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.