Livy is certainly a wonderful read and the basis of many of the civic myths that the Romans cherished about themselves which have come down to us as history, but his pro-Roman partiality in writing about the Carthaginians must be taken into account.

Above all it must be recognized that Livy is not a primary source. He did not witness the events about which he wrote, or speak with eyewitnesses. His accuracy therefore comes down to his diligence as a researcher, and here there is definitely grounds for criticism. In many cases he appears to have not visited the sites of the events he describes and he relied heavily on pro-Roman literature that he seems to have been reluctant to evaluate for its accuracy. Certainly he seems to have been eager to please his audience and not tell them anything that they didn't want to hear.

In this respect Livy is of course hardly unique, even today, and his importance is not to be confused with his accuracy. His style, too, by its very readability, can make hard-core historians a little skeptical. Thucydides' style seems much more objective, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Thucydides was completely impartial. Livy was telling wonderful stories, and stories have come to seem somehow less serious than 'history'.

Not many people today believe that the city of Rome was founded in exactly 753 BC, or that the whole Tarquin-Lucretia-Brutus story is 'true'. Livy probably had no more actual primary souce material for the first 500 years of Rome's history than we do today, and perhaps less as modern archeology has shown us a great deal about early Rome. If he made up all those stories about the Sabine women and so on, how much can we trust his writing in later parts of the book?