Laudator Temporis Acti

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), Short Talks with the Dead and Others (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928), pp. 43-44:

But there is more than that about ‘Tite-Live,’ as they call him over the water. There is the virile simplicity, the straightforwardness of his pen: very different from his successor, Tacit. There is the jolly jingoism of the fellow in which any honest man must, should and shall revel.

I had a long discussion some seven years ago, lasting far into the night, with the headmaster of one of the great public schools. The discussion turned upon a subject on which I was put down for a debate at the Cambridge Union that autumn—I forget for the moment whether for or against—to wit, ‘Whether the teaching of false history be not necessary to the State.’ Livy had no doubts. He was for the legend, first, last and all the time. He felt it in his bones that the greatness of Rome was to be supported by as much pro-Roman legend as he could manage—and he never faltered. He had the religion of patriotism—and I have known worse:

‘Et si cui populo licere oportet consecrare origines suas et ad Deos referre Auctores, ea belli gloria est populo Romano ut cum suum conditorisque sui parentem Martem potissimum ferat tam et hoc gentes humane patiantur aequo animo quam imperium patiuntur.’

The Latin passage comes from the preface to the first book of Livy, translated by B.O. Foster thus:

If any people ought to be allowed to consecrate their origins and refer them to a divine source, so great is the military glory of the Roman People that when they profess that their Father and the Father of their Founder was none other than Mars, the nations of the earth may well submit to this also with as good a grace as they submit to Rome’s dominion.