LIVY’S prose style is essentially that of the writer of direct narrative. He is conceded to be the “most important prose writer of the Augustan Age,” but if a writer’s philosophy were to be judged by the moralizing he does, rather than by the view he takes of events, Livy might fairly be called the least philosophical of historians. That he was not so, however; that he did really consider events for their meaning as a part of a connected whole, rather than for their own sake as facts appealing to patriotic or individual vanity, he shows in the preface to his “History.” “To the following considerations,” he says, “I wish every one seriously and earnestly to attend: By what kind of men and by what sort of conduct in peace and war the empire has been both acquired and extended; then, as discipline gradually declines, let him follow in his thoughts the structure of ancient morals (at first as it were leaning aside; then sinking further and further; then beginning to fall precipitate), until he arrives at the present times, when our vices have attained to such a height of enormity that we can no longer endure either the burden of them or the sharpness of the necessary remedies. This is the great advantage to be derived from the study of history,—indeed, the only one which can make it answer any profitable and salutary purpose.” This certainly is a philosophical motive of the highest order, and those who remember that Livy has defined it as the only motive which justified him in the immense labor of his “History” will acquit him of the charge of using fact and myth to glorify Rome, rather than to develop what he conceived to be the truth. The preface to his “History” is an essay of great merit and correct form. It might not be safe to say that no other such can be found in his historical works, but a search through the “History” will seldom show an interruption of the continuity of his narrative longer than half a page at a time. He stops occasionally to define his facts in a few terse sentences of comment or explanation, but nearly always he seeks to illustrate his idea of the meaning of history by the statement of fact itself rather than by comment upon it. He was born at Padua (Patavium), and died there at the age of seventy-six. Over forty years of his life were spent in Rome, where he wrote his “History” in one hundred and forty-two books, of which thirty-five have come down to us. He also wrote a celebrated treatise on “Oratory” in the form of dialogues, discussing the training of an orator and the secret of his success at the bar and in public life.