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Livy and his history

Titus Livius was born at Patavium in northern Italy, today’s Padua, probably in 64 bc, and died there probably in ad 12; his family’s communal epitaph may still be seen. He began writing his history From the Foundation of the City (Ab Urbe Condita) around 27 bc, just as Rome’s latest supreme leader, Augustus, was consolidating his primacy over the city and the empire. Starting with the origins of Rome, he concluded with the year 9 bc in Book 142, an average yearly output of nearly four sizeable books. Of these, only 35 (1–10 and 21–45) survive, though luckily a collection of epitomes or résumés of nearly all 142 is extant.

The history made Livy famous in his own lifetime: there is a story of an admirer from Gades (Cádiz) in Spain who travelled to Rome simply to see the man of renown, and then went home. Livy was on friendly terms with Augustus, but From the Foundation of the City was not a commissioned work or propaganda piece for the new regime: Livy openly wondered whether it would have been worse or better for the Roman people if Julius Caesar had never been born, and accorded enough praise to Caesar’s foe Pompey for Augustus to tease him with being a ‘Pompeian’––perhaps a punning joke based on his Patavine origin.

Books 21–30 of From the Foundation comprise our most detailed and exciting ancient account of the Second Punic War, Hannibal’s war against Rome.2 The two warring states, Rome and Carthage, were supposedly founded within a few decades of each other: Carthage in 814, Rome in 753. It will help a better understanding of Livy’s narrative to summarize the events that led to their rivalry

Doubt about Caesar: Seneca, Natural Questions 5.18. Friendship with Augustus, and the joke: Tacitus, Annals 4.34; perhaps a pun on Livy’s origin––not really a ‘Patavine’ but a ‘Pompeian’ (Pompeii being the well-known town in Campania). 2 ‘Punic’ (Latin Punicus or Poenicus) is an alternative term for ‘Carthaginian’, recalling the city’s Phoenician ancestry

Rome and Carthage: two republics

Both Rome and Carthage had traditions of eastern ancestry––Rome descended from Trojan refugees, Carthage the creation of Dido, a princess of Tyre in Phoenicia (roughly today’s Lebanon), fleeing tyranny at home. The favourable geography of both cities made them locally powerful from early times. Rome’s strong site on seven hills beside the Tiber commanded the best routes along that section of Italy’s coast and between sea and interior. Carthage, on a diamond-shaped peninsula overlooking the narrowest stretch of the Mediterranean, was not the oldest Phoenician colony but the best positioned for western commerce and communications.

By 270 the Romans dominated peninsular Italy. Roughly its central third had become actual Roman territory, including the wealthy region of Campania whose cities––notably Capua––enjoyed much local autonomy. Many strategic sites elsewhere were occupied by ‘Latin colonies’, cities founded by the Romans and holding a privileged status akin to Roman citizenship. The rest of Italy was a political quilt of states, all bound to Rome by alliance treaties, which left them (like the Latins) self-governing but inflexibly subordinate to her in foreign relations and military activities. The Romans had also developed significant international trade (as had many maritime Italian cities) from Spain to Greece and including Punic North Africa. They had also undergone a first encounter with an overseas foe: Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who brought over a professional Greek army in 280 to aid the Greek city of Tarentum against them. With Greek military science at its peak, Pyrrhus inflicted the expected defeats on Roman armies, only to find himself no better off. When the Romans finally drove him out of Italy and forced Tarentum into their alliance system, it was a portent of the future

The Carthaginians built their hegemony mainly by sea, from the profits of trade and then from dependent territories. From the midsixth century they controlled the western quarter of Sicily, sharing the island with numerous, often squabbling, Greek city-states like Syracuse, Agrigentum, and Messana. They also occupied the fertile lowlands of Sardinia and places in Corsica; and maintained close contacts with the old Phoenician colonies on the coasts of Spain, notably Gades. They tried to enforce a monopoly on the trade in tin that came from beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, and sometimes x Introduction regulated other dealings through agreements with trade-partners: the second-century Greek historian Polybius quotes the texts of two early treaties with Rome, struck in 509 and 348. Carthage also imposed control over her fertile North African hinterland, including other old Phoenician cities like Utica which were treated as privileged allies; by contrast, the surrounding North African populations were taxed and conscripted as subjects.

Third-century Carthage and Rome shared many general political features. After early monarchies, both had developed as republics. Their systems included male-only citizens’ assemblies which enacted laws and elected magistrates (see Glossary), a senate made up of leading men including ex-magistrates, and the magistrates themselves who had fixed tenures of office. In both republics, it was the senate and magistrates who between them decided most questions, with the citizens’ ratification usually a formality. Closer comparisons are difficult, for details of politics at Carthage are few, but at Rome some leading families enjoyed prominence––thanks to recurrent electoral success––for generations, like those of the Hannibalic war’s heroes Fabius, Marcellus, and Scipio. But there was room for men from less distinguished backgrounds to attain rank and influence, too: for instance Flaminius, the energetic though brash consul whose career ended in disaster at Lake Trasimene in 217 (but whose son in turn would one day be consul), and Cato, a newcomer from Tusculum near Rome, consul in 195, censor, proponent in old age of Carthage’s destruction, founder of Latin history writing, and much else.

With only two consuls a year, very few reached that ultimate height. But as the detailed notices in Livy and other authorities show, Roman voters at elections were capable both of loyalty to generations of the same families and of choosing virtual unknowns; there were enough magistracies, particularly at the lower levels, to allow this range of selection. The citizen body in turn, meeting in various formal assemblies, usually followed the Senate’s lead but occasionally enacted otherwise. The result was a vigorous and versatile political life of blended conservatism and innovation.

The Punic republic, too, had well-established political families, but they are much harder to trace. With much of the city’s wealth based on the risks of maritime trading, and with wealth (according to Aristotle, writing around 330) no less important than birth for Introduction xi political success, it was a challenge for competitive families to maintain the standing won by successful ancestors. Hamilcar Barca’s supposed descent from a brother of Queen Dido is no guide to whether his family had enjoyed recent eminence. All the same, one family or clan, the Magonids, had enjoyed not only eminence but practical dominance over the state starting around 550 with Mago–– a successful general––and lasting until 396, while another family (thanks to a leader termed Hanno ‘the Great’) managed similar leadership from about 350 to o 310.

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