Livy’s
Monumental Roman History,
1600 first edition in English
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“I invite the reader's attention to the much more serious consideration of the kind of lives our ancestors lived, of who were the men and what the means, both in politics and war, by which Rome's power was first acquired and subsequently expanded, I would then have him trace the process of our moral decline, to watch first the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them.” –T. Livy |
| "What chiefly makes the study of history wholesome and profitable is this, that in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see, and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings." –T. Livy |
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[Livy] Livius, Titus. The Romane Historie Written by T. Livius of Padua. Also, the Breviaries of L. Florus: with a Chronologie to the Whole History: and the Topographie of Rome in Old Time. Translated out of the Latin into English by Philemon Holland. London: Adam Islip, 1600. Thick folio (approx. 1500 pages), late eighteenth-century three-quarter calf over marbled boards. |
| First edition in English of Livy’s highly influential history of Rome. A classic in its own lifetime, Livy’s history exerted a profound and lasting influence on the style and philosophy of historical writing through the time of Gibbon. The first edition in English is translated by the noted classical scholar Philemon Holland was widely studied during Elizabethan time and served as a major Shakespeare source. Some dampstaining to approximately first 100 pages, getting progressively lighter and less bothersome; usual occasional spotting and very small wormholes, binding with light wear. A rare first edition in English of a supremely important Roman text. |