Imatges de pàgina
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LIVY'S HISTORY OF ROME,

BOOK XXII.

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E. JOHNSON, TRINITY STREET.

LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS AND CO., 32, PATERNOSTER ROW.

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LIFE OF TITUS LIVIUS.

TITUS LIVIUS was born at Patavium, the modern Padua, a town in Cisalpine Gaul, B.C. 59. He appears to have gone up to Rome when quite a youth, and after living there for many years he returned to his native town, where he died at the age of seventysix, in the fourth year of the reign of Tiberius, A.D. 17, the same year in which P. Ovidius Naso also died. His literary talents attracted the notice of Augustus, who became his patron. Strange though it may seem, this is really all we know of the personal history of so illustrious a historian as Titus Livius, although in the absence of authentic information, tradition and the partiality of the learned have attributed many sayings and doings to him of which he was doubtless entirely innocent. In the year A.D. 1360, the town of Padua was thrown into great excitement by the accidental discovery, within the monastery of St. Justina, (on the site of an ancient Temple of Jupiter,) of a tablet with this inscription, V. F. T. LIVIVS. LIVIE. T. F. QVARTE. L. HALYS. CONCORDIALIS. PATAVI. SIBI. ET. SVIS. OMNIBVS. The worthy citizens unanimously agreed that this referred to the great Titus Livius, and when in the next century an ancient skeleton was discovered in the same monastery, they fondly believed that they had the veritable remains of their world-renowned countryman,

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