The Classics Works in Progress group will host Rachel Love, who will be presenting part of a dissertation chapter, “Everything You Expected and Less: Livy’s Preface, Again” on Monday, October 10th at 4 pm.
Abstract
This (re)reading of Livy’s preface comes from my first chapter, which examines Livy’s relationship to his predecessors. As it’s now typically read, Livy’s preface casts the author as a “diffident”, “modest”, and “public spirited” historian who stands apart from his peers’ constant competition with earlier historians (Liv. praef. 2; Moles, 2004). But in setting the assertions of Livy’s preface against the few things we do know about early Roman histories, we have an opportunity to save Livy from a horrifically boring reputation and to restore to him the spirit of petty competition with which he first penned “Facturusne…”