Livy's The History Of Rome: Book Analysis

In ancient history Romans have always been the dominant force that would build itself back up and strengthen into a major civilization for hundreds of years to come. Although, what a lot of people don’t know is how the Romans initially began or perceived to be created as a people that was born from mythological stories that tied into their own culture at the time. Titus Livius (Livy) was an historian that wrote many books on the history of Rome, but today we will only go through an English translation from 1919 of Livy’ first book. We will be discussing what happened (what was written down as the origin of Rome), some interesting points in the text, and analyze the way Livy wrote/structured his work. Let’s start with a summary of what the book is about. It starts off with Aeneas and his Trojans ending up in “the land of Laurentum”, the men started to pillage the land until King Latinus went to go and stop them (Livy, 1919). Aeneas ends up marrying King Latinus’

The experience that you get from reading this is similar to being told a bed time story because of how you are able to imagine and visualize what is happening. Personally, as a take away I now know the origin of how Rome was built and some of the myths behind it like Romulus and Remus for example. I was surprised that Livy would describe both tales of a story too because in my experience ancient scholars would only write what they believed and that was that. Then in the book when Romulus was King, how he tricked his neighbors to go into Rome, so he and his people could take women to marry and how it ended with the women saying it was all their fault sets the standards of how women were perceived back then. Which was trouble, even though the women didn’t do anything (not including the part of the book where Tullia convinced her husband to kill her father), but that’s how it all worked back