Livy and his historical writing have long occupied an ambiguous place within the field of modern classical scholarship. On the one hand, ancient historians primarily interested in historical events have generally treated Livy's narrative as simply an important source for much of Roman republican history, while viewing the surviving books of the Ab Urbe Condita as little more than Livy's rather clumsy and unimaginative redaction of the works of his annalistic predecessors. On the other hand, classicists chiefly concerned with matters of language and style have been interested in Livy's masterful shaping of the received historical tradition into well defined episodes with interlocking or overlapping themes. Consequently, these two approaches have spawned two rather distinct types of Livian historiography, which for the sake of convenience can be termed “the historical school" and "the literary school."