Livy's Ab Urbe Condita: History, Myth, and Roman Identity
Of the 142 books Livy wrote, only 35 survive today, and the ones covering Rome's mythical founding, Romulus, Numa, and the kings, are ironically some of the most quoted. Titus Livius (59 BC – AD 17) set out to write a continuous history of Rome from its foundation to his own time, and in his very first book he tells readers plainly that he will not vouch for the truth of the oldest stories, only pass them on.
Livy the man and the scale of his project
Livy was born in Padua in 59 BC and spent much of his career in Rome during the reign of Augustus, producing Ab Urbe Condita, meaning 'From the Founding of the City.' The finished work ran to 142 books covering roughly seven centuries, from Rome's legendary foundation down to the death of Drusus in 9 BC. It is one of the most ambitious historical projects to survive from antiquity, even in its incomplete state.
What survives, what doesn't
Only 35 of the original 142 books have come down to us, covering the earliest period (Books 1–10) and a stretch of the middle Republic (Books 21–45), mostly the wars against Hannibal and the eastern Mediterranean campaigns. Everything after that, including Livy's account of the late Republic and the civil wars he lived through, is lost except for short summaries called periochae and quotations preserved by later authors. This matters for mythology specifically because Book 1, covering Romulus through the fall of the monarchy, is intact and is the single most complete narrative source for Rome's foundation legend. For the lost books, later readers are left with the periochae, brief ancient summaries that preserve the bare sequence of events without any of Livy's own narrative voice or detail, a reminder of just how much of his original achievement is gone for good.
Book 1: myth presented as history
Livy opens with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy, moves through the Alban kings, and arrives at Romulus and Remus, the she-wolf, the founding of the city, and the reigns of the seven kings. He narrates all of it in the same confident prose style he uses for events centuries closer to his own lifetime, which is part of why readers sometimes mistake legend for verified history when reading Livy uncritically.
Livy's own disclaimer about the earliest material
Livy is unusually upfront about the problem. In his preface to Book 1, he states that he will not affirm or deny the truth of events from before the city existed or was being founded, treating them as the proper domain of poetic license rather than strict history. It is a remarkable piece of ancient source criticism, written by the historian himself, and it should inform how every modern reader approaches his opening books.
Livy vs. Plutarch as sources on early Rome
| Feature | Livy | Plutarch |
|---|---|---|
| Language | Latin | Greek |
| Perspective | Roman historian writing Rome's own story | Greek biographer writing about Rome from outside |
| Format | Continuous narrative history, 142 books | Paired biographies, 'Parallel Lives' |
| Approximate date | Written under Augustus, late 1st c. BC | Written c. AD 100–120 |
| Treatment of legend | States skepticism, then narrates it anyway | Compares variant versions, often names his sources |
| Best used for | Overall narrative sequence and political framing | Alternate traditions and details Livy omits |
Checklist: reading Livy's early books responsibly
- Note the places where Livy explicitly flags uncertainty, especially his Book 1 preface, rather than skipping past it.
- Cross-check major episodes against Plutarch or Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who often preserve different versions of the same event.
- Keep the legendary pre-history (roughly Books 1–5) mentally separate from the better-documented middle and late Republic.
- Remember Livy is writing around seven hundred years after Romulus supposedly lived, using sources that were already uneven in his own time.
Common mistakes
Readers often assume that because Livy narrates the Romulus story in the same tone as, say, the Second Punic War, he considered both equally certain; his own preface says otherwise. Another common error is treating Livy as the single authoritative version of early Rome, when his account is one voice among several, alongside the Aeneid, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Plutarch, each shaping the material differently, a pattern discussed further in our overview of who wrote Roman mythology. A third mistake flattens the whole 142-book work into just its legendary opening, ignoring that the vast majority of Ab Urbe Condita, almost all of it now lost, concerned recent and verifiable Roman history, wars, elections, and Senate debates, not myth at all.
Why historians still value him despite the legend
Even with its gaps and its uncritical stretches, Ab Urbe Condita remains the backbone of how most people encounter Rome's early history, because no fuller continuous narrative survives. Livy's achievement is less about verifying ancient fact and more about shaping, for later generations, a coherent Roman memory of its own origins, the same impulse behind Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's calendar poetry. Later Roman readers themselves treated the surviving books this way, excerpting and quoting Livy's early narrative for moral and patriotic instruction long after the rest of the history had faded from circulation, which is part of why those particular books survived at all while so many later ones did not. Medieval monastic copyists, working centuries after the Western Roman Empire had ended, kept recopying the same surviving portions for the same reason, a chain of transmission that ultimately decided which parts of Livy's vast project modern readers would ever get to see. The surviving manuscripts themselves are not ancient originals but later copies, the oldest significant ones dating from well into the medieval period, so even the 35 books that do survive reached the modern world through a long relay of hand-copying, with all the small errors and variant readings that process introduces.
Sources
- Livy, Ab Urbe Condita (Book 1 preface and Books 1–10) — The primary text discussed throughout this article.
- Plutarch, Parallel Lives (Life of Romulus; Life of Numa) — A comparative Greek account of the same early figures.
- Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities — An independent, detailed narrative of early Rome for cross-checking Livy.
Frequently asked questions
How much of Livy's history actually survives?
Only 35 of the original 142 books survive complete, covering early Rome through roughly 293 BC and then the period of the Punic Wars. Everything else exists only in brief later summaries or scattered quotations.
Did Livy himself believe the Romulus and Remus story was literally true?
He says explicitly in his Book 1 preface that he will not affirm or deny events from before Rome's founding, treating the earliest material as outside the normal standards of historical proof, while still narrating it in full.
Is Livy more reliable than Plutarch for early Roman history?
Neither is simply more reliable; they are different kinds of sources. Livy offers a continuous Roman narrative, while Plutarch, writing in Greek generations later, often preserves variant traditions and named earlier sources that Livy leaves out.
When was Ab Urbe Condita written?
Livy composed it over several decades starting around 27 BC, during the reign of Augustus, publishing it in installments rather than all at once.