CHURCH AND BRODRIBB'S " LIVY."* Hamm records but few campaigns
that are comparable for interest with those of Hannibal, and fewer still, perhaps, than have been painted in colours so bright and enduring. Livy was the Macaulay, as Polybius was the Napier, of that memorable contest which is commonly called the Second Punic War,—a contest which Arnold compares with that which Napoleon waged against England. He brackets these mighty struggles together, as being the only two examples which history-affords of the highest individual genius being matched against the resources and institutions of a great country. It seems to us that the cases are not quite analogous. Hannibal, while he appears to have been a man quite equal in capacity to Napoleon, stands out as a far more interesting figure in history. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that the first half of Livy's third decade, which Messrs. Church and Brodribb have translated, is full of undying interest, and that not merely for the striking nature of the events which it recounts, but for the admirable way in which those events are recounted. Not, indeed, for professors and students of military science ; they must go elsewhere for the lore which they require, as there is nothing of Jomini in Livy. To take a single example, in his description of the battle on the Trebia, be places the Roman camp on the left bank of that river, and in consequence of this absurdity has to represent Hannibal as so paralysed by his own victory that he either perceived nothing, or else pretended to perceive nothing, when the de- feated Romans crossed the river on rafts in his presence, on the night after the engagement. The Roman camp was on the right bank of the Trebia, and it is strange, indeed, that a writer who strove so earnestly to realise the scenes which he describes as Arnold did should have failed to see that it was. But Livy was a writer of a different stamp, and evolved the manceuvre which his blunder necessitated with perfect insouciance ; and hence it is that students who consult his work to learn the lessons which campaigns so masterly should teach learn little or nothing :— "Inconsniti, abennt, sedemque odcre Sibyliae."
But in war, as Napoleon insisted, moral force stands to physical force in the ratio of three to one, and the moral aspects of Hannibal's immortal struggle are finely brought out by Livy, who, as Mr. Church and Mr. Brodribb justly say, had a charm- ing and delightful style, which could most skilfully adapt itself to the events he was narrating, a hearty sympathy with good- ness and virtue, and a fearless truthfulness when there was a strong temptation to flattery. These last words may sound strange to some who have been taught to think that Livy's picture of " dims Hannibal" is a grossly unfair one; but in the main they are just, and we quote with pleasure some further remarks on this subject, from the admirable little essay on "Livy and his History," which is prefixed to this transla- tion :—
"The thought of Rome's surpassing greatness, of her almost miraculous growth from a very humble beginning, was ever present to his mind. This it is, coupled with a remarkably vivid style, which gives to his work the charm and interest of which we are all con- scious. The truth is that his History is all the better for having been written with a strong patriotic feeling. He may have been unfair to the great Hannibal, just as many of our own writers find it impos- sible to be fair to Napoleon. Still, we believe that, even in such cases, when his mind would naturally have a very decided bias, the general impression be leaves is not very far wrong. Hannibal, for instance, whose very name was enough to excite a perfect frenzy of hatred in a Roman breast, stands out in the pages of Livy as quite the greatest figure of the time. Here, at any rate, he has let us see the truth, even while he was most zealously striving to hold up to his reader's admiration the glory and greatness of Rome."
As to the way in which Messrs. Church and Brodribb have translated those eloquent pages in Livy which describe the mightiest exploits of the foremost General of all this world, there is little to be said, since good wine needs no bush. It was not likely that the scholars who have translated Taeitus with such brilliant success would fail with an easier author ; and failed, of course, they have not. They have succeeded in a way which leaves no room for criticism. Always faithful, and when consistent with English idiom, literal, their translation is as nearly perfect as possible,—quite as perfect, we should say, • Lint, Book., .11‘1.-IX V. The Second Punic War. Traneated into English, with Notes. By A. J. Church, M.A., and W. J. Brodribb, M.A. London Macmillan and Co. 1883. if we regard the readers for whom it has been written. A
little more brilliancy and force might have been thrown into it, had the translators' object been chiefly to give an unlettered Englishman a vivid notion of Livy's vivid style. But such a game as that would have been by no means worth the candle. It would have been time ill spent to polish and polish sentences. in English which, however manipulated, would have failed after all to communicate the ineffable charm of Livy's inimitable style. That charm is really as untransferable as Quintilian'a famous description of it (lactea nbertas) is untranslateable. But the readers for whom this translation has been made will find it, as we have intimated, all that they can wish. It is an excellent "crib," then, some one might object. It is, we should answer, but
let us distinguish. There are cribs and cribs ; and the late Mr. Bohn is answerable for some, but by no means all, of the disfavour in which some cribs are held in England. Arnold knew what he
was about when he cried aloud for an honest, straightforward " schoolboy " version of any classic. Such cribs are aids to. scholarship, indeed; and as men are beginning to see, or rather, do now see, very plainly that the tortoise-pace at which Latin has hitherto been learnt must be changed for something much faster, they are the aids which yearly become more popular.
Macaulay has recorded his method of learning a new language. Well, what that excellent crib the Authorised Version of St. John's Gospel was to him that and more this translation might be made, by an able schoolmaster, for his pupils. We have no space to point out how, and we say without the faintest hesita- tion that the schoolmaster who would discountenance the use of a translation like this is not worth his salt. Another use to which it might be applied is this. It would really make one of the best introductions to Latin prose composition that can be conceived. If a persevering student will translate four of five sentences every day from this "crib " into Latin, and correct them with Livy for his tutor, we will guarantee that at the end of a year he will write Latin prose with a facility and correct-
ness that cannot be learnt from the books of exercise which are so much in vogue. If, during the same year, he will read as
rapidly as he can the text of these five books, with the aid of this translation, and we are contemplating now a fourth- form boy—who during the same period will be put on starva- tion diet of some thirty of Arnold's exercises and half a book perhaps of Livy—he, that fourth-form boy, will at that same year's end know quite as much Latin as half of the men do who at present teach it in England. There is no need, therefore, from our point of view—and we make no doubt of its correctness—to praise this book. We regard it as a distinct boon to all students of Latin literature, and regarding also Latin itself as an indis- pensable element in the education of all Englishmen who aspire to anything higher than the Three R's, we do not hesitate to say that Messrs. Church and Brodribb, in writing this transla-
tion, have deserved well of the republic of letters. We conclude with an extract, as a specimen of their excellent handiwork ;
it is the famous description of Hannibal's winter-quarters in Capua :—
"Then for most of the winter be had his army under cover. Often and long had it steeled itself against every human hardship ; and of comfort it had had no trial or experience. And thus the men whom no intensity of misery had conquered were now ruined by a superfluity of good things and an excess of pleasure ; all the more utterly as, from the novelty of their enjoyments, they plunged into. them so greedily. Sloth, wine, feasting, women, baths, and tho lounging which, with daily habit, became increasingly attrac- tive, so enervated both body and mind, that henceforward it was their past victories rather than their present strength which saved them. The error of the General was considered by good judges of the art of war more fatal than his not having marched instantly from the field of Cannae to Rome. Delay on that occasion could be thought only to have deferred victory ; this blunder sacrificed, as it seemed, the strength needful for victory. And so, undoubtedly, just as if it had been another army with which he had left Capes, Hannibal kept up afterwards none of his old discipline. In fact,. entanglements with women made many of his men return thither, and the moment they began to serve under canvas, and trenchimc and other military duties came upon them, body and spirit alike gave way, as if they had been raw recruits. From this time during the whole period of the summer campaigns, numbers would steal away from the ranks without leave ; and it was Capon, and Ca pus only, that was the hiding. place of the deserters."
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