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The aim of the author is to see how Livy gives an account of the two hundred and fifty episodes in which towns are taken by storm by the Romans or surrender to them. The narrative is most of the time short and factual, but there may also be some alterations to the plain chronological order, such as ellipses, diversions or reduplications. The narrator sometimes gives additional elements, in order to explain the fate of the town or to make it more pitiful, but he seldom speaks from an axiological or historiographical point of view. To sum up, there are two main factors which determine the way of reporting the facts in the Ab Vrbe condita: a) the importance of the fall of the town in the history of Rome b) Livy’s patriotism, which leads him to conceal or to justify the brutality of the Roman conquest.