Livy: Ab urbe condita Book VI by Livy

Livy: Ab urbe condita Book VI by Livy

Book VI of Livy's Ab urbe condita covers the history of Rome from 390 to 367 BC, a period during which the city, while in the process of recovering from being sacked by the Gauls, faced serious civil disturbance, the resolution of which fundamentally changed the structure of Roman society. This edition considers the historical text from a literary and historiographical perspective: the Commentary contains a detailed analysis of Livy's narrative style and structure, with particular focus on his language and use of commonplaces, while the Introduction discusses the didactic nature of the Ab urbe condita and situates Livy's sophisticated and challenging work in the ancient historiographical tradition. Special attention is paid to the role of the reader, and to the relationship between the style and the kind of history being written. Issues of contemporary Augustan politics are also discussed.

Titus Livius was born in Patavium (modern Padua) in northern Italy around 59 BC. Given that he was able to devote so much of his life to writing history, it is reasonable to suppose that Livy's family must have been fairly wealthy. This work, which he called the Ab Urbe Condita-From the Founding of the City- took Livy forty years to write.