HIRST, Note on the Date of Livy's Birth, And on the Termination of His History
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Note on the Date of Livy's Birth, and on the Termination of His History
Author(s): Gertrude HirstSource: The Classical Weekly, Vol. 19, No. 17 (Mar. 8, 1926), pp. 138-139Published by: Classical Association of the Atlantic StatesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4388743 .
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138 THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY [VOL.XIX, No. 17, WHOLENo. 520
possible that Tiberius did not wish to see Germanicus
get too strong a hold upon the army of Syria. If so, he
might have given Piso instructions which would cover
much that he had done and for doing which he was
being furiously denounced in the Senate. I think it
likely that Piso had gone much farther than the Em-
peror intended, and that, in returning to Syria and pro-
voking a civil war, he had entirely exceeded his orders.
Nevertheless, the production of his instructions might
have made it possible for him to make a good defense on
some points and to extenuate his guilt on others.
It seems clear that after his death his friends attempted
to justify his conduct in this way and that this was the
only sort of apology which could possibly l)e made.
If he had such orders from Tiberius, it was necessary to
explain why he had not produced them, and his friends
put the blame on Sejanus and the Emperor by saying
that he had been duped and murdered to prevent it.
That Tiberius had a motive for not wishing such
orders made public is clear enough. Their productionwould not have convicted him of murder, but they
would have shown him in a verv bad light to the Roman
people. It would have appeared to them that lhe had
treated Germanicus treacherously, and that, while he
was conferring outward honors and distinctions upon
the prince, he had secretly striven to undermine and
thwart him. At that moment the people were wild
with grief over the death of their favorite and were al-
ready more or less suspicious of the Emperor. How-
ever sound the reasons which had led Tiberius to give
such instructions to Piso, the Emperor did not care to
face the storm which would have followed their pro-
duction. The story of Piso's friends was not, therefore,altogether incredible, though as to the assertion that
Piso was murdered I feel quite confident that it was
false.
That Tacitus inserted the passage in the Annales is
not due, I think, to a wish on his part to slander Tibe-
rius, but to an honest desire to be fair to Piso. In his
account of the trial he has followed the testimony of the
prosecution, and he does not think it fair to suppress the
defense entirely. Piso made no real answer to most of
the charges in open court and so Tacitus has told us
how his friends defended his memory after his tragic
death. Their apology had not found its way into the
usual histories and so Tacitus explains the source of hisinformation. He had it direct from men who had
heard what the friends of Piso said. He gives it for
what it is worth, because he strove to be impartial,
warns his reader that he can not vouch for it, and
passes on. Modern scholars have read into the passage
meanings which it can not have, and have thus first
created a myth and then used the myth to discredit the
innocent historian'5.UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS FRANK BURR MARSH
1In THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY for March I5 will be found anarticle by Mr. M. M. Odgers, of the University of Pennsylvania,entitled On Whitewashing Certain of the Ancients. Mr. Odgersdiscusses especially the attempts of Beesly to defend Catiline and
Tiberius, and the effort of Mr. Weigall to defend Cleopatra. Alongwith these indictments of ancient men of letters and historians wemay set the article by Dr. Alice A. Deckman, Livia Augusta, THECLASSICAL WEEKLY I9.2I-25.
C. K.>.
'Olympiad 180.2, according to Scaliger's edition, but OlympiadI80.4, 57 B. C., according to Mai's Armenian version.
2E.g. in the article Messala, in the Encyclopaedia Britannicall.3De M. Valerii Messalae Aetate, 7-8 (Stettin, i886). See also
Jacob Hammer, Prolegomena to an Edition of the PanegyricusMessalae: The Military and Political Career of M. Valerius MessalaCorvinus, Chapter I, 3-I0, for an exhaustive discussion of the datesof the birth and the death of Messala (Columbia UniversityPress, I925).
4The evidence for this is thereference, in
I.I9.3,
to the closing,by Augustus, of the Gates of Janus.5A Literary History of Rome, 642.6Einleitung und Quellenkunde zur R6mischen Geschichte, I46-
147 (Berlin, 192I).7Codex Nazarianus, now at Heidelberg.
NOTE ON THE DATE OF LIVY'S BIRTH, ANDON THE TERMINATION OF HIS HISTORY
The commonly accepted date for Livy's birth, de-pending on St. Jerome', is 59 B. C. Jerome's state-ment runs thus: Messala Corvinus orator nascitur, et
Titus Livius Patavinus, scriptor historicus. It waslong since seen that the date given for Messala'sbirth did not square with the statement made else-where by Jerome,that Messala died in ii A. D., aged72, and with other circumstancesin Messala's life.The dates now usually accepted for Messala are 64B. C.-8 A. D2. Schulz3first pointed out a plausibleexplanationof Jerome'smistake in assigning Messala's
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MARCH 8, 19261 THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 139
two (22) books were written by Livy in the last three
years of his life, from his seventy-eighth to his eighty-
first year (if he was born in 64 B. C.). This tremend-
ous output, if substantiated, would suggest that the
aged author had a definite goal in view. Now, Drusus
was credited with democratic tendencies8. Livy,
when relating his death and funeral, would not onlv
have given the eulogies pronounced by Augustus and
Tiberius, but would also, in accordance with his own
custom9, have set forth the character of Drusus. He
would well have known how to indicate whatever
Republican sentiments Drusus had. WMay e not have
treated the burial of Augustus's nmoreliberal-minde(d
stepson as the burial of the last hopes for a restoration
of the Republic By praising Tiberius's brotherl,-
devotion in escorting on foot Drusus's body through-
out the long march from Germany to Rome'0, Livy
could avoid any appearance of censuring the Princeps
in eulogizing his more democratic brother. But the
contrast was doubtless clear to a discerning reader,and not least to Tiberius himself.
In this very brief paper my object has been to bring
out two points which do not seem to have been noted:
(i) 64 B. C., not 59 B. C., is probably the date of the
birth of Livv.
(2) The death of Drusus mav really have been in-
tended by Livy to serve as the close of his work, that is,
the end he set himself in his declining years. One
may take for granted that he attended the ceremonies
at the funeral of Drusus, and that he wrote a copious
account of them, to be drawn on later for his History.
The Periochae of the last five books, which deal with
the period after the death of Agrippa in 12 B. C.. allrefer to the conquests miiade by Drusus. His death
must have seemed a national disaster. As Livy medi-
tated on it in the later years of Augustuis's rule, he
may well have thought that with Drusus was buried
also all possibility of a revival of the Republic-the
Republic that was the theme of his prose epic. Book
142 seems to have been devoted to the death and the
funeral ceremonies of Drusus; the last words of the
Periochae are supremis eius plures honores datill.BARNARD COLLEGE GERTRUDE HIRST
8Tacitus, Annales I.3.3, 2.82.3.
9Seneca, Suasoriae 21-22.?0Suetonius,Tiberius 7.sThis paper was read at the Fifty-Seventh Annual Meeting of
the American Philological Association, at Cornell University, onDecember 3T, 1925.
REVIEWS
The Greeks in Spain. By Rhys Carpenter. BrynMawr Notes and Monographs VI. London and
New York: Longmans, Green and Company (1925).
Pp. Viii + I80. 2 Maps, XXV Plates.
There is a well marked tendency in the historical
and archaeological work which is being done in the
European countries and in the Near East to fill up by
spade work the gaps in our historical information re-
garding the prehistoric and the early historical periods
in the life of the v-arious countries. The remoter the
past, the scantier our literary information, the keener is
our interest in such archaeological work. Spain, until
the last few decades, had been in this respect one of the
most neglected countries. From the archaeological
and the historical point of view, however, it is one of the
most interesting districts in Europe. The Roman re-
mains are numerous and well-preserved, especially in
the South. The Greeks and the Phoenicians have left
important traces of their soiourn in the peninsula.
The wealth of prehistoric remains, from palaeolithic
times down to the late Iron Age, is overwhelming.
Yet for generations very little had been done in the
wav of investigating the remote past of the peninsula,
and the record of wNhathad been done remained buiried
in local puiblications. In the last few decades, how-
ever, we notice an almost complete change. Systematic
work has been carried out by the local organizations;
the beautiful Musetum at Madrid, and many pro-
vincial Museums have been growing steadily and have
become better organized. French scholars have shown
a keen interest in studying the ancient remains of
Spain, and, lately, some German scholars have devotedtheir lives to the examination of the most important
problems of protohistoric Spain and Spain of the classi-
cal period. The result is that we now know much more
about Spain than was known in the days of Hiubner
and Mommsen. We are at least aware of the main
problems, and we see the way these main problems
ought to be solved. Leaving aside the great problems
of the palaeolithic, neolithic, and bronze periods (the
importance of Spaia here is a recognized fact and the
collected material very rich), I may mention the im-
portant ouestionl of the character of the 'native'
civilization of Spain, i. e. the civilization of the two
earliest conquerors of Spain, the Iberians and theCelts (or vice versa). Not less important are the
outesti9n of the Tartessos Kingdom, the problem of the
Greek settlements in Spain, and of the work of coloni-
zation which was done in Spain, first bv the Phoeni-
cians, later by Carthage, and, finally, the question of
the aspect which Spain presented when the Romans
first appeared on the peninsula and began their long
work of conquest and Romanization.
One of these problems is dealt with in a charming
little book, The Greeks in Spain, by Professor Rhys
Carpenter. This is a learned monograph, based on
some new and little known material, thorough and
painstaking in details, showing an excellent personalknowledge of the land, and an exhaustive study of
what had been done, both by Spaniards and by for-
eigners, in the field covered by the book. It is at the
same time fascinating reading for any one who is in-
terested in historical and archaeological problems,
whatever his special field may be.
The contents of the booklet are as follows:
I. Legend (i-5); II. Record (6-iI); III. In-ference (The Voyage to Tartessos, I2-36, The SantaElena Bronzes, 37-46, The Massiliot Sailing-Book, 47-56, Greek Art and Iberian, 57-96, Ampurias, 97-II6);Appendices (II7-I40); Commentary (I4I-I62); Bib-liography (I63-I68); List of Illustrations (I69-174);Index (I75-I78); Assumed Chronology for Ancient
Spain (I 79-I 80).
The story begins with the discovery of Spain by the
Samians, abouit 630 B. C., and runs through the