Livy History Exploration

Based on History of Rome, this dissertation concerns itself with a study of the characteristics of historiography of Livy, and demonstraton of the link between his historiography and the times he lives in.The first issue examined in the research is that History of Rome follows the method and idea of Rome historiography. What revealed by the analysis includes 1) He takes the traditional annals style of Rome as his narrative framework, recording events year by year in the name of consuls; 2) the historical method of rhetoric is exerted into his writing; 3) the characteristic of being politics-orientation in Roman historiography is embodied in Livy's work. Deriving from traditional historiography of Rome and absorbing the spirits of his times, Livy's historiography is a combination instead of the replication of traditional one. His historical data comes from research of Roman chronicle writers, antiquarians, and Greece historian Polybius, and also oral tradition. The choice and application of these sources show that he emphasized the ethical function in traditional historiography and endeavored to moralize the readers in patriotism. For that he even revised, forged and invented historical stories.The next in order, Livy's historiography thought is an annotation of history from the perspective of temporal social reality. From his point of view, the study of history is to set moral examples for the current time. And Roman history proves that Rome succeeded in the wars because of its excellent ethos. That's the gist that he traces back Roman history in the framework of "moral". His annotation of history delivers to his people that the renewal of Roman traditional morality is the guarantee of the national order's resuming and promise of Rome renaissance in the future.The additional issue is that these characteristics have a close...