Book Description

Livy's 142-volume history of Rome is one of the high points of ancient historical writing; but three-quarters of that history is lost, known only from indirect sources such as epitomes and quotations. D. S. Levene's Livy: The Fragments and Periochae provides a text, translation, and commentary on all of the surviving 'para-Livian' material from antiquity. This includes the various epitomes and 'fragments' (quotations from or references to the lost books), but it also covers citations from the surviving books and all testimonia to Livy's life, work, and readership between his death in A.D. 17 and the end of classical antiquity (approximately A.D. 650). This collection of material provides the fullest account ever developed of the reputation of Livy in antiquity and the way he was used and read by later writers. Through it, Levene explores an important but under-studied aspect of the intellectual life of the Roman world. This second volume contains the first part of the Periochae, the fullest surviving epitome of Livy's history. The text has been newly translated and reedited with a new scholarly apparatus; there is also a full literary, textual and historical commentary. The volume's extensive introduction offers the fullest ever study of the Periochae as a literary text, with new evidence for the nature of the text and the circumstances of its writing.