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had detected her, or some of the imperial family, in some illicit transaction. Dryden inclines to the opinion that Ovid had chanced" to stumble upon the privacies of the empress Livia, and had seen her in a bath;" for as he remarks, the words "sine veste Dianam," hinted by the poet, while in exile, as the cause of his hard lot, applies better to Livia, who had the fame of chastity, than to either of the Julias. Certain it is that our bard had a practice of intruding himself very unseasonably on such occasions, and under circumstances that indicated an amorous motive; but it is scarcely supposable that Augustus would have punished such an offence so severely in the instance of Livia, who was then turned of sixty, and beyond the age when the Roman ladies were in the bloom of beauty. The last supposition, as concerns the mystery, has been based on the assumption that Ovid had come into possession of some delicate state secret, connected with the lineal branch of succession, and had thus fallen under the suspicion of the jealous Livia and her dark-souled Tiberius, who were then controlling the aged emperor. But this is not even within the scope of plausibility. The knowledge of a state secret, however obtained, would hardly come under the appellation of a fault, and in one of the epistles from Brutus, the hapless exile uses this language:

"Cur aliquid vidi, cur conscia lumina feci?

Cur imprudenti cognita culpa mihi ?”

But conjecture is wholly at fault, and supposition is only allowable because pleasing in its connexions with so interesting an epoch and so brilliant a reign. The veil still depends, and the solution of the mystery seems now to be closed forever within the tomb of the Cæsars. There are other poets of less note whose works are entirely lost, and about whom, in consequence, no very great interest is felt. The dramatic literature of the Augustan age has also perished without leaving us a solitary memorial. The taste of the day was not favorable to the development of the drama like that of the preceding age; it continued to be attached to mime and pantomine. The prose writings of the golden era are few in

number, and, with one exception, prefer no claim to distinguished merit. That exception is Livy.

Titus Livius, the prince of Roman historians, was born of a consular family at Patavium or Padua, in the year of Rome 695, and fifty-nine before the birth of Jesus. He received his early instruction in his native city, and refrained from visiting Rome during the whole period of civil dissensions, proscriptions, and homicides, which followed on the assassination of Julius Cæsar. When he first visited the Capital the empire had been established and Augustus ruled with undivided despotic power. His first composition, after settling in Rome, was a series of dialogues addressed to Augustus, and which secured him at once high imperial favor. He was invited to reside within the palace, and was given free access to all the archives and records of state, which might assist the prosecution of the historical researches in which he was employed. He was engaged in this great work for well nigh twenty years, occasionally retiring to Naples that he might leisurely arrange and write out the materials gathered at the capital city. Their publication raised him to the summit of literary fame, and placed him, in the estimation of his admiring countrymen, in the same rank among historians that Virgil held among their poets and Cicero among their orators.

The work of Livy comprehended the whole history of Rome, from the foundation of the city to the latter period of the reign of Augustus, and consisted of one hundred and forty-two books, of which, as is well known, only thirty-five remain. The first ten books, or the first Decade, bring down Roman history from the arrival of Eneas to within a few years of the war with Pyrrhus. The series of the second Decade is lost. The narrative recommences with the second Punic war, when Hannibal, crossing the Alps, invades Italy, and continues with little interruption to the period when the Roman senate resolved on the destruction of Carthage. This embraces one of the most splendid and spirited epochs of ancient history. The great struggles in which Hannibal and Scipio are the chief antagonists, the campaign ́in Macedon,

and the contest with Antiochus, king of Syria, form the subject. Still it is certain that we have lost the most valuable and reliable portion of Livy's history. The commencement of those ferocious discords which eventuated in the overthrow of liberty, the account of the civil wars between Marius and Sylla, and Cæsar and Pompey, as well as the subsequent events which the author witnessed, would have proved the most interesting narrative to us of this age of all the scenes. recorded by Livy. Bolingbroke and Gibbon have both declared that they would give up what we now possess of Livy on condition of recovering what we have lost.

We have already seen that the materials for writing or compiling early Roman history were exceedingly defective, and that they were not well employed by Fabius Pictor. Livy has studiously followed this historian, without the slightest. regard to criticism, and without even consulting the few original records that remained. He neglected to examine the archives of any other Italian state than his native Padua, and eschews most strangely the guidance of Polybius in his account of the second Punic war, with which that writer was both contemporaneous and familiar. Livy, in fact, cannot be considered a very accurate or scrupulous writer of history, and has been literally riddled by Niebuhr and the modern critics. He is more of a painter or novelist in his narratives of early Roman history, than a discerning and discriminative. historiographer. He is wretchedly inconsistent, wholly unreliable in his chronology, and he commits many and glaring mistakes in the military art. He made little use of inscriptions or documents conveniently within reach, and must be pronounced deficient in one of the most essential requisites of a faithful historian, a love of truth, diligence and patience in consulting authorities, and a careful and perspicacious examination of conflicting testimonies. His account, for instance, of Hannibal's passage of the Alps, has been thoroughly discredited, and is no longer regarded as authority by classic scholars. Livy borrows his account from Polybius, and asVOL. VII.-7

serts that the Carthaginians crossed by Mount Genevre though Polybius himself, after describing the countries through which they marched, and the distances traversed, neglects to say by what gap or over which eminence the perilous adventure was undertaken and achieved. But it has remained for a skillful tactician, a minute practical inquirer and ripe scholar of our own age to unfold the labyrinthal train of erroneous premises and conclusions, and to settle definitely the point of history, as also to expose the ignorance or carelessness of Livy. It is to Gen. Mellville, an accomplished officer of the British army, that the literary world is indebted for a satisfactory and irrefutable explanation of this difficult. question. He made personal observations of the countries embraced in the descriptions of Polybius, and, taking this author for his sole guide, has established that Livy's inference from the same source was wrong, and that Hannibal must have crossed over and descended from the Little St. Bernard into the plains of Italy.

But as an eloquent, fascinating writer, a brilliant narrator, and a beautiful delineator, Livy is unsurpassed. His descriptive powers are of the first order, and the reader, unconsciously seduced by the glowing pictures opened to his view, soon becomes less intent to arrive at truth than to drink in the gorgeous auxiliaries of general tame narration, with which the author allures him to the end of his work. There was doubtless a design in thus resorting to the grand and ornamental. Livy was filled with admiration of his country's greatness, and the chief object of his noble work was to erect an enduring monument to the glory of Rome; a monument, in the language of his friend, Horace, more lasting than brass, more lofty than towering pyramids. He is often surprised into error by the force of partiality, and converts into fact the mere extravagances of fancy. His exuberant patriotism too often leads him to prefer a favorite tradition to an unwelcome truth, and the wanderings of a fertile and excited imagination are too frequently evoked to garnish the frowning features of faithful history. But there is a charm and an interest attached

to these artful fictions which would be unwillingly exchanged for the grosser details of scrupulous narrative, and classic enthusiasm is chilled to annoyance when forced to receive the rude exposures of Niebuhr for the "pictured pages" of the enchanting Livy.

Livy received extraordinary funeral honors after his death, which occurred in his native city in the year of our Lord 17, and in the seventy-sixth of his age. The Romans regarded his memory with the greatest reverence while Rome existed, and the statues erected to him were collected and preserved with true filial tenderness.

This distinguished name closes the roll of the brilliant and prominent authors of the Augustan age, and with it closes also the brightest chapter in the history of Roman literature. The paternal reign of Augustus, the most mild of absolute monarchs known to history, may have seemed to contradict the idea, so generally received, that literature must wither beneath the touch of despotism; but reflection will afford the satisfactory explanation. At the time of his usurpation, all Rome was fresh with the memory of Cicero and his compeers, and Augustus himself had been trained by his illustrious uncle to literary pursuits. He therefore chose to encourage literature as a means of diverting the public attention from his meditated usurpation of despotic power, as well as from personal tastes. But, having transmitted this confirmed and now popular absolutism to his vicious successors, unrelieved by his own private preferences, and shorn of the necessity which had compelled policy in his reign, the light of learning soon began to flicker and fade, until at last it was totally eclipsed by the deadly influence of unrestrained tyranny. The gloomy Tiberius, the mad and dissolute Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the tiger-tempered Nero, and the savage Domitian, were too wedded to vice, too thoroughly brutal in nature, too hungry for blood and social devastation, too bent on insane projects and abandoned pleasures, to enjoy the chaste luxuries of literature, or to appreciate that merit which is founded on the possession of genius and virtue.

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