LIVRE, le-vr', an ancient French coin, now superseded by the franc as the unit of value. The livre was equal to about 20 francs ($4). The livre was also the unit of weight until superseded by the kilogram — the equivalent of two 'ivies — in the metric system.
LIVY (Tires Lneus), Roman historian: b. Patavium (Padua), 59 a.c.; d. there, 17 ac. He spent most of his time at Rome, but kept aloof from active political life, although among his friends were numbered the most eminent men of his day. In spite of his republican leanings he was befriended by Augustus,' who counted him, with Virgil and Horace, as one of the literary ornaments of his court. His principal work is the 'History of Rome> in 142 books (Titi Livii ab Urbe Condita Libri), which comprehends a period extending from the build ing of the city to the year 9 B.c. Only 35 of these books are extant, namely, the first 10, which cover the period ending 293 B.c., and the 25 from the 21st to the 45th books, which com prehend the years between 218 and 167 }Lc., as well as a number of fragments and short ab stracts, or tables of contents of all the books excepting the 136th and the 137th. Livy under took this work, as he states in his preface, partly that he might plunge his mind into things of the past, and so forget the grievances of the present, and partly that he might spread out before his contemporaries a picture of the nation's ancestral glories. He has indeed pro duced a work which is truly national, which has always received the admiration and esteem of antiquity and is in modern times regarded as one of the most precious relics of Latin litera ture. Since his time it has been the source of all knowledge of the period it deals with. He began its composition between the years 27 B.C. and 25 a.c., and published it from time to time in a series of detached parts; the present di vision into decades is of later origin. It ap that he was engaged upon his histdry up to the time of his death, but failed to carry it on to the end he had meditated, which would have included the death of Augustus. He had a practical object in view in the accomplishment of this task, but this was less to achieve a critical and scientific exploration of the past than to produce a moving, lifelike and readable representation of the time and country in which he lived. With this end in view he has chosen
a style of his own; not the transparent splendor of Cicero. nor the condensed and enistrarnmatic pungency of Tacitus, nor the dilettante, though sometimes effective, archaism of Sallust. His narrative moves along with stately dignity; it teems with anecdote and glows with patriotic emotion. He employs a phraseology remark able for copiousness, for picturesqueness, for vivid description and occasionally for an elo quence that is burnished into poetic lustre. His materials must mainly have been derived from preceding annalists, but he weaves into his work the local traditions of a mythic age and rivals Virgil in his love for the fables of Tus cany and Latium. His account of the Punic wars he draws from Polybius. We must not, however, expect to find in his writings a clear account of the origin and development of the Roman constitution. He seems to have cared little for the study of constitutional law, and even less for that of military art. Yet his political views were very decided, and in his account of the civil war, which resulted in the downfall of the republic, he shows himself a strong partisan of the aristocratic party, so that Augustus did not hesitate to style him a Pom peian. The historic basis for the Roman his tory of Livy cannot be fully understood with out reading the works of Niebuhr. Livy's com plete works have been published by Gronov (1679); Drakenborch (182S) ; Zingerle (1883) ; an English translation appears in the Bohn Li brary, and a complete German translation by Klaiber and Teuffel appeared (Stuttgart 1854 56). Fiigner's 'Lexicon Livianum> (1889), al though incomplete, is important in Livian litera ture. Consult Niemann, (Etudes sur la Langue et Litterature de Live> (1884) ; Taine, 'Essai sur Tite Live> (1888) ; Madvig, 'Emenda tiones Livianw> (1877).