The other great endowment which Livy possessed was a gift of style such as very few historians have boasted. Asinius Pollio, indeed, is said to have found in Livy a certain provincialism (Patavinitas), but it is quite clear from Quintilian (i. 5. 56; viii. I. 3), who reports the fact, that the criticism referred merely to some peculiarity in vocabulary or, at most, of idiom, which we can no longer detect. Quintilian himself in x. 1. toI, where he sums up the characteristics of Livy ("Nor let Herodotus be in dignant if we claim an equal rank for T. Livius—in narrative marvellously pleasant and eminently lucid; in speeches eloquent beyond all telling—so appropriate are the sentiments both to the situation and to the speaker; the emotions, and particularly the softer emotions, no historian, to speak with the utmost re serve, has commended more"), hardly touches on the question of style, and the elusive phrase which he uses in x. 1. 32 "the milky richness of Livy" (Livi lactea ubertas), has produced more controversy than illumination. Macaulay, in his essay on History, supposes it to refer to his "exuberance of thought and language, always fresh, always sweet, always pure, no sooner yielded than repaired." If one remembers that the uber (= 6460
genus dicendi is the rich and ornate style, the qualities of which are "dignity and amplitude," and that the bad style which apes the ornate is the "turgid and inflated" (Aul. Gell. vi. 14), the translation of Quintilian's phrase which suggests itself is "un affected richness" or "rich simplicity." In any case, Livy's style is a happy medium between the austerity of the republican age and the preciosity of the imperial. And by virtue of those two gifts of imagination and style her loyal and devoted son has succeeded in fashioning for the vanished republic "a winding sheet"—to use the language of Simonides—"such as neither mould nor all-conquering Time shall destroy." BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Editio princeps, Rome (1469) ; Drakenborch, Leyden (1738-46) ; Weissenborn (1858-62), new ed. by Muller, Weidmann, Berlin (1875-94). There are numerous editions of single books. There is no worthy translation, but that of Philemon Holland (I600), has an interest of its own. (A. W. MA.)