Whereas the Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius has won the highest praise for his successivecommented editions of Tacitus’ Annales and Historiae, hitherto no attention has been paidto his philological and antiquarian study of Livy. By editing, emending and lecturing onLivy’s monumental history of Rome, however, Lipsius not only followed in the footstepsof famous scholars such as Petrarch, Henricus Glareanus and Carolus Sigonius, but alsocontinued a tradition at the Louvain Collegium Trilingue. A close investigation of Lipsius’Epistolicae Quaestiones, which contain a masterly sample of textual criticism, enables usto judge Lipsius’ correction of Livy against the emendatio lipsiana applied to Tacitus, thusshedding light on both the methods and achievements of one of the leading classical philologistsof the sixteenth century.
