The appeal of Livy, the great historian of the Augustan age, lies both in his riveting storytelling and in the sophistication, clarity, and accessibility of his prose. Aiming to preserve the memory of Rome’s achievements and morally rejuvenate his contemporaries, Livy takes readers on a tour of Rome’s past as he thinks deeply about historiography, its uses, and its challenges.

Selections in this volume convey the liveliness and variety of Livy’s style, with its permutations and combinations of narrative and speech, and with its portrayal of Romans and foreigners, men and women, aristocrats and ex-slaves. Selections include such favorites as the story of Horatius at the Bridge, which inspired the historian Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome and was studied by generations of Latin students, as well as others not often included in readers—such as Livy’s account of the so-called “Bacchic conspiracy.”

• Introduction to Livy, to his work, sources, ideas, artistry, and reception
• 566 lines of unadapted Latin text from Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita: Preface 6–10; Book 1: 6.3–7.3; Book 2: 10.1–13, 12.1–16, 13.6–11; Book 7: 9.6–10.14; Book 21: 1.1–2.2, 35.4–12, 40.6–11, 41.13–17, 42–43.10, 44.1–9; Book 22: 51.1–9; Book 39: 9.1–7, 10.1–8, 13.1–14, 15.1–14, 16.1–13
• Notes at the back
• Two maps and one photograph
• Bibliography
• Complete vocabulary

Mary Jaeger is Professor of Classics at the University of Oregon. After receiving her B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College, where she first read Livy with Marleen Flory, she earned her M.A. (Latin) and Ph.D. (Classics) from the University of California at Berkeley. Her research interests are in Roman historical narrative. She is the author of Livy’s Written Rome (1997) and Archimedes and the Roman Imagination (2008).