquinius Superbus embodies regal hubris. The rape of Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius precipitates the 509 BCE revolution: Lucius Junius Brutus and Publius Valerius Publicola expel the Tarquins and establish the consulship. Oaths against kingship, axes removed from fasces within the city, and laws safeguarding appeal reflect an anti-tyrannical settlement. Lars Porsenna of Clusium pressures Rome, testing the new regime’s stability. Livy connects the fall of the monarchy to moralized exempla, treating Lucretia’s suicide as a civic catalyst and the reorganization of authority as the origin of liberty. The narrative frames later political conflicts as fidelity or deviation from this foundational compact.
The first decades of the Republic face external war and internal unrest. Porsenna’s siege around 508 to 506 BCE produces heroic vignettes of Horatius Cocles, Mucius Scaevola, and Cloelia, illustrating virtus under duress. The foedus Cassianum in 493 BCE binds Rome and the Latin League in mutual defense. In 494 BCE, the plebs secede to the Mons Sacer, gaining tribunes of the plebs and the sacrosanct right of intercession. Livy weaves diplomacy and class conflict, showing how military necessity forces political concessions. The treaty and the tribunate exemplify Rome’s capacity to transform crisis into institutional innovation, a recurring structural motif in the books.
From 494 to 287 BCE, the Conflict of the Orders reshapes the Republic’s legal and political architecture. Debt bondage, land hunger, and exclusion from high office spur plebeian mobilization. The decemviral commission in 451 to 450 BCE produces the Twelve Tables, Rome’s first written law, codifying procedure, property norms, and family authority while limiting magisterial arbitrariness. The second board’s tyranny under Appius Claudius, culminating in the outrage against Verginia and the plebeian secession of 449 BCE, leads to the restoration of the consular regime and the Valerio Horatian laws safeguarding provocatio and tribunes. The Lex Canuleia of 445 BCE legalizes intermarriage between patricians and plebeians, eroding status barriers. After decades of alternating military tribunes with consular power, the Licinio Sextian laws of 367 BCE mandate that one consul could be plebeian and address debt and land concentration, while creating the praetorship and curule aedileship. The Lex Poetelia of 326 BCE curtails nexum, softening debt servitude. Finally, the Lex Hortensia in 287 BCE makes plebiscites binding on all citizens without Senate approval, definitively integrating plebeian legislative sovereignty. Livy presents this long contest through set pieces of agrarian agitation, prosecutions, and speeches that emphasize moderation and civic concord. He shows how social grievances linked to war service and public land distribution catalyzed structural reform, and how religious inviolability of the tribunate institutionalized dissent. By narrating the progressive opening of magistracies and lawmaking, the books frame Roman greatness as the product of negotiated inclusion, while also warning that ambition, faction, and concentrated wealth repeatedly threaten the res publica.
The dictatorship crystallizes emergency power and moral exemplum. In 458 BCE, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus is appointed dictator to rescue the trapped consul at Mount Algidus during the Aequian war; he defeats the enemy and resigns within sixteen days. Earlier and later episodes of suspected tyranny, such as Spurius Cassius’s agrarian reform proposal in 486 BCE and the grain crisis involving Spurius Maelius in 439 BCE, end in execution, policed by patrician guardians of tradition like Gaius Servilius Ahala. Livy uses these cases to probe the boundary between public service and personal power, contrasting honest emergency authority with demagogic or regal ambition.
Rome’s expansion against Etruria culminates in the siege of Veii, waged intermittently from 406 to 396 BCE. Innovations include paying soldiers stipendium. Under Marcus Furius Camillus, Rome captures the city via tunneling and vows a temple to Mater Matuta and Apollo’s dedication of Delian rituals. The opening of the Alban Lake, interpreted via prophecy, dramatizes the interplay of religion and strategy. Camillus’s triumph and later exile, followed by recall, structure narratives about leadership and envy. Livy uses Veii to mark a leap in Roman scale: the annihilation of a rival ten miles from Rome, new territory, and debates about relocating population to Veii’s site.
The Gallic sack, placed by Roman tradition in 390 BCE at the Battle of the Allia, sees Brennus’s Senones rout Roman forces on 18 July and occupy the city, sparing only the Capitoline. Legends of sacred geese warning Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, elders awaiting death, and the phrase woe to the vanquished frame trauma and resilience. Camillus purportedly intervenes to prevent ransom and defeats the Gauls, though chronology is debated. Livy crafts the sack as a moral and institutional reset, explaining subsequent fortification efforts, austere discipline, and suspicion of sudden wealth. The episode becomes a touchstone for calamity mastered through pietas and perseverance.
The Latin War from 340 to 338 BCE shatters the old confederacy. Consuls Publius Decius Mus and Titus Manlius Torquatus win decisive battles, including at Mount Vesuvius where Decius performs devotio, sacrificing himself to secure victory. Rome dissolves the Latin League, imposes diverse settlements, and integrates communities as municipia with or without suffrage, or as allied civitates. Colonies secure routes and frontiers. Livy highlights how Rome replaces parity alliances with a hierarchy managed through citizenship gradations and treaty obligations. The narratives of stern discipline and sacrificial leadership offer exempla that justify a new order based on centralized command and calibrated inclusion.
The three Samnite Wars, dated 343 to 341, 326 to 304, and 298 to 290 BCE, redefine Italy. Early clashes in Campania draw Rome into mountain warfare; the humiliation at the Caudine Forks in 321 BCE, where Roman legions pass under the yoke, exposes strategic overreach. Reforms follow: road building, new colonies, and cavalry improvements. In the Third War, the coalition at Sentinum in 295 BCE pits Rome against Samnites, Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls; Decius Mus the younger repeats his father’s devotio, and Marcus Atilius Regulus and Publius Fabius Rullianus secure victory. Livy frames these campaigns as a crucible forging discipline and federated power.
Conquest brings infrastructure and administrative change. The Via Appia and Aqua Appia, initiated by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 BCE, connect Rome to Capua and improve urban supply. Censuses enroll citizens, regulate morals, and revise the Senate’s roll; Appius’s controversial admission of sons of freedmen to tribes exemplifies social tension. Strategic Latin colonies such as Cales in 334 BCE and Fregellae in 328 BCE secure river crossings and roads. Public land allocation and veteran settlement knit new territories into Rome’s framework. Livy integrates these data to show how logistics, law, and settlement policies convert victory into durable governance and social transformation.
Religion pervades politics and war. The Sibylline Books, consulted by special priests, guide prodigy responses; vows for temples, games, and tithes shape campaigns. The dedication of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline in 509 BCE anchors state cult. Rituals such as devotio, evocation of enemy gods, and auspices before assemblies articulate Rome’s claims to divine favor. Livy catalogues prodigies like showers of stones or monstrous births, not as curiosities but as prompts for moral correction. In his narrative, piety, proper rites, and priestly authority secure the pax deorum, while negligence or impiety correlates with military and civic failure.
Livy’s early books function as political critique through exempla that praise restraint and condemn arrogance, luxury, and faction. By juxtaposing tyrannical figures like Tarquinius Superbus with citizens such as Publicola and Cincinnatus, he advocates limited, accountable power. The Conflict of the Orders exposes debt bondage, land monopolies, and exclusion from office; its resolution through lawmaking and sacral protections models legitimate reform. Episodes of engineered panic or demagogy warn against charismatic shortcuts. Writing amid Augustan moral legislation, Livy underscores traditional virtues as remedies for social fracture, using archaic Rome to reflect on contemporary debates about authority, citizenship, and the ethical uses of victory.
The narrative also critiques structural inequities and the costs of expansion. Debt crises, agrarian disputes, and the executions of reformers like Spurius Cassius and Spurius Maelius illustrate how elites can weaponize legality to preserve privilege. Yet the opening of offices and law to plebeians, the end of nexum, and calibrated grants of citizenship suggest a path toward civic concord. Livy exposes perils of emergency power and triumphal self aggrandizement, insisting on collective deliberation, religious accountability, and the rule of law. By casting early Rome as a laboratory for inclusion and discipline, the work invites readers to judge their own era’s class divides and imperial governance.
Author Biography
Titus Livius, known in English as Livy, was a Roman historian of the Augustan age whose vast history of Rome helped define how later generations imagined the city’s past. Born at Patavium (modern Padua), he wrote Ab Urbe Condita, a monumental narrative that traced Roman history from its legendary foundation to his own lifetime. Composed across the transition from Republic to Empire, the work combined storytelling, moral reflection, and political analysis. Its scope, clarity, and ambition secured Livy a central place in Latin literature. Although much of the original has been lost, the surviving books shaped classical education and continue to inform modern discussions of Roman memory and identity.
Details of Livy’s early life are sparse, but his origins in Patavium—a prosperous city in northern Italy—are well documented. He likely received the rhetorical and philosophical training expected of an elite Roman-era author, and at some point spent extended periods in Rome, where the intellectual climate of Augustus’s reign fostered historical and literary endeavors. Specific teachers, schools, and family particulars are not securely attested, and there is no reliable record of his holding public office. The provincial perspective sometimes noted in his prose, together with his evident mastery of metropolitan literary culture, suggests a writer who combined local pride with engagement in Rome’s wider political and cultural debates.
Livy’s life work, Ab Urbe Condita, comprised 142 books arranged in a broadly annalistic framework, treating events year by year while developing larger arcs. He appears to have published it in installments over several decades, revising as he proceeded. The narrative covers Rome’s early legends, the regal period, the Republic’s internal struggles, and foreign wars, ultimately reaching his contemporary age. Intended for educated readers, the history balances sources and speeches with moral exempla, seeking to instruct as well as to delight. The magnitude of the project made it a reference point for Roman identity, offering a comprehensive account that rivaled the achievements of Greek historical writing.
Livy drew on a wide range of predecessors, including earlier Roman annalists and official records, and he relied heavily on Polybius for the Second Punic War. His method interweaves documentary traditions with constructed speeches and vivid scenes, emphasizing character, fortune, and civic virtue. Stylistically, he writes in an elevated, periodic Latin often associated with rhetorical training; ancient criticism praised his expansive, flowing eloquence. Moral and didactic aims are explicit: he portrays Roman greatness as rooted in discipline, pietas, and exemplary conduct, and he sympathizes with efforts to restore public virtue. Though he sought truth as he understood it, he also crafted a compelling literary narrative that shaped readers’ judgments.
Livy enjoyed great renown in his own time. Ancient reports place him in friendly contact with Augustus and note that his sympathies in civil war narratives sometimes led contemporaries to call him a “Pompeian,” apparently in jest. Later tradition credits him with encouraging the young Claudius to take up historical study. However, there is no secure evidence that Livy pursued a political career; his reputation rests on authorship. Of the original 142 books, Books 1–10 and 21–45 survive in substantial portions, with losses and gaps, while the rest are known chiefly through summaries (the Periochae) and fragments. This uneven transmission profoundly shapes modern access to his project.
Readers across antiquity and beyond debated Livy’s balance of accuracy and artistry. His moralizing tone and preference for dramatic narrative sometimes drew criticism from those seeking stricter source analysis, yet his vision of Rome as a community forged by virtue and adversity proved influential. He was attentive to constitutional change, the tensions of republican politics, and the costs of expansion, often casting episodes as instructive examples for his own age. Ancient notices mention additional rhetorical or philosophical writings, now lost, but his legacy rests firmly on the history. As a historian, Livy offered a unifying national saga; as a writer, he set standards for Latin prose narrative.
In later years Livy appears to have returned to Patavium, where he died in the early first century AD, traditionally dated to AD 17. His text circulated widely in antiquity, though the full work did not survive. During the Middle Ages, epitomes preserved an outline of the lost books, keeping his name alive. With the revival of classical learning, humanists restored and edited the extant portions, and Livy became central to civic and republican discourse; Machiavelli’s reflections on Roman politics famously engage his history. Today Livy is read both as a principal source for early and middle Republican history and as a literary masterpiece of Augustan Rome.
The History of Rome (Vol. 1-4)
The History of Rome Vol. 1
Book I
The coming of Æneas into Italy, and his achievements there; the reign of Ascanius in Alba, and of the other Sylvian kings. Romulus and Remus born. Amulius killed. Romulus builds Rome; forms a senate; makes war upon the Sabines; presents the opima spolia to Jupiter Feretrius; divides the people into curiæ; his victories; is deified. Numa institutes the rites of religious worship; builds a temple to Janus; and having made peace with all his neighbours, closes it for the first time; enjoys a peaceful reign, and is succeeded by Tullus Hostilius. War with the Albans; combat of the Horatii and Curiatii. Alba demolished, and the Albans made citizens of Rome. War declared against the Sabines; Tullus killed by lightning. Ancus Marcius renews the religious institutions of Numa; conquers the Latins, confers on them the right of citizenship, and assigns them the Aventine hill to dwell on; adds the hill Janiculum to the city; enlarges the bounds of the empire. In his reign Lucumo comes to Rome; assumes the name of Tarquinius; and, after the death of Ancus, is raised to the throne. He increases the senate, by adding to it a hundred new senators; defeats the Latins and Sabines; augments the centuries of knights; builds a wall round the city; makes the common sewers; is slain by the sons of Ancus after a reign of thirty-eight years; and is succeeded by Servius Tullius. He institutes the census; closes the lustrum, in which eighty thousand citizens are said to have been enrolled; divides the people into classes and centuries; enlarges the Pomœrium, and adds the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline hills to the city; after a reign of forty years, is murdered by L. Tarquin, afterwards surnamed Superbus. He usurps the crown. Tarquin makes war on the Volsci, and, with the plunder taken from them, builds a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus. By a stratagem of his son, Sextus Tarquin, he reduces the city of Gabii; after a reign of twenty-five years is dethroned and banished, in consequence of the forcible violation of the person of Lucretia by his son Sextus. L. Junius Brutus and L. Tarquinius Collatinus first created consuls.
Preface
Whether in tracing the history of the Roman people, from the foundation of the city, I shall employ myself to a useful purpose,1 I am neither very certain, nor, if I were, dare I say: inasmuch as I observe, that it is both an old and hackneyed practice,2 later authors always supposing that they will either adduce something more authentic in the facts, or, that they will excel the less polished ancients in their style of writing. Be that as it may, it will, at all events, be a satisfaction to me, that I too have contributed my share3 to perpetuate the achievements of a people, the lords of the world; and if, amidst so great a number of historians,4 my reputation should remain in obscurity, I may console myself with the celebrity and lustre of those who shall stand in the way of my fame. Moreover, the subject is both of immense labour, as being one which must be traced back for more than seven hundred years, and which, having set out from small beginnings, has increased to such a degree that it is now distressed by its own magnitude. And, to most readers, I doubt not but that the first origin and the events immediately succeeding, will afford but little pleasure, while they will be hastening to these later times,5 in which the strength of this overgrown people has for a long period been working its own destruction. I, on the contrary, shall seek this, as a reward of my labour, viz. to withdraw myself from the view of the calamities, which our age has witnessed for so many years, so long as I am reviewing with my whole attention these ancient times, being free from every care6 that may distract a writer's mind, though it cannot warp it from the truth. The traditions which have come down to us of what happened before the building of the city, or before its building was contemplated, as being suitable rather to the fictions of poetry than to the genuine records of history, I have no intention either to affirm or refute. This indulgence is conceded to antiquity, that by blending things human with divine, it may make the origin of cities appear more venerable: and if any people might be allowed to consecrate their origin, and to ascribe it to the gods as its authors, such is the renown of the Roman people in war, that when they represent Mars, in particular, as their own parent and that of their founder, the nations of the world may submit to this as patiently as they submit to their sovereignty.—But in whatever way these and such like matters shall be attended to, or judged of, I shall not deem of great importance. I would have every man apply his mind seriously to consider these points, viz. what their life and what their manners were; through what men and by what measures, both in peace and in war, their empire was acquired7 and extended; then, as discipline gradually declined, let him follow in his thoughts their morals, at first as slightly giving way, anon how they sunk more and more, then began to fall headlong, until he reaches the present times, when we can neither endure our vices, nor their remedies. This it is which is particularly salutary and profitable in the study of history, that you behold instances of every variety of conduct displayed on a conspicuous monument; that from thence you may select for yourself and for your country that which you may imitate; thence note what is shameful in the undertaking, and shameful in the result, which you may avoid. But either a fond partiality for the task I have undertaken deceives me, or there never was any state either greater, or more moral, or richer in good examples, nor one into which luxury and avarice made their entrance so late, and where poverty and frugality were so much and so long honoured; so that the less wealth there was, the less desire was there. Of late, riches have introduced avarice, and excessive pleasures a longing for them, amidst luxury and a passion for ruining ourselves and destroying every thing else. But let complaints, which will not be agreeable even then, when perhaps they will be also necessary, be kept aloof at least from the first stage of commencing so great a work. We should rather, if it was usual with us (historians) as it is with poets, begin with good omens, vows and prayers to the gods and goddesses to vouchsafe good success to our efforts in so arduous an undertaking.
1
Now first of all it is sufficiently established that, Troy having been taken, the utmost severity was shown to all the other Trojans; but that towards two, Æneas and Antenor, the Greeks forbore all the rights of war, both in accordance with an ancient tie of hospitality, and because they had ever been the advisers of peace, and of the restoration of Helen—then that Antenor after various vicissitudes came into the innermost bay of the Adriatic Sea, with a body of the Heneti, who having been driven from Paphlagonia in consequence of a civil commotion, were in quest both of a settlement and a leader, their king Pylæmenes having been lost at Troy; and that the Heneti and Trojans, having expelled the Euganei, who dwelt between the sea and the Alps, took possession of the country; and the place where they first landed is called Troy; from whence also the name of Trojan is given to the canton; but the nation in general is called Veneti: that Æneas was driven from home by a similar calamity, but the fates leading him to the founding of a greater empire, he came first to Macedonia: that he sailed from thence to Sicily in quest of a settlement: that from Sicily he made for the Laurentine territory; this place also has the name of Troy. When the Trojans, having disembarked there, were driving plunder from the lands,—as being persons to whom, after their almost immeasurable wandering, nothing was left but their arms and ships,—Latinus the king, and the Aborigines, who then occupied those places, assembled in arms from the city and country to repel the violence of the new-comers. On this point the tradition is two-fold: some say, that Latinus, after being overcome in battle, made first a peace, and then an alliance with Æneas: others, that when the armies were drawn out in battle-array, before the signals were sounded, Latinus advanced to the front of the troops and invited the leader of the adventurers to a conference. That he then inquired who they were, whence (they had come), or by what casualty they had left their home, and in quest of what they had landed on the Laurentine territory: after he heard that the host were Trojans, their chief Æneas, the son of Anchises and Venus, and that, driven from their own country and their homes, which had been destroyed by fire, they were seeking a settlement and a place for building a town, struck with admiration of the noble origin of the nation and of the hero, and their spirit, alike prepared for peace or war, he confirmed the assurance of future friendship by giving his right hand: that upon this a compact was struck between the chiefs, and mutual greetings passed between the armies: that Æneas was hospitably entertained by Latinus: that Latinus, in the presence of his household gods, added a family league to the public one, by giving Æneas his daughter in marriage. This event confirms the Trojans in the hope of at length terminating their wanderings by a fixed and permanent settlement. They build a town. Æneas calls it Lavinium, after the name of his wife. In a short time, too, a son was the issue of the new marriage, to whom his parents gave the name of Ascanius.
2
The Aborigines and Trojans were soon after attacked together in war. Turnus, king of the Rutulians, to whom Lavinia had been affianced before the coming of Æneas, enraged that a stranger had been preferred to himself, made war on Æneas and Latinus together. Neither side came off from that contest with cause for rejoicing. The Rutulians were vanquished; the victorious Aborigines and Trojans lost their leader Latinus. Upon this Turnus and the Rutulians, diffident of their strength, have recourse to the flourishing state of the Etruscans, and their king Mezentius; who holding his court at Cœre, at that time an opulent town, being by no means pleased, even from the commencement, at the founding of the new city, and then considering that the Trojan power was increasing much more than was altogether consistent with the safety of the neighbouring states, without reluctance joined his forces in alliance with the Rutulians. Æneas, in order to conciliate the minds of the Aborigines to meet the terror of so serious a war, called both nations Latins, so that they might all be not only under the same laws, but also the same name. Nor after that did the Aborigines yield to the Trojans in zeal and fidelity towards their king Æneas; relying therefore on this disposition of the two nations, who were now daily coalescing more and more, although Etruria was so powerful, that it filled with the fame of its prowess not only the land, but the sea also, through the whole length of Italy, from the Alps to the Sicilian Strait, though he might have repelled the war by means of fortifications, yet he led out his forces to the field. Upon this a battle ensued successful to the Latins, the last also of the mortal acts of Æneas. He was buried, by whatever name human and divine laws require him to be called,8 on the banks of the river Numicius. They call him Jupiter Indiges.
3
Ascanius, the son of Æneas, was not yet old enough to take the government upon him; that government, however, remained secure for him till the age of maturity. In the interim, the Latin state and the kingdom of his grandfather and father was secured for the boy under the regency of his mother (such capacity was there in Lavinia). I have some doubts (for who can state as certain a matter of such antiquity) whether this was the Ascanius, or one older than he, born of Creusa before the fall of Troy, and the companion of his father in his flight from thence, the same whom, being called Iulus, the Julian family call the author of their name. This Ascanius, wheresoever and of whatever mother born, (it is at least certain that he was the son of Æneas,) Lavinium being overstocked with inhabitants, left that flourishing and, considering these times, wealthy city to his mother or step-mother, and built for himself a new one at the foot of Mount Alba, which, being extended on the ridge of a hill, was, from its situation, called Longa Alba. Between the founding of Lavinium and the transplanting this colony to Longa Alba, about thirty years intervened. Yet its power had increased to such a degree, especially after the defeat of the Etrurians, that not even upon the death of Æneas, nor after that, during the regency of Lavinia, and the first essays of the young prince's reign, did Mezentius, the Etrurians, or any other of its neighbours dare to take up arms against it. A peace had been concluded between the two nations on these terms, that the river Albula, now called Tiber, should be the common boundary between the Etrurians and Latins. After him Sylvius, the son of Ascanius, born by some accident in a wood, ascends the throne. He was the father of Æneas Sylvius, who afterwards begot Latinus Sylvius. By him several colonies, called the ancient Latins, were transplanted. From this time, all the princes, who reigned at Alba, had the surname of Sylvius. From Latinus sprung Alba; from Alba, Atys; from Atys, Capys; from Capys, Capetus; from Capetus, Tiberinus, who, being drowned in crossing the river Albula, gave it a name famous with posterity. Then Agrippa, the son of Tiberinus; after Agrippa, Romulus Silvius ascends the throne, in succession to his father. The latter, having been killed by a thunderbolt, left the kingdom to Aventinus, who being buried on that hill, which is now part of the city of Rome, gave his name to it. After him reigns Proca; he begets Numitor and Amulius. To Numitor, his eldest son, he bequeaths the ancient kingdom of the Sylvian family. But force prevailed more than the father's will or the respect due to seniority: for Amulius, having expelled his brother, seizes the kingdom; he adds crime to crime, murders his brother's male issue; and under pretence of doing his brother's daughter, Rhea Sylvia, honour, having made her a vestal virgin, by obliging her to perpetual virginity he deprives her of all hopes of issue.
4
But, in my opinion, the origin of so great a city, and the establishment of an empire next in power to that of the gods, was due to the Fates. The vestal Rhea, being deflowered by force, when she had brought forth twins, declares Mars to be the father of her illegitimate offspring, either because she believed it to be so, or because a god was a more creditable author of her offence. But neither gods nor men protect her or her children from the king's cruelty: the priestess is bound and thrown into prison; the children he commands to be thrown into the current of the river. By some interposition of providence,9 the Tiber having overflowed its banks in stagnant pools, did not admit of any access to the regular bed of the river; and the bearers supposed that the infants could be drowned in water however still; thus, as if they had effectually executed the king's orders, they expose the boys in the nearest land-flood, where now stands the ficus Ruminalis (they say that it was called Romularis). The country thereabout was then a vast wilderness. The tradition is, that when the water, subsiding, had left the floating trough, in which the children had been exposed, on dry ground, a thirsty she-wolf, coming from the neighbouring mountains, directed her course to the cries of the infants, and that she held down her dugs to them with so much gentleness, that the keeper of the king's flock found her licking the boys with her tongue. It is said his name was Faustulus; and that they were carried by him to his homestead to be nursed by his wife Laurentia. Some are of opinion that she was called Lupa among the shepherds, from her being a common prostitute, and that this gave rise to the surprising story. The children thus born and thus brought up, when arrived at the years of manhood, did not loiter away their time in tending the folds or following the flocks, but roamed and hunted in the forests. Having by this exercise improved their strength and courage, they not only encountered wild beasts, but even attacked robbers laden with plunder, and afterwards divided the spoil among the shepherds. And in company with these, the number of their young associates daily increasing, they carried on their business and their sports.
5
They say, that the festival of the lupercal, as now celebrated, was even at that time solemnized on the Palatine hill, which, from Palanteum, a city of Arcadia, was first called Palatium, and afterwards Mount Palatine. There they say that Evander, who belonged to the tribe of Arcadians,10 that for many years before had possessed that country, appointed the observance of a feast, introduced from Arcadia, in such manner, that young men ran about naked in sport and wantonness, doing honour to Pan Lycæus, whom the Romans afterwards called Inuus. That the robbers, through rage at the loss of their booty, having lain in wait for them whilst intent on this sport, as the festival was now well known, whilst Romulus vigorously defended himself, took Remus prisoner; that they delivered him up, when taken, to king Amulius, accusing him with the utmost effrontery. They principally alleged it as a charge against them, that they had made incursions upon Numitor's lands, and plundered them in a hostile manner, having assembled a band of young men for the purpose. Upon this Remus was delivered to Numitor to be punished. Now, from the very first, Faustulus had entertained hopes that the boys whom he was bringing up were of the blood royal; for he both knew that the children had been exposed by the king's orders, and that the time at which he had taken them up agreed exactly with that period: but he had been unwilling that the matter, as not being yet ripe for discovery, should be disclosed, till either a fit opportunity or necessity should arise. Necessity came first; accordingly, compelled by fear, he discovers the whole affair to Romulus. By accident also, whilst he had Remus in custody, and had heard that the brothers were twins, on comparing their age, and observing their turn of mind entirely free from servility, the recollection of his grand-children struck Numitor; and on making inquiries11 he arrived at the same conclusion, so that he was well nigh recognising Remus. Thus a plot is concerted for the king on all sides. Romulus, not accompanied by a body of young men, (for he was unequal to open force,) but having commanded the shepherds to come to the palace by different roads at a fixed time, forces his way to the king; and Remus, with another party from Numitor's house, assists his brother, and so they kill the king.
6
Numitor, at the beginning of the fray, having given out that enemies had invaded the city, and assaulted the palace, after he had drawn off the Alban youth to secure the citadel with a garrison and arms, when he saw the young men, after they had killed the king, advancing to congratulate him, immediately called an assembly of the people, and represented to them the unnatural behaviour of his brother towards him, the extraction of his grand-children, the manner of their birth and education, and how they came to be discovered; then he informed them of the king's death, and that he was killed by his orders. When the young princes, coming up with their band through the middle of the assembly, saluted their grandfather king, an approving shout, following from all the people present, ratified to him both that title and the sovereignty. Thus the government of Alba being committed to Numitor, a desire seized Romulus and Remus to build a city on the spot where they had been exposed and brought up. And there was an overflowing population of Albans and of Latins. The shepherds too had come into that design, and all these readily inspired hopes, that Alba and Lavinium would be but petty places in comparison with the city which they intended to build. But ambition of the sovereignty, the bane of their grandfather, interrupted these designs, and thence arose a shameful quarrel from a beginning sufficiently amicable. For as they were twins, and the respect due to seniority could not determine the point, they agreed to leave to the tutelary gods of the place to choose, by augury, which should give a name to the new city, which govern it when built.
7
Romulus chose the Palatine and Remus the Aventine hill as their stands to make their observations. It is said, that to Remus an omen came first, six vultures; and now, the omen having been declared, when double the number presented itself to Romulus, his own party saluted each king; the former claimed the kingdom on the ground of priority of time, the latter on account of the number of birds. Upon this, having met in an altercation, from the contest of angry feelings they turn to bloodshed; there Remus fell from a blow received in the crowd. A more common account is, that Remus, in derision of his brother, leaped over his new-built wall, and was, for that reason, slain by Romulus in a passion; who, after sharply chiding him, added words to this effect: "So shall every one fare, who shall dare to leap over my fortifications."12 Thus Romulus got the sovereignty to himself; the city, when built, was called after the name of its founder. His first work was to fortify the Palatine hill where he had been educated. To the other gods he offers sacrifices according to the Alban rite; to Hercules, according to the Grecian rite, as they had been instituted by Evander. There is a tradition, that Hercules, having killed Geryon, drove his oxen, which were extremely beautiful, into those places; and that, after swimming over the Tiber, and driving the cattle before him, being fatigued with travelling, he laid himself down on the banks of the river, in a grassy place, to refresh them with rest and rich pasture. When sleep had overpowered him, satiated with food and wine, a shepherd of the place, named Cacus, presuming on his strength, and charmed with the beauty of the oxen, wished to purloin that booty, but because, if he had driven them forward into the cave, their footsteps would have guided the search of their owner thither, he therefore drew the most beautiful of them, one by one, by the tails, backwards into a cave. Hercules, awaking at day-break, when he had surveyed his herd, and observed that some of them were missing, goes directly to the nearest cave, to see if by chance their footsteps would lead him thither. But when he observed that they were all turned from it, and directed him no other way, confounded, and not knowing what to do, he began to drive his cattle out of that unlucky place. Upon this, some of the cows, as they usually do, lowed on missing those that were left; and the lowings of those that were confined being returned from the cave, made Hercules turn that way. And when Cacus attempted to prevent him by force, as he was proceeding to the cave, being struck with a club, he was slain, vainly imploring the assistance of the shepherds. At that time Evander, who had fled from the Peloponnesus, ruled this country more by his credit and reputation than absolute sway. He was a person highly revered for his wondrous knowledge of letters,13 a discovery that was entirely new and surprising to men ignorant of every art; but more highly respected on account of the supposed divinity of his mother Carmenta, whom these nations had admired as a prophetess, before the coming of the Sibyl into Italy. This prince, alarmed by the concourse of the shepherds hastily crowding round the stranger, whom they charged with open murder, after he heard the act and the cause of the act, observing the person and mien of the hero to be larger, and his gait more majestic, than human, asked who he was? As soon as he was informed of his name, his father, and his native country, he said, "Hail! Hercules! son of Jupiter, my mother, a truth-telling interpreter of the gods, has revealed to me, that thou shalt increase the number of the celestials; and that to thee an altar shall be dedicated here, which some ages hence the most powerful people on earth shall call Ara Maxima, and honour according to thy own institution." Hercules having given him his right hand, said, "That he accepted the omen, and would fulfil the predictions of the fates, by building and consecrating an altar." There for the first time a sacrifice was offered to Hercules of a chosen heifer, taken from the herd, the Potitii and Pinarii, who were then the most distinguished families that inhabited these parts, having been invited to the service and the entertainment. It so happened that the Potitii were present in due time, and the entrails were set before them; when they were eaten up, the Pinarii came to the remainder of the feast. From this time it was ordained, that while the Pinarian family subsisted, none of them should eat of the entrails of the solemn sacrifices. The Potitii, being instructed by Evander, discharged this sacred function as priests for many ages, until the office, solemnly appropriated to their family, being delegated to public slaves, their whole race became extinct. This was the only foreign religious institution which Romulus adopted, being even then an abettor of immortality attained by merit, to which his own destinies were conducting him.
8
The duties of religion having been duly performed, and the multitude summoned to a meeting, as they could be incorporated into one people by no other means than fixed rules, he gave them a code of laws, and judging that these would be best respected by this rude class of men, if he made himself dignified by the insignia of authority, he assumed a more majestic appearance both in his other appointments, and especially by taking twelve lictors to attend him. Some think that he chose this number of officers from that of the birds, which in the augury had portended the kingdom to him. I do not object to be of the opinion of those who will have it that the apparitors (in general), and this particular class of them,14 and even their number, was taken from their neighbours the Etrurians, from whom were borrowed the curule chair, and the gown edged with purple; and that the Etrurians adopted that number, because their king being elected in common from twelve states, each state assigned him one lictor. Meanwhile the city increased by their taking in various lots of ground for buildings, whilst they built rather with a view to future numbers, than for the population15 which they then had. Then, lest the size of the city might be of no avail, in order to augment the population, according to the ancient policy of the founders of cities, who, after drawing together to them an obscure and mean multitude, used to feign that their offspring sprung out of the earth, he opened as a sanctuary, a place which is now enclosed as you go down "to the two groves."16 Hither fled from the neighbouring states, without distinction whether freemen or slaves, crowds of all sorts, desirous of change: and this was the first accession of strength to their rising greatness. When he was now not dissatisfied with his strength, he next sets about forming some means of directing that strength. He creates one hundred senators, either because that number was sufficient, or because there were only one hundred who could name their fathers. They certainly were called Fathers, through respect, and their descendants, Patricians.17
9
And now the Roman state was become so powerful, that it was a match for any of the neighbouring nations in war, but, from the paucity of women, its greatness could only last for one age of man; for they had no hope of issue at home, nor had they any intermarriages with their neighbours. Therefore, by the advice of the Fathers, Romulus sent ambassadors to the neighbouring states to solicit an alliance and the privilege of intermarriage for his new subjects. "That cities, like every thing else, rose from very humble beginnings.[1q]
