"Real, Solemn History"

In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen has the character Catherine Morland declare her dislike of "real, solemn history". She says, "it does not tell me anything that does not either vex or weary me . . .with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all--it is very tiresome . . . "

This week I'm reading a book that should qualify as "real, solemn history"--Livy's History of Early Rome. I'm happy to say that it has neither vexed nor wearied me and that good and bad men and women are included. I'm still in Book One and already there has been a spectacularly bad pair, Tullia, the daughter of King Servius Tullius and her brother-in-law, Lucius Tarquinius, or Tarquin. They each kill their spouses (she killing his brother, and he killing her sister) and then literally throw the king out of the Senate House and into the street, where their assassins kill him and Tullia runs over him in her carriage. Tarquin becomes king, and you can imagine what kind of king he is, after that beginning. He finally gets so bad that the populace demand that he and his family go into exile and the position of king be eliminated. Two consuls are elected and the Roman Republic is born.

Of course the ousted king stirs up trouble with Rome's enemies, and during the ensuing war a young girl is taken hostage. This girl, Cloelia, goes against Catherine's theory of history by being both good and a woman. She bravely escapes from the enemy's guards and leads a group of captured girls to swim across the Tiber River and back to the safety of their families. The enemy king is so impressed that he asks for her to be returned to him (curiously, the Romans comply). He then praises her publicly and allows her to select other hostages to be freed. Livy tells us that a statue of Cloelia on horseback was set up at the top of the Sacred Way after the war. There are two other heroes mentioned in this particular war. One tries to assassinate the enemy king and then puts his hand into fire to prove that no punishment will deter him. The other fights off the entire enemy army at the most vulnerable entrance to the city, a wooden bridge, while Roman soldiers work at destroying it. He holds off the enemy until the bridge collapses and then jumps into the river fully armed and swims to safety. He, too gets a statue. By the time Livy wrote down these stories they'd had 500 years to improve. I wonder how much is real and how much legend. Still, it's history--solemn, but not at all tiresome.