of biased testimony on both sides, from which a
judicious man might have a fair chance to extract the truth, would go
far to cure the defect.

The point, however, to which I tend is, that the portions of Livy's
history from which we must judge of his trustworthiness treat, for the
most part, of periods concerning which even his evidence was of the
scantiest and poorest description. He doubtless had family records,
funeral panegyrics, and inscription--all of which were possibly almost
as reliable as those of our own day. Songs sung at festivals and
handed down by tradition may or may not be held more truthful. These
he had as well; but the government records, the ancient fasti, had
been destroyed at the time of the burning of the city by the Gauls,
and there is no hint of any Roman historian that lived prior to the
date of the second Punic war. Thus we may safely infer that Livy wrote
of the first five hundred years without the aid of any contemporary
evidence, either approximately complete or ostensibly reliable. With
the beginning of the second Punic war began also the writing of
history. Quintus Fabius Pictor had left a work, which Polybius
condemned on the score of its evident partiality. Lucius Cincius
Alimentus, whose claim to knowledge if not to impartiality rests
largely on the fact that he was captured and held prisoner by
Hannibal, also left memoirs; but Hannibal was not famous for treating
prisoners mildly, and the Romans, most cruel themselves in this
respect, were always deeply scandalized by a much less degree of
harshness on the part of their enemies. Above all, there was Polybius
himself, who perhaps approaches nearer to the critical historian than
any writer of antiquity, and it is Polybius upon whom Livy mainly
relies through his third, fourth, and fifth decades. The works of
Fabius and Cincius are lost. So also are those of the Lacedaemonian
Sosilus and the Sicilian Silanus, who campaigned with Hannibal and
wrote the Carthaginian side of the story; nor is there any evidence
that either Polybius or Livy had access to their writings. Polybius,
then, may be said to be the only reliable source from which Livy could
draw for any of his extant books, and before condemning unqualifiedly
in the cases where he deserts him and harks back to Roman authorities
we must remember that Livy was a strong nationalist, one of a people
who, despite their conquests, were essentially narrow, prejudiced,
egotistical; and, t