204 ON THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OE THE ROMANS. 



In what spirit, then, did he compose his work ? To ray own 

 taste, the question is best answered by the writer on Koraan history 

 whom I have already quoted : — " His wish was to forget the dege- 

 neracy of his own age whilst reviving the recollection of what had 

 been glorious and excellent in former times. And the very securi- 

 ty in which the weary world was beginning to breathe again (un- 

 der the mild despotism of Augustus) could not but comfort him 

 under his melancholy when he was delineating the fearful events 

 of the civil wars. He desired to teach his countrymen to know and 

 to admire the deeds of their ancestors, which had either been for- 

 gotten or were heard of only from unconnected narratives : and he 

 bestowed upon their literature a colossal master-work, with which 

 the Greeks have nothing whatever to compare, nor can any mo- 

 dern nation place a parallel work beside it. No loss that has be- 

 fallen us, in Roman literature, is equal to that of the works of Livy 

 which have perished." 



Cicero distinctly gives the pre-eminence to the Greek historians : 

 for which, indeed, he is strongly censured by Lord Bolingbroke, 

 who, singular to say, forgets that Livy was no more than an infant, 

 and Tacitus unborn, when the great light of Roman eloquence and 

 philosophy was quenched under the second triumvirate. Had, how- 

 ever, Cicero lived, he would have had less to regret in the litera- 

 ture of his own language and nation. 



It is to Livy, therefore, we must particularly apply for informa- 

 tion as to the Roman character. But before we proceed to this 

 inquiry, it will be requisite to say a few words upon the foundation 

 of Rome and the origin of the people who afterwards arrived at so 

 high a pitch of prosperity and splendour. 



It is difficult to make anything of the contradictory fables con- 

 nected with the foundation of Rome ; but its first builders seem to 

 have been a military body composed of restless spirits from other 

 states, yet independent of all and unconnected exactly with any. 

 At the same time we must confess their origin, so far as we are able 

 to judge of it, was anything rather than reputable. 



It would seem that Romulus had arrived at a considerable degree 

 of power, as the leader of a new and motley collection of not by 

 any means respectable persons. Very early befel the rape of the 

 Sabine women, an act of violence by which he was enabled to pro- 

 cure wives for at least the more valuable and decent of his compa- 

 nions. By this, a war was excited, which, however, by the address 

 and affection of the women themselves, who had become attached to 

 their lords and masters — a circumstance, by the bve, which testifies 



