unvisited convent or forgotten library may yet give to the world a
work that must always be regarded as one of the greatest of Roman
masterpieces. The story that the destruction of Livy was effected by
order of Pope Gregory I, on the score of the superstitions contained
in the historian's pages, never has been fairly substantiated, and
therefore I prefer to acquit that pontiff of the less pardonable
superstition involved in such an act of fanatical vandalism. That the
books preserved to us would be by far the most objectionable from
Gregory's alleged point of view may be noted for what it is worth in
favour of the theory of destruction by chance rather than by design.

Here is the inventory of what we have and of what we might have had.
The entire work of Livy--a work that occupied more than forty years
of his life--was contained in one hundred and forty-two books, which
narrated the history of Rome, from the supposed landing of Æneas,
through the early years of the empire of Augustus, and down to the
death of Drusus, B.C. 9. Books I-X, containing the story of early
Rome to the year 294 B.C., the date of the final subjugation of the
Samnites and the consequent establishment of the Roman commonwealth as
the controlling power in Italy, remain to us. These, by the accepted
chronology, represent a period of four hundred and sixty years. Books
XI-XX, being the second "decade," according to a division attributed
to the fifth century of our era are missing. They covered seventy-five
years, and brought the narrative down to the beginning of the second
Punic war. Books XXI-XLV have been saved, though those of the fifth
"decade" are imperfect. They close with the triumph of Æmilius, in 167
B.C., and the reduction of Macedonia to a Roman province. Of the other
books, only a few fragments remain, the most interesting of which
(from Book CXX) recounts the death of Cicero, and gives what appears
to be a very just estimate of his character. We have epitomes of all