| Livy's style has been often described but rarely analyzed. He is generally classed as a Ciceronian in thought and style, a characterization which disregards both his genre and the strongly non-Ciceronian elements of his writing. Little attention is paid to his debts to the historiographical tradition and to the literary and intellectual influences of his contemporaries. This thesis attempts to provide a more balanced and accurate assessment of Livy.;The thesis demonstrates (inter alia) that Livy was a far more self-conscious writer than has generally been thought. His manipulation of his sources is skillful, while his careful choice of words makes his language even richer than is usual in historia. His penchant for innovative expressions and syntax mark him as a harbinger of "Silver" Latin; point and inconcinnity are important features of his style, as is the almost poetic use of figurative language and aural effects. The structure of his narrative periods is unmistakably historical; his oratorical periods show a greater tendency to imbalance and color than Cicero's, though they are generally recognizable as oratory. Finally, his repetitiveness often has structural function, either delineating the sections of an episode or marking parts of a sentence or paragraph; this use of repetition as a stylistic device has parallels in poetic practice.;A tripartite introduction first looks at Livy's oldest critics, who are to a large extent responsible for the label "Ciceronian" and for crediting him with a dislike for Sallust; it is shown that these sources are not unbiased, and that modern interpretations of them are often inaccurate. Previous studies of Livian style are then discussed; a more fruitful method of close reading which analyzes Livy's his organizing techniques (e.g., sentence structure, textual architectonics) is detailed. A third section summarizes some results of that close reading. The bulk of the thesis is a linguistic and stylistic commentary on Livy 6.1-20; the Packard concordance is used to provide access to the rest of the history. Historical questions are disregarded except when they illustrate Livy's literary adaptation and correction of his sources. Several longer discussions of important thematic or structural features of the book are included (e.g., on Camillus; on Livy's construction of parallel episodes; on the Manlian seditio and its literary and historical roots). |
