The History of Rome, Books I-V

Summary

Books I-V are the first pentad of Livy's vast history of Rome from its foundation, carrying the story from the arrival of Aeneas in Italy to the recovery of the city after the Gallic sack of about 390 BC. Livy opens with a preface that admits the earliest traditions are closer to poetry than to record, and then states his purpose: history sets before the reader examples of every kind of conduct, to be imitated or avoided, and Rome, he believes, was richer in good examples than any other state until luxury and avarice came late. Book I tells of the twins Romulus and Remus, nursed by a she-wolf, the founding of the city, the rape of the Sabine women and their intervention between their fathers and husbands, the religious institutions of Numa, the combat of the Horatii and Curiatii, the reforms of Servius Tullius, and the tyranny of Tarquin the Proud. It closes with the rape of Lucretia by Sextus Tarquin, her death by her own hand before her husband and father, and the oath of Lucius Junius Brutus to drive out the kings. Book II follows the young Republic: Brutus condemns his own sons for conspiring to restore the Tarquins, Horatius Cocles holds the bridge, Mucius Scaevola thrusts his hand into the fire before Porsena, the plebeians secede and are won back by Menenius Agrippa's fable of the belly and the limbs, and Coriolanus turns back from Rome at his mother's plea. Book III centres on Cincinnatus, summoned from his four-acre farm to be dictator and laying down the office on the sixteenth day, and on the decemvirs who wrote the Twelve Tables until Appius Claudius's attempt on Verginia provoked her father to kill her rather than see her enslaved. Book IV treats the struggle over intermarriage and the consulship, the killing of Spurius Maelius, wars with Veii and Fidenae, and repeated pestilence and famine. Book V narrates the ten-year siege and capture of Veii under Camillus, his exile, the disaster at the Allia, the Gauls' occupation of the city, the geese that woke the defenders of the Capitol, Brennus's cry over the ransom gold, and Camillus's speech persuading the Romans to rebuild rather than migrate to Veii. The library text is D. Spillan's literal prose translation of 1853 (Bohn's Classical Library), Books I-V only.

Top Lessons

• History as a gallery of examples

  Livy's preface makes history a school of conduct: the reader looks at Lucretia, Brutus, Cincinnatus and Camillus and decides what to imitate and what to avoid. He is frank that the earliest stories are legend, yet he thinks their moral force does not depend on precise fact.

• Public duty and private loss

  Brutus watches his sons executed, Verginius kills his daughter to keep her from Appius, and Horatius kills his sister for mourning an enemy. Livy records these as hard cases where the claims of the city press against family, and he shows Romans arguing over them, as in the trial of Horatius.

• Power laid down

  Cincinnatus leaves his plough, saves the army and returns home within sixteen days, while the decemvirs refuse to lay down power and fall. Livy measures leaders by their willingness to give back authority once its purpose is served.

• Concord between the orders

  Much of Books II-IV is the struggle between patricians and plebeians over debt, office and marriage. Livy gives both sides speeches and shows Rome surviving through compromises such as the tribunate and the Canuleian law, with Menenius's fable as the emblem of mutual dependence.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Livy is not a medical writer, but Books I-V record a recurring pattern of pestilence and famine in early Rome and the religious responses to them. Plague is reported under Tullus Hostilius and again and again in Books III-V; the Romans respond with vows, a temple to Apollo for the people's health (433 BC, Book IV) and, in 399 BC, the first lectisternium, a banquet set before images of the gods (Book V, ch. 13). These passages show disease understood as a public and religious event, with no physicians in view. Menenius Agrippa's fable (Book II, ch. 32) uses the physiology of its time, in which the belly perfects food into blood that is distributed through the veins, to argue for civic concord; it is an early instance of the body-politic metaphor. Lucretia's death (Book I, ch. 58) has been discussed for two millennia as a question of honour, guilt and suicide; Augustine's critique in City of God I is the classic Christian reading. The Gauls' sickness in the burnt and unburied city (Book V, ch. 48) is an early account of disease following siege. Any modern identification of these plagues is speculation.

• Book I, ch. 31

  A pestilence strikes under Tullus Hostilius, and the warlike king, himself falling ill, turns anxiously to neglected rites.

• Book I, ch. 58

  Lucretia distinguishes the violated body from the guiltless mind and kills herself before her kin.

• Book II, ch. 32

  Menenius Agrippa's fable of the limbs that starve the belly, with its account of food made into blood for the veins.

• Book III, chs. 6-8 and 32

  Pestilence kills consuls, augurs and much of the people while the Aequi and Volsci press on the city; later plague and famine come together.

• Book IV, ch. 25; Book V, ch. 13

  A temple vowed to Apollo for the health of the people, and the first lectisternium held to end an intractable pestilence.

• Book V, ch. 48

  Disease among the Gauls camped in the ruined city amid ashes and unburied dead during the siege of the Capitol.