A man once crossed the Roman world from Cádiz just to look at Livy
Livy was never a senator, never a soldier and never held office, yet his history of Rome made him a celebrity. Pliny the Younger reported that a man travelled from Cádiz in Spain to Rome and straight back again, for no reason except to meet the author in person.
Titus Livius was born in Patavium, modern Padua, probably in 59 BC, when it was among the richest cities in Italy and known for conservative morals. His teenage years coincided with civil war, which likely kept him from the usual elite education in Rome or a tour of Greece. The Roman politician Asinius Pollio later sneered at his provincial Patavinity. Livy seems to have had private money, though its source is unknown, and that freedom let him spend decades writing.
His great work, Ab Urbe Condita, meaning From the Founding of the City, ran from Rome's earliest legends before 753 BC to his own time under Augustus. He began it probably at around 33 and kept going into old age. Writing under the new emperor, he stressed Roman triumphs and heroic examples, and because he was describing events centuries past, its reliability as history is questionable. Still, alongside Polybius it is a chief source for the Second Punic War. Military blunders in the text suggest he never served in the army.
He was close to the imperial family and encouraged the young Claudius, born in 10 BC, to write history. The friendship tolerated disagreement: Tacitus records that Livy praised Pompey so warmly that Augustus nicknamed him Pompeianus. Livy is thought to have returned to Padua after Augustus died, and he died there in AD 17.
Much of his work is lost. Its sheer length meant medieval readers relied on summaries, and copies went unreplaced. Renaissance collectors paid fortunes to recover what survived; the poet Beccadelli sold a country house to buy a single manuscript. Even his dates are shakier than they look, since ancient chronicles disagree, and one manuscript puts his birth at 57 BC.
Source: Livy
