Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TITI LIVI HISTORIARUM AB URBE CONDITA LIBER I. 1 FACTURUSNE operae pretium sim, si a primordio urbis res populi Romani perscripserim, nec satis scio, nec, si sciam, 2 dicere ausim, quippe qui cum veterem tum vulgatam esse rem videam, dum novi semper scriptores aut in rebus certius aliquid allaturos se aut scribendi arte rudem vetustatem superaturos 5 3 credunt. utcumque erit, iuvabit tamen rerum gestarum memoriae principis terrarum populi pro virili parte et ipsum consuluisse; et si in tanta scriptorum turba mea fama in obscuro sit, nobilitate ac magnitudine eorum me, qui nomini 4 officient meo, consoler, res est praeterea et immensi operis, ut 10 A somewhat confused opening. The outline is: ?Of the probable value of his work he thinks it trite to make any prediction; two things are against its success, the multitude of previous writers, and the insignificant and half-forgotten character of the primitive history of Rome: in any case he will find his reward in the consciousness of having done something for the glory of his country, and the distraction of his mind from a painful present. I. Facturusne operae pretium sim. Here the archetype had ' sim pretium, ' but we are enabled to correct it by the authority of Quintilian. Inst. Or. 9. 4, 74. According to W., ' whether I shall succeed, ' ' whether my work will be appreciated.' But Livy could not say that it was a trite or common practice for writers to declare at the beginning of their books that those books would be appreciated. The phrase occurs in 25. 30 and 27. 17. In the former of these passages W. would again translate ' succeed.' But if that passage be examined, and it be remarked how ' si operae pretium faciat' stands opposed to ' si malle obsideri pergat, ' it will appear that its sense there is that wh..