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Compare And Contrast Tacitus And Livy

585 Words3 Pages

Justin West
Pror. Boardman
Ch 201
10/16/14
Making History Tacitus and Livy, these two great historians both wrote during the time of the Roman Empires decline. While both Tacitus and Livys’ ways of writing history are very similar in several ways, the way that Levy wrote history was quite different from the way that Tacitus wrote history. While they both share a few common thoughts, like the superiority of Roman values, their perceptions of Rome differ. Both of the authors recognize the superiority of the Rome, and also critique other comparable empires and society. The way these two men differ in their historical writings is the different criticism that the two have about the Roman society, as well as their writing styles. Livy and Tacitus while different in several ways, were also similar in just as many. Both the historians saw Roman as superior to other “lands”, and they also had a few shared thoughts on the Roman values. Livy shows his patriotism in his writing of Romulus and Remus when he starts the piece off by stating “But (I must believe) it was already written in the books of fate that this great city of ours should arise, and the first steps be taken to the founding of the mightiest empire the world has known-next to God’s” (Boardman 154). Livy believes that this great empire that he is living in is greater than all other empires, being only trumped by …show more content…

Livy is much more direct than Tacitus, who rather than just praise Rome, actually speaks poorly of other empires in his writing. For example, in his writings of the Germans he speaks very poorly of the Germans. The ways that he

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