That his somewhat haphazard use of different authorities in volved him sometimes in inconsistencies (e.g., xxvii. 7. 1, com pared with xxvi. 51. 2), sometimes in duplications which rep resent a single event as two (e.g., xxiii. 46 compared with xxv. 18; xxvii. 18 compared with xxviii. 13), seems undeniable. As to mistaking the meaning of his authorities, one of the best known examples is xxxiii. 35 "Cornelius came to Thermopylae, where a full convention of Greece-called the Pylaic convention-takes place on fixed days." This appears to represent Polybius xviii.
31. 6 iri. Tc2n, esEpAticCov oimoboi, : that is to say, Livy appears to have confused a convention at Thermum in Aetolia with the amphictyonic convention at Thermopylae. The slip is a very natural one, and, of course, Livy may here be follow ing some other authority than Polybius.
It is further charged against Livy that he does not appear to have made any attempt to check his literary authorities by personal examination of official records and monumental evi dence. His discussion of the inscription on the linen breast plate of A. Cornelius Cossus in the temple of Iupiter Feretrius (iv. 20) and his references to the "magistratuum libri lintei" (iv. 7 and 20), which he cites on the authority of Licinius Macer, appear to imply that he had not personally inspected them. We have, indeed, some phrases which suggest such personal examin ation (e.g., ix. 18 Paginas in annalibus magistratuum fastisque percurrere licet, etc.), but there is certainly no sign of anything like a critical examination of all available records. And, lastly, there is no evidence that he made any study of the topography of the places in which the scenes which he described were enacted.
But whatever may be his defects as a scientific historian, there can be no doubt that in regard to the two chief aims which Livy proposed to himself—to preserve the memory of the great deeds of the Roman people and to set upon a pedestal, for imi tation or avoidance, conspicuous examples of good and evil—the history is a triumphant success. Nor is it altogether too bold to hazard the conjecture that if Livy had shown more meticulous accuracy in the verification of his facts, he might have—com paratively at least—failed of his principal purpose. It is, un happily, too often true of historians, that accuracy is a synonym for dullness which, for the end which Livy had in view, would have been the most fatal of all faults. "Never let us speak dis respectfully," says a modern critic, "of accuracy, of research, of stern veracity, of unbiassed judgments, or lightly confer the grave title of historian upon hasty rhetoricians who have refused to take pains; but the fact remains that, for the ordinary think ing man who has taken his degree, an ounce of mother-wit is often worth a pound of clergy, and that even the so-called his tory of an inaccurate genius may be not only more amusing, but more profitable reading than the blameless work of a duller nature."
In addition to enthusiasm for his subject—a prime, if not an indispensable, requisite in a historian,—Livy was the happy possessor of two other supreme endowments. The first is his gift of sympathetic imagination which enables him so to identify himself with the past that he becomes not so much the critical spectator of events as an interested participant. "I am not una ware," he writes (xliii. 13), "that, owing to the same indifference (negligentia) which nowadays leads the generality of men to disbelieve that the gods give warning of anything by portents, no prodigies are now reported publicly or recorded in our annals; but, on the one hand, when I am writing ancient history, my mind, I know not how, takes on an antique tinge (antiquus fit animus), and, on the other hand, a certain feeling of reverence (quaedam religio) constrains me to consider those things worthy of being recorded in my annals which the wisest men considered deserving of the attention of the State." It is this imaginative sympathy which lends vivacity and verisimilitude to his des criptions, whether his theme be a warlike scene, such as the sack of Rome by the Gauls (v. 41 seq.), the siege of Saguntum (xxi. 7. seq.), the battle of the Metaurus (xxvii. 47 seq.), or a scene of a domestic character, such as the death of Lucretia (i. 58) or the death of Philopoemen (xxxix. 5o). To the same gift are largely to be attributed the brilliance of his pen-portraits, such as those of M. Porcius Cato (xxxix. 40), Hannibal (xxi. 4), and the vivid quality of the set speeches which, following es tablished precedent, he puts into the mouth of his characters (e.g., Cato xxxiv. 2.); Q. Fabius (xxii. 39), Hannibal (xxx. 3o). And since nothing is so potent as imagination to stir the imagina tion, one may suppose that it was this quality which chiefly moved the man of Gades "who came from the ends of the earth to look upon Livy, and, having seen him, immediately departed" (Plin., Ep. ii. 3.).