SOURCE: Grafton, Anthony. “‘Discitur ut agatur’: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy.¹” In Annotation and Its Texts, edited by Stephen A. Barney, pp. 108-29. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

In the following essay, originally presented at a symposium in 1988, Grafton examines the evidence of Harvey's critical reading as found in his marginalia, observing the links between reading, eloquence, and power in the social order of Tudor England.

How did they understand Livy my grandfather my great grandfather—²

Zbigniew Herbert's question provokes and puzzles the historian of early modern culture as well as the reader of modern poetry. No Latin prose author stimulated more scholarly interpretations or artistic representations than Livy did between 1450 and 1650. His vast though incomplete epic of Roman history was thronged with exemplary heroes and heroines, terrifying villains, precedents for modern customs, and policies for modern rulers. His many dramatic incidents were not so much stable...