The European Reception of Livy (1469–1600)

Chapter 1 explores Livy’s early reception and translation in Renaissance Europe, examining the first, key decades in which the history reached a wider audience through its publication on the continent. The chapter first examines the literary fame enjoyed by Livy in Europe towards the end of the fifteenth century as well as the attempts of his earliest editors in print to impose some kind of critical order onto this monolithic work. The focus then moves to the first vernacular translations of Livy to have appeared in Europe, including the first renderings of the history into French and Italian. The final section considers the various translation styles at work in early-modern England and how these manifest themselves in each of the sixteenth-century translations of Livy.

Conclusion

The conclusion draws together the main themes and concerns of the book: namely how the translation and application of Livy in Tudor England was intricately connected to the most pressing political and cultural concerns of the day. So too it reflects on Livy’s impact on the vernacular literatures of the period, including William Painter’s novellas and Shakespeare’s poetry and prose. It also underlines the fact that, rather than a diminishing interest in Livy, the seventeenth century saw the historian at the heart of the constitutional debates underpinning the English Civil War. The translation of Livy in the early-modern period, as the conclusion underlines, functioned not only as a reflection of the political concerns of the moment, but also as an active attempt to reshape, refashion, and urge forward those concerns. Though Livy’s part in the Classical Reception of the early-modern era is sometimes underplayed, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of Livy’s contribution to the culture and politics of sixteenth-, and indeed seventeenth-, century England.

Philemon Holland’s Livy and Sir Francis Nethersole’s Problemes

Chapter 6 turns to Philemon Holland’s (1552–1637) enormous Romane Historie (1600), the first full-scale translation of Livy into English, completed in the final years of the sixteenth century. This chapter examines the use to which Francis Nethersole (bap. 1587, d. 1659) put Holland’s Tudor translation at the height of the English Civil War. Nethersole’s appeal to Livy in 1648 formed part of an ever-intensifying engagement with the AUC in the mid-seventeenth century. Nethersole harnessed sections from Books 8 and 9 of the AUC to a contemporary debate among the Parliamentarians concerning the punishment of Delinquents. These selections from Holland’s Livy are located in the wider context of the intense engagement with Livy’s history in the mid-seventeenth century, from Leveller pamphlets celebrating the expulsion of kings to royalist defences of absolute monarchy. With his account of Rome’s transition from monarchy to a consular republic, Livy was readily exploited in debates concerning the government and constitution of England, serving as one of the most prominent authorities of political thought during the English Civil War.

Livy’s Lucretia in English Poetry and Prose

Chapter 4 compares Painter’s re-politicizing of the Lucretia legend with Shakespeare’s adaptation of the same narrative in Lucrece. By returning to Livy, this chapter argues, Painter placed a renewed emphasis on the republican hero, Lucius Junius Brutus, whose presence in the narrative had been all but forgotten by the vernacular tradition. While Lucretia’s father and husband are dumbstruck by Lucretia’s suicide, it is Brutus who seizes the opportunity for action and takes their oath to avenge her death. Alerted to the dramatic force of Brutus’s intervention by Painter’s translation, Shakespeare harnessed Livy’s eloquent revolutionary not only in Lucrece, but also in Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Titus Andronicus. The significance of Brutus and his republican revolution to Shakespeare is thus traced across his plays and poetry, revealing Shakespeare’s consistent interest in this very specific politically charged moment in Roman history.

Roman History and the Status of Women

Chapter 3 locates William Thomas’s (d.1554) translation of a succinct but significant moment of the AUC concerning the repeal of the Lex Oppia, a sumptuary law targeting women in particular. The episode shows the women of Rome taking to the streets to demand the law’s repeal, forcing senators and tribunes alike to acknowledge their protest. Thomas thus chose to adapt one of the most arresting examples of women’s engagement in Roman politics. By choosing Livy as a champion of female autonomy, he went firmly against the contemporary grain, vying against more frequent appeals to the AUC as a means of censuring women’s dress and behaviour. Thomas was most probably alerted to this way of reading Livy during his extensive travel in Italy. During the Quattrocento, there had emerged a series of speeches and tracts concerning the status of women, which had similarly harnessed Livy in the defence of womankind. This chapter explores how Thomas was able combine these arguments with his own reading of classical history, producing a bold intervention in the Renaissance querelle des femmes.

Anthony Cope’s Livy

Chapter 2 explores how Sir Anthony Cope (1486/7–1551) translated Livy’s account of the Second Punic War for his The Historie of Two the Moste Noble Capitaines of the Worlde (1544), showcasing the martial prowess of Scipio and his Carthiginian opponent, Hannibal. Cope deliberately reworked the third decade as a commentary on contemporary foreign policy and war with Scotland. Cope, as this chapter explores, imbued his translation with a diplomatic lexicon which was becoming standardized under Henry VIII. By doing so, Cope produced a translation which supported the official Henrician view that all peaceful avenues of negotiation with Scotland had been exhausted. The struggles between Rome and Carthage thus became, in Cope’s hands, an endorsement of Henry’s renewal of hostilities with Scotland, complementing wider trends in Tudor Propaganda. In Cope’s Livy, as in Henrician England, there are limits to diplomacy.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Livy’s Legendary Rome

Chapter 5 explores the influence exerted by Livy on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Livy’s account of the early, legendary Rome makes itself felt in Macbeth in two distinct but complementary ways. When Hector Boece wrote his national history of Scotland, the Scotorum Historia (1527), he turned to Livy to fill the historical blanks in Scotland’s past. The Macbeth episode was no exception, and Boece modelled his Maccabeus closely on Livy’s Tarquin the Proud. Raphael Holinshed (c.1525–80?), relying on Boece’s Scotorum Historia, as well as its Scots translation by John Bellenden, for his Historie of Scotland, thereby incorporated these distinctly Livian elements into his own account of Macbeth’s reign. Shakespeare used Holinshed as his primary source for Macbeth and thus rehearsed a portrait of tyranny which was ultimately inspired by Livy’s Tarquin. The second means of transmission involves a new source for consideration: William Painter’s Second Tome of the Palace of Pleasure. By translating Livy for his novel the Two Roman Queenes, Painter highlighted the roles played by two female king-makers, Tanaquil and Tullia, in establishing and edifying the Tarquinian dynasty at Rome. It was Painter’s interpretation of Livy, this chapter argues, that alerted Shakespeare to the dramatically satisfying prospect of a wife who not only encourages her husband with an appeal to his masculinity, but readily participates in the crimes she would have her husband commit. There is more of ancient Rome to Shakespeare’s Scottish play, this chapter argues, than first meets the eye.

Introduction

The Introduction offers an outline of Livy’s life, classical reputation, and particular style of historiography. The study is then situated amid the major recent works on Classical Reception and Translation Studies, identifying its main contributions to the field. The introduction also sets out the main critical impulses at the heart of this monograph. Much like recent works on classical reception in English literature, this study of Livy’s early-modern reception is concerned with exploring how the classical work enriched the native tradition, uncovering the ways in which the AUC pushed literature in the English vernacular in new and politically challenging directions. And while giving deserved attention to the political and cultural contexts from which each of these translations emerged, this study, as the introduction explains, also attempts also to offer a detailed comparison of the Latin original with the English version, tracing the shifts in meaning and emphasis across the linguistic divide.