“What conditions existed before the founding of the city or when it was being built are passed down as the fanciful tales of poets rather than the tested truths of history; and it is not my plan to confirm or refute them. It is the license of the ancient past to make the city more prominent by mixing human origins with the divine. And if it is permitted for any people to claim their own origins as sacred and to make their founders gods, then the glory of the Roman people in war is so great that, when they claim that most powerful Mars is the father of their own founder, surely the races of man can endure it as easily as they do Roman empire.”
Quae ante conditam condendamve urbem poeticis magis decora fabulis quam incorruptis rerum gestarum monumentis traduntur, ea nec adfirmare nec refellere in animo est. Datur haec venia antiquitati ut miscendo humana divinis primordia urbium augustiora faciat; et si cui populo licere oportet consecrare origines suas et ad deos referre auctores, ea belli gloria est populo Romano ut cum suum conditorisque sui parentem Martem potissimum ferat, tam et hoc gentes humanae patiantur aequo animo quam imperium patiuntur
“…surely the races of man can endure it as easily as they do Roman empire.” — Livy having a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun, or…?
I suspect he’s dead serious here…