Livy (Titus Livius): The Padua Outsider Who Wrote Rome's 142-Book Epic

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Titus Livius, known as Livy, was born around 59 BC in Patavium, modern Padua, a wealthy and conservative city in Cisalpine Gaul. During the civil wars after Julius Caesar's murder, the governor Asinius Pollio tried to extort money for Mark Antony; Patavium's elite hid, and their slaves refused bribes to betray them as the city stayed loyal to the Senate. The wars kept Livy from the usual study trip to Greece. In his thirties he moved to Rome with wealth of unknown origin, but he had never held office or commanded troops, made errors describing battles taken from Polybius, and skipped the fashionable declamation contests. Pollio, now a Roman power broker, mocked his writing for its Patavinitas, or provincial quality.

Around age 33 Livy began Ab Urbe Condita, a history of Rome from its founding to his own day that ran to 142 books. Written under Augustus, it supplied moral precedents for the emperor's reforms, yet Livy praised Pompey, Brutus and Cassius. Tacitus records that Augustus called him a Pompeian, but the two stayed friends, and Livy encouraged the young Claudius to write history. He died in Padua in 17 AD. In the Middle Ages the work survived mostly through summaries and many books were lost, so Renaissance humanists hunted the surviving manuscripts, and Machiavelli built his Discourses on the first ten books.

• A man from Cádiz traveled to Rome only to see Livy in person, then went home.
• Livy's preface says he did not mind if his own fame stayed in darkness.
• He had a son who became a geographer and a daughter.
• The poet Beccadelli sold a country estate to buy a single Livy manuscript.
• A Scottish Jacobite who escaped prison in 1715 was recaptured and executed after lingering to recover his copy of Livy.