Livy: AB VRBE CONDITA LIBRI

Facturusne operae pretium sim si a primordio urbis res populi Romani perscripserim nec satis scio nec, si sciam, dicere ausim, quippe qui cum veterem tum volgatam esse rem videam, dum novi semper scriptores aut in rebus certius aliquid allaturos se aut scribendi arte rudem vetustatem superaturos credunt. Utcumque erit, iuvabit tamen rerum gestarum memoriae principis terrarum populi pro virili parte et ipsum consuluisse; et si in tanta scriptorum turba mea fama in obscuro sit, nobilitate ac magnitudine eorum me qui nomini officient meo consoler. Res est praeterea et immensi operis, ut quae supra septingentesimum annum repetatur et quae ab exiguis profecta initiis eo creverit ut iam magnitudine laboret sua; et legentium plerisque haud dubito quin primae origines proximaque originibus minus praebitura voluptatis sint, festinantibus ad haec nova quibus iam pridem praevalentis populi vires se ipsae conficiunt: ego contra hoc quoque laboris praemium petam, ut me a conspectu malorum quae nostra tot per annos vidit aetas, tantisper certe dum prisca [tota] illa mente repeto, avertam, omnis expers curae quae scribentis animum, etsi non flectere a uero, sollicitum tamen efficere posset.

Whether I shall be making work worth the effort if I write out from the primordial beginnings of the City the affairs of the Roman people I neither sufficiently know, nor, if I did know, would I dare to say—since I see that the matter is both old and vulgarized, while ever-new writers believe that they will either bring something more certain in the facts, or will, by the art of writing, surpass the rough antiquity. However it will be, it will nevertheless delight that I too have looked to the memory of the deeds of the people preeminent among the lands, to the extent of my own share; and if, in so great a throng of writers, my fame should be in obscurity, I shall console myself with the nobility and magnitude of those who will hinder my name. Moreover, the task is one of immense labor—inasmuch as it is to be traced back beyond the seven-hundredth year, and that which, having set out from slight beginnings, has so grown that now it is burdened by its own magnitude; and for most readers I do not doubt that the first origins and the things nearest to the origins will afford less pleasure, as they hasten to these new events in which the forces of a people long since prevailing are consuming themselves by their very strength: I, on the contrary, will seek this too as the reward of my labor, that I turn myself away from the sight of the evils which our age has seen for so many years, at least for so long as I recall in my mind those ancient [whole] things, being wholly free from the care which, although it could not bend a writer’s mind away from the truth, could yet make it anxious.

Quae ante conditam condendamve urbem poeticis magis decora fabulis quam incorruptis rerum gestarum monumentis traduntur, ea nec adfirmare nec refellere in animo est. Datur haec venia antiquitati ut miscendo humana divinis primordia urbium augustiora faciat; et si cui populo licere oportet consecrare origines suas et ad deos referre auctores, ea belli gloria est populo Romano ut cum suum conditorisque sui parentem Martem potissimum ferat, tam et hoc gentes humanae patiantur aequo animo quam imperium patiuntur. Sed haec et his similia utcumque animaduersa aut existimata erunt haud in magno equidem ponam discrimine: ad illa mihi pro se quisque acriter intendat animum, quae vita, qui mores fuerint, per quos viros quibusque artibus domi militiaeque et partum et auctum imperium sit; labente deinde paulatim disciplina velut desidentes primo mores sequatur animo, deinde ut magis magisque lapsi sint, tum ire coeperint praecipites, donec ad haec tempora quibus nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus perventum est.

Those matters which, before the city was founded or to be founded, are handed down as more befitting poetic fables than incorrupt monuments of deeds, I have no mind either to affirm or to refute. This indulgence is granted to antiquity, to make the beginnings of cities more august by mixing human things with divine; and if it ought to be permitted to any people to consecrate its origins and refer its authors to the gods, such is the glory in war of the Roman people that, since it names Mars most especially as the father both of itself and of its founder, let the nations of men endure this with as even a mind as they endure its imperium. But these and things like them, however they shall have been observed or estimated, I for my part will not set in great distinction: to those things let each for himself keenly direct his mind—what the life was, what the mores were, through what men and by what arts both at home and in the field the imperium was gotten and augmented; then, with discipline gradually slipping, let him in mind follow the mores as they first sink, then how more and more they have lapsed, then how they began to go headlong, until it has come to these times in which we can endure neither our vices nor the remedies.

Hoc illud est praecipue in cognitione rerum salubre ac frugiferum, omnis te exempli documenta in inlustri posita monumento intueri; inde tibi tuaeque rei publicae quod imitere capias, inde foedum inceptu foedum exitu quod vites. Ceterum aut me amor negotii suscepti fallit, aut nulla unquam res publica nec maior nec sanctior nec bonis exemplis ditior fuit, nec in quam [civitatem] tam serae avaritia luxuriaque immigraverint, nec ubi tantus ac tam diu paupertati ac parsimoniae honos fuerit. Adeo quanto rerum minus, tanto minus cupiditatis erat: nuper divitiae avaritiam et abundantes voluptates desiderium per luxum atque libidinem pereundi perdendique omnia invexere.

This is especially the salutary and fruitful thing in the cognition of affairs: to behold all the lessons of example set in an illustrious monument; from there you may take for yourself and for your republic what you should imitate, from there the foul in inception, foul in outcome, which you should avoid. Moreover, either love of the business undertaken deceives me, or never was any republic either greater or more sacred or richer in good examples, nor into which [city] avarice and luxury immigrated so late, nor where so great and so long an honor was paid to poverty and parsimony. To such a degree, the less there was of things, the less there was of desire: only recently have riches brought in avarice, and pleasures in abundance the craving—through luxury and lust—to perish and to destroy everything.

Sed querellae, ne tum quidem gratae futurae cum forsitan necessariae erunt, ab initio certe tantae ordiendae rei absint: cum bonis potius ominibus votisque et precationibus deorum dearumque, si, ut poetis, nobis quoque mos esset, libentius inciperemus, ut orsis tantum operis successus prosperos darent.

But let complaints—which not even then will be welcome when perhaps they will be necessary—be absent from the outset, surely, of so great a matter to be set in motion: with good omens rather, and vows and supplications of the gods and goddesses, if, as for poets, the custom were ours as well, we would more gladly begin, so that they might grant prosperous successes to a work only just begun.