In his preface Livy blames vitia, not ambitio for the universal destruction of the civil wars, while his exempla from the monarchic period and beyond show praise or condemnation of individuals for their actions, not their political offices. Livy's preface and early exempla further demonstrate that Livy's writings, while condemnatory of his contemporary Rome, blame Rome's decline on the character of the Roman people rather than a corruption of the Republic's political forms. As a result, although Augustus' rule would ultimately prove the end of Rome's republic, nevertheless during Livy's early writings Augustus' reign and the Republic were not antithetical. An examination of Augustus' position during the early years of Livy's writing shows that the princeps cloaked his power within the precedent of Republican autocracy, in which imperium could be unlimited in power so long as it was limited by time. This paper addresses the paradox by attempting to place Livy's writings within their proper historical and literary context. As early as Tacitus, Livian scholarship has struggled to resolve the "Livian paradox," the conflict between Livy's support of the Roman Republic and his overt approval of Augustus, who brought about the end of the Republic.
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