Two thousand years ago, an eminent Roman historian coined the popular aphorism, “Better late than never.” His name was Titus Livius, anglicized as simply Livy. True to the aphorism, he wrote much that deserves overdue attention today. Livy’s life (roughly 59 B.C. to about A.D. 17) spanned the most consequential period in the thousand-year history of ancient Rome. He witnessed the last decades of the crumbling old Republic and the rise in its place of the imperial autocracy we know as the Roman Empire. He was in his early 20s when the last great defender of the republican heritage, Cicero, was assassinated by a henchman of the tyrant Marc Antony. Livy observed the entirety of the reign of the first emperor, Augustus. He is best known for his history of Rome, “Ab Urbe Condita,” described both in his day and in ours with such terms as “monumental” and “magisterial.” What little we …