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The History of Rome

Livy · Translated by D. Spillan, 1853

Livy

The History of Rome

Translated by D. Spillan, 1853

What this is

Livy set out to write the whole history of Rome from its founding and got as far as 142 books, of which 35 survive. These are the first eight: the kings, the founding of the republic, the struggle of the orders, the Gauls taking the city, and the Samnite wars. The further the narrative gets from the founding, the more it is history and the less it is legend.

Book One has its own edition

Book One — the founding is set out chapter by chapter, with a map of Latium, the reign each falls in, and a plain note on how much of it is history. It is not repeated here; the contents below link to it.

How it is set

One leaf per book, with the sections numbered inside it as Long numbers them. A section of Marcus is often three lines, and a page holding three lines is not a page.

What is not here

Notes. These books have the text and nothing else at present — no map, no lives, no commentary. Book One shows what an annotated book looks like on this shelf, and these will follow it. An empty heading is better than invented filler.

The eight books

  1. I Book One — the founding 60 sections
  2. II The affairs, civil and military, of the Roman people, henceforward free, their annual… 65 sections
  3. III After the taking of Antium, Titus Æmilius and Quintus Fabius are elected consuls. This was the… 72 sections
  4. IV Marcus Genucius and Caius Curtius followed these as consuls. The year was disturbed both at… 61 sections
  5. V Peace being established in every other quarter, the Romans and Veientians were still in arms… 55 sections
  6. VI The transactions of the Romans, from the building of the city of Rome to the capture of the… 42 sections
  7. VII This year will be remarkable for the consulship of a man of mean birth, remarkable for two new… 42 sections
  8. VIII The consuls now were Caius Plautius a second time, and Lucius Æmilius Mamercinus; when the… 40 sections

Text: Livy, The History of Rome — D. Spillan’s translation for Bohn’s Classical Library, 1853, public domain, from Project Gutenberg ebook 19725, set unaltered. Spillan’s own footnotes are his and are not printed; his argument to each book is printed at its head and labelled as his. All 437 chapters of Books I to VIII, numbering checked and contiguous in every book.