Tito livio ab urbe condita perseus
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Livy
Roman historian (59 BC – AD 17)
For people with the given name or nickname, see Livy (given name).
Titus Livius (Latin:[ˈtɪtʊsˈliːwiʊs]; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy (LIV-ee), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled Ab Urbe Condita, ''From the Founding of the City'', covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own lifetime. He was on good terms with members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and was a friend of Augustus,[1] whose young grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, he encouraged to take up the writing of history.[2]
Life
[edit]Livy was born in Patavium in northern Italy, now modern Padua, probably in 59 BC.[ii] At the time of his birth, his home city of Patavium was the second wealthiest on the Italian peninsula, and the largest in the province of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy). Cisalpine Gaul was merged in Italy proper during his lifetime and its inhabitants were given Roman citizenship by Julius Caesar. In his works, Livy often expressed his deep affection and pride for Patavium, and the city was well known for its conservative values in morality an
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Introduction
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From entries in Jerome's re-working of the Chronicleof Eusebius we learn that Titus Livius the Patavian was born in 59 B.C., the year of Caesar's first consulship, and died in his native town (the modern Padua) in 17 A.D. Of his parents nothing is known. They were presumably well-to-do, for their son received the training in Greek and Latin literature and in rhetoric which constituted the standard curriculum of that time, and was afterwards able to devote a long life to the unremunerative work of writing. That he was by birth an aristocrat is no more than an inference from his outstanding sympathy with the senatorial party. Livy's childhood witnessed the conquest of Gaul and Caesar's rapid rise to lordship over the Roman world. These early years he doubtless passed in his northern home. Patavium laid claim to great antiquity. Livy tells us himself in his opening chapter the legend of its founding by the Trojan Antenor, and elsewhere describes with unmistakable satisfaction the vain attempt of the Spartan Cleonymus (in 302 B.C.) to [p. x]subdue the Patavians.1They defended themselves with equal vigour and success against the aggressions of the Etruscans and the inroads of the Gauls, and in the war with Hannibal cast in their lot with Rome. In 49 B.C., when•