Summary of Livy

okay so Libby like I said he you know he's talking about a period that's hundreds of years after he was born you know he was he was a contemporary of Augustus and he was actually close you know in the entourage of Augustus they had a similar outlook on life that you know they were they were both conservative in their moral values and Livvy I believe Augustus actually the the was a sponsor of Libby in his history so you have to keep that in mind as one of his biases but you know Livvy was was one of these men in Rome who you know he was wealthy enough where he could devote his entire life to writing history you know he didn't have to take on a profession he was he was never senator but like I said he was very close to the Giulio Clawdeen's and he was a big part of that moral and religious revival that augustus began when he took power so when when we're looking at Libby's histories there's a lot of biases there's a lot of issues we have to think about with his recounting of history you know like I said he's a moralizer and he's kind of pushing these ideals that the Julia Claudia pnes that Augustus is pushing when he takes power he encouraged patriotism you know ancestral ways and his histories you know it's almost like an Aesop's fables type of situation where you know he's telling a story and he's really trying to get some sort of moral across and these stories whether there's a bit of truth in them or not and so you know another issue we have here is goes into it more in depth but you can see here you know the traditional founding date of Rome is 753 BC ii you know Livy is writing these histories close to the turn of the millennium and he you know what his primary sources you know his his his oldest source he has for this would have been a in 449 the Twelve Tables which were written down but most of these records that go past that go past the 4th century BC would have been destroyed in 390 when the Gauls sacked Rome and burned the city so he doesn't have a lot of source material to work on so you know Livy the more alive you know according to Livie this is the this is like the the worldview that he has according to solidity Rome's rise is attributed to this patriotism this discipline courage that the early Romans had and you know a disdain for material wealth he talks about Cincinnatus in that regard and he you know he looks at he believes that Rome is a victim of its own success what would cause the downfall of the Republic that was the wealth you know that was a strife from all the conquests that occurred after the period of the Punic Wars and the Mithra dated quarters and you know overall greed and moral depravity among its citizens that he saw as being as a corrupting influences on the Republic and which which ultimately to him led to its downfall so his sources you know he's got the Twelve Tables that's the oldest one he uses a lot of oral histories and family histories which are pretty they're not the best sources you know that this in this period like the you know families would have what kind of linked themselves especially the the rich families the patrician families would link themselves to famous heroes from ancient times it was Lucius Junius Brutus was the one who supposedly you know overthrew the monarchy and so the famous Brutus that we know who participate in the conspiracy against Caesar his family come you know would link themselves back to that original Brutus who overthrew the monarchy and there's probably some symbolism there which led Brutus to feel like he needed to lead that charge against Caesar as if he was overthrowing the next Rex the next king that was taking over room so you know and and he does have some older histories pictur was one of the original reminisce torrents which we don't there's no extant copy of pictur that we have to look at but in Livi's time he had access to it and he made use of that when he was creating his history and that's probably that might be his best source that he has okay so bearing that in mind all that stuff that you know the you know the authenticity of a lot of this information should be called new should be questioned but he talks about the founding of Rome of course it begins with Romulus and Remus they were supposedly the twin sons of a vestal virgin and the gods Mars the Vestal Virgins their their father was was king nimit or of Alba and he was deposed at the time and a king I'm Elias he was like this usurper and obviously he wanted to find Romulus and Remus because they would have been heirs to the kingdom and he wanted to have them killed so of course the babies in a very cliche story we've heard many times in history were exposed where you know they're left by the Tiber and to Beach and but the idea was that when the Tiber came up it would drown the children and that would be the end of that but of course luckily the waters recede and the babies are fine this is like I said the story that we see in a lot of different oral traditions even with the beginning of the kingdom of Persian Empire when you look at Zach series was the modeun King who wanted to put out baby Cyrus to be exposed out in the wilderness because he knew that he would grow up to be this great king he was supposedly brought out by one of his generals but instead of leaving him out he gave him to a villager who raised baby Cyrus who who eventually usurped the modeun King that Kingdom and they started the Akkadian Persian Empire same situation here you know except that you know the waters recede the babies are fine they're supposedly nursed by a she-wolf lupa raised by peasant farmers until that they were until they were older and to make a long story short once they are older they retake out before their grandfather and they decide to sit out and found a new city for their own which you can see on the map here Rome here on the Tiber on the east bank of the Tiber is where they they started it and now here we have this situation of you know we've got you know two brothers or twins whose going to be the ruler you know it's not very often that you can find joint rule in this kind of situation Remus sets up on the Aventine hill and Romulus sets up on the Palantine you can see the various hills that make up the famous original hills of Rome here so how do they determine whose gonna be you know the king or where it was like where should we found this city so they go to this idea and this is an important part of Roman religion is a concept called divination where you know Olivia's a good source for this where he talks about where basically you look for signs from nature as a sign from the gods to tell you what to do so in this case the the type of divination that they were taking part in is called the contest of augury where they're gonna look for vultures in the sky as a sign from the gods so how do you interpret these so hurry miss he's the first one to see vultures and he sees six of them and then Romulus very shortly thereafter he's later in time but he sees a lot more vulture she sees twelve of them so the question becomes who to the GOC prefer you know what what happened to the brother who lost so you know of course we know that Romulus in the end he's considered the victor in this situation otherwise Romans would be called Riemann's and in the end Romulus ends up killing Remus in an act of fratricide and this is basically how the founding of Rome begins on an act of fratricide and the the foundation of Rome is made on the Palantine the way that Romulus wanted it okay so Romulus is considered goes on to be the first king of Rome so there's seven kings total that make up the period of the monarchy he's the first of these the other key story from our section of Livy is talking about what's called the rape of the sabien women but first they're just a couple things that it says Romulus does he's the one who creates the the senatorial rang for the first time he creates a hundred senators these elders from from various clans and basically their role is to advise the king to advise Romulus they don't really have legislative power but they do go on to have the the ability to appoint the king and they they kind of go into a session and you know and and try to figure out who's going to be the next king and if they can't decide they have what's called an inter ex which is like each senator takes takes takes his turn for today being the king until that they find they finally decide who they're going to appoint so they have very little power the way that they do later on in the period of the Republic but they are this this idea is founded at this point so the problem here is according to Livy is that rome lacked enough women who adequately grow the population beyond that first generation of men who were at who helped found the city so you know Romney starts sending out all these overtures to other city-states you know asking for like you know bribes and things of that nature and these other city-states you know that are they're much more well-established than Rome or like you know we don't we don't want to send our daughters to this backwater you know sitting on the edge of the Italian peninsula they're not interested so what do they do what is Rama says to figure out something and he decides to invite you know the people of these neighboring city-states to Rome for dinner and a show for a festival of sorts but then while they're all watching the show a signal is given and the Romans rush into the crowd and they grab all of all the wives all of the women and daughters of these of these other city-states and kick everybody out of the city so they basically kidnap all of these women supposedly and and they they're forced to marry Roman men and this is how the second generation of Rome is is made in the first early case of Stockholm Syndrome okay so the final thing that will be we get from our portion of Livy is basically you know the birth of the Republic you know so far we've been through this period of the monarchy so the way that the and this is a long story I'm going to keep this short so we have the rape of Lucretia is what this this incident is called okay so we had a Brahmin this was the first king of run the last and seventh King was Tarquinius Superbus Tarquin the proud he ranged from supposedly from 535 to 509 and 509 is considered the founding date of the Republic he was not well liked by the people his son so basically what happened was you know Tarkin was out on campaign and his son and some of the other noble men were drinking and they were talking each other's wives and cool analysis was claiming how virtuous his wife was and to summarize quickly basically sexta stork Linnaeus rapes his wife : itis this other noble man's wife Lucretia and in the end you know Lucretia tells her husband what happened but you know and of course it's no fault of her own but she kills herself you know out of shame from being raped by this man and Libby's moral here is that you know you remember he's trying to show young Romans like what it means you know duty and in virtue to the Roman state his idea of a moral here was that she chose her own honor over over her own life you know this is this was supposed to be some great idea by you know Livy which wasn't a moral that aged well of time obviously so this event so you know this enrages these other noblemen Brutus famously the and Kola nut cult : artists and all these other men they they pretty much closed the door the gates of Rome and keep out Superbus and in the end you know this is when the Republic is considered to have been born the last king has been kicked out of the city and-and-and the Roman Republic is born out of this Oh actually yeah we there's one more little tidbit from Livy from our reading is the story of Titus manliness no we fast forward about 200 some years to 340 BC Rome is at war with its Latin neighbors and this was really you know a moral tale that's like you know spun by Livy this might be the most obvious just kind of moral tale that he spends he you know it's it's like Titus manliness was manliest was the consul at the time he was the general commanding the army during these wars with their Latin neighbors and he issued an order to the entire Roman army to not leave their posts to fight any of these these any of the enemy Latins without the consent of their superiors but what happened was his own son also named Titus Manlius was challenged by an enemy soldier he Titus was out he was a member of the Calvary he was out patrolling and he's kind of egged on into fighting one of these enemy soldiers he was challenged by him Titus accepts and he wins the duel and he kills the enemy soldier and he brings you know the spoils of his victory back to his father sure that he won everybody's cheering however you know this he disregard a direct order from command and his and in his own father said you know to show his sacrifice to the Roman state decides to punish his son by burning him at the stake which is you know maybe a little over the top but but you know here's Livy trying to trying to give us a moral here you know that just you know despite the love that if you know between a father and son Titus Manliness the elder you know he showed his allegiance to Rome is above all else you know by sacrificing his own son which has echoes of the story of Abraham and Isaac actually later on in the Old Testament all right so that that's Livy so that's what we get out of Livy so when you're talking if you're you know just if you're taught if you're trying to study for the exam and you want to talk about the founding of Rome for some sort of essay prompt you're wanting to talk about these very early years that the overthrow of the monarchy or as someone of this mortal story about Titus manliness manlius you're gonna want to talk about Livy you're gonna use Liddy as your source you need to say you know Olivia asserts or put Livy in parentheses after the sentence when you're talking about any of this stuff here so you know once he does get rid of Anthony Augustus quickly starts to you know consolidate power and he does a lot of things that are that that make him many historians consider him to be the greatest emperor the period of the Emperor's in Rome and he's considered widely to be the best and this is why he expanded the empire to to perhaps his greatest extent

Channel: Septimius Severus

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Keywords: Who was Livy, Roman History, Romulus and Remus, Sabine Women, Titus Manlius, Lecture Sample, Summary of Livy, Summary of Roman Sources

Id: txZF8o7tzzE

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 27 2018