author
Livy
-58–16
Best known for a vast history of Rome, this classic historian turned the city’s legends, wars, and politics into one of antiquity’s most influential narratives. Even in partial survival, his work remains a major window into how Romans understood their past.
5 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Patavium, the city now called Padua, Livy was a Roman historian who lived from 59 BC to AD 17. He is known above all for Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City), a monumental history of Rome that originally stretched to 142 books and traced the story from Rome’s legendary beginnings onward.
Only part of that enormous work survives, but the books that remain helped shape later ideas about early Rome, the Republic, and the moral lessons history could teach. Rather than writing as a soldier or statesman, Livy wrote as a literary historian, bringing together tradition, drama, and patriotic memory in a style that made his history famous in his own lifetime.
Very little is known for certain about his private life, which makes the achievement of his writing stand out even more. For readers today, Livy offers not just facts about ancient Rome, but a vivid sense of how Romans imagined courage, ambition, failure, and civic duty.