ON THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OE THE ROMANS. 203 



their labours, having no, or scarcely any, previous model before 

 them. If, however, there are any historians amongst them, into 

 whose characters and feelings their own writings give us any in- 

 sight whatever, these are undoubtedly Livy and Tacitus. Every 

 page of their histories bears the most conclusive testimony to their 

 own nobility of feeling, to their love of liberty, their attachment to 

 the free institutions of their country. Yet the candid manner in 

 which they relate the errors of democracy, the oligarchy, and the 

 emperors are equally apparent. Livy, however, wrote when the 

 liberties of Rome had no longer any existence ; and Tacitus was 

 born under the imperial despotism : neither of these authors, there- 

 fore, had ever breathed the air of freedom, or known anything of 

 free institutions except merely as things that once had been. 

 Livy was a bright ornament of the Augustan age ; and was born 

 about the time of the great battle of Philippi. Tacitus was, per- 

 haps, the last of all the truly classical writers of Rome. They 

 knew nothing, therefore, except by contrast, of Roman freedom ; 

 and yet these are the men who have left us the most valuable his- 

 tories of their native land. It was because the Roman spirit so lone 

 survived the commonwealth. 



The reasons that influenced the earlier and the greater of these 

 historians are thus divided by the acute and indefatigable Niebuhr : 

 " Livy wrote," observes that author, " because nature had endowed 

 him not only with an admirable talent for narration, but also with a 

 highly brilliant gift of seizing upon what is characteristic in huma- 

 nity. He wanted only the command of, or rather, perhaps, a de- 

 light in metrical arrangement, to have had the genius of the poet." 

 And surely this it is to write under the spontaneous inspiration of 

 a natural genius : this it is to be an author of the first and most 

 elevated rank ! 



" Livy wrote," continues Niebuhr, " equally without doubt or 

 conviction, but with all the spirit of the marvellous and heroic 

 ages. In domestic politics he had prepossessions which coloured, 

 slightly, perhaps, his writings ; although party spirit was already 

 burnt out under the extinguisher applied by the imperial despotism. 

 At the same time, we can scarcely believe Livy to have been a very 

 laborious enquirer. Of distant countries he seems to have adopted 

 the first account that came to hand. And surely, in his own time, 

 amongst the ancient semi-fabulous tales which formed the materials 

 —half poetical, half historical—of his Decades, lie might, by more 



pains-uking, have furnished something more valuably because more 

 authentic." 



