The Historian’s Silences: What Livy Did Not Know—Or Chose Not to Tell

Abstract

AbstractThe fragments of Livy’s annalistic predecessors may be meagre, but they allow us to detect variant traditions which he does not include. Polybios, Tacitus and the emperor Claudius also record such variants on early Roman history. The same is true of the antiquarians Varro, Cincius, Verrius Flaccus, Gellius and Festus. These variants are examined to suggest what Livy might have rejected and why.