SIR,— Poor Livy! Mr. Finley puzzles me by denying the
title of .'history' to his work. After all, 'Horatius on the bridge, Coriolanus, the rape of Lucretia,' and the other legends (my gloss on one of which is quoted with the implication that all Livy's writing is simi- larly unauthenticated) arc less than one-fourteenth of the whole. For the rest, Livy conscientiously sought to write truthful history, vitiated .by factual inaccuracy but also enriched by psychological insight into motives and character. It is thus that we can apprehend the Roman Republican genius for govern- ment and war; nor is the conventional myth of the Augustan Zeitgeist to be allowed to obscure this. Livy is a Republican and a traditionalist, Augustan only in the sense that these were attitudes warmly wel- comed in the entourage of Augustus. When in the nineteenth century the great Germans exposed Livy's frailties, his merits were partially obscured. But it is only in Britain and America that he is 'unread and unloved,' and even here there arc signs of revived interest.—Yours faithfully,
P. G. WALSH
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