Advantages And Disadvantages Of Fieldus Livius

Titus Livius also known as Livy is a roman analyst who was born in 59BC. Livy writing style is known for engaging the attention of an audience. He accomplishes this through emotive descriptions and long speeches. It is commonly known that Livy sacrifices chronology and ignores contradictory versions of events in or to make Rome seem victorious. Livy’s standard of writing was not always high and there where most likely political influences on Livy even though he played no official part in politics. Not being involved in the Senate served as both an advantage and a disadvantage to Livy as it excludes him from parliament which means he had no first-hand experience of the systems he wrote about. His exclusion also meant that he had no access to

sealed historical recounts. Livy wrote about history in a way that highlighted the morals of a story and sacrificed the historical accuracy. This is clearly mentioned by Livy at the beginning of his writing The History of Rome “I would then have him trace the process of our moral decline, to watch first the sinking of the foundations of morality”. For Livy obsession with the desire to write history that would reveal the effects of character overshadowed the need for historical accuracy. What Livy did very successfully manage to achieve is to reshape history for his generation so that it was alive and meaningful. Rather than Livy’s work being an accurate representation of the historical events, it recounts it actually does a better job of informing the reader of Roman life and beliefs in the time he lived

Livy’s text The Rape of Lucretia, from the History of Rome tells his version of the story of how the Roman kingdom fell.

The story of the fall of the Roman kingdom as told by Livy begins with king Tarquinius men gathered around a table praising their wives. Finally, one man declared that there was no use in arguing as his wife Lucretia was the most loyal. Another man suggested that as they are capable of it they should go to their houses unannounced in order to check up on their wives. Unlike the rest of the women, Lucretia was not going out but rather working on spinning with her servants in their house. Impressed by this her husband returned home for the night and invited the king's sons in for the night. several days later Sextus Tarquinius (one of the king’s sons) broke into Lucretia's bedroom held a sword to her neck and raped her. The next morning, she called in her father and husband. She explained to them what had happened. After explaining this to her father she killed herself due to her overwhelming feeling of dishonour. Due to this, her father rallied what was left of the senators and as a city, they expelled Tarquinius from all the territories of Rome. A general election was held to discover the new governing system the vote was for the republic. The monarchy was at an

end.