It is easy to belittle the contribution which technology can make to the appreciation of the classics but in one field at least, the compilation of Concordances, progress has been sensational. For over 200 years scholars have promised to produce a Concordance of Livy. No less than fourteen ventures have been advertised during that period – and have foundered. Now at last in Packard's monumental Concordance scholars of Livy's text and style have the tool for which they have waited so long. It is, of course, a tool conditioned by its own limitations: it is not analytical; it does not classify; and it accepts standard editions without considering textual difficulties. Nevertheless some indication of its value may be gained from the frequency with which its evidence is used in the following reconstruction of certain passages of Livy Book IX.

The manuscript tradition for that book is the same as that for the rest of the Decade. The Mediceus (M), supported by Gelenius' citations of a closely related manuscript, represents one tradition of the Nicomachean edition, except for chapters 9 to 14 where it appears that a quaternion in M's original was lost and was restored from the λ branch. The second tradition is divided into two independent branches π, most faithfully witnessed by the Paris (P) and Upsala (U) manuscripts, and λ, most faithfully witnessed by the Codex Thuaneus (T).