Hello, dear historians! I've been reading "Ad Urbe Condita" recently for my paper on republican mercenaries and something odd has happened. In the place of a book mentioned in the title I read this: "[P. Licinio consuli ad exercitum ciuilem socialemque petenti addita auxilia,] Ligurium duo milia, Cretenses sagitarii - incertus numerus quantum rogati (auxilia) cretenses missisent -, Numidae item equites elephantique." It is clear for me that this text can be divided in three different parts: 1. Livy tells us the exact number of ligurians; 2. Livy apologizes that the number of cretans is unknown; 3. Livy doesn't tell anything, no numbers, no apologies. I honestly think this is odd because Livy never used "incertus numerus" before and never uses again in the text. Because he doesn't use these words when he talks about numedian auxiliaries. How can he know the number of ligurians while not knowing the numbers of others? I checked and he doesn't quote nor Valerias Antias, nor Polybius in this part of a text.
Why? Who to blame? What to do? Please tell me if I go too far with this and this is just another mistake on Livy's conscience. Any kind of help will be greatly appreciated!
To be perfectly honest, I'm not really sure what you're asking here. Are you asking what Livy's sources are? The problem of Livy's sources is a vexed one, that you should probably look into yourself before anything else. Typically when Livy does not directly refer to a source we have little idea where he's getting his information. It's as likely that Livy is getting his figures from a series of inscriptions that might only preserve part of the information as it is that he's getting it from another author.
Have you looked at a commentary? If this isn't, as I suspect it in fact is, simply variatio then a commentary, either historical or linguistic, will almost certainly mention it. Commentators have combed through Livy's text, especially to look for correspondence with other texts.