Why do historians find Livy an unreliable source of information?
Historians find Livy an unreliable source of information because Livy was a historian in the loosest sense of the word. He did not travel much and had no intimate knowledge of political workings of Rome. [ In my opinion the real ancient historians came out of Greece. Greeks like Timaeus and Herodotus considered travel and research as an important factor in the writing of history. They would study the lands and customs of different cultures to gain sympathy of both sides. Its not even fair to say that Livy was ignorant to the Greek methodology because in the 3rd century BCE Rome expanded
south and came in contact with bilingual Greek historians. While Greek models of historic writings were available, Roman historians such as Livy used history in a nationalistic sense to inflate Roman superiority. His information often comes from unreliable sources and they were often contradictory
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