NB. Papers not included in the
seven volumes of Roman
Papers (1979–1991). In
chronological order as reprinted and sourced in Ten Studies in Tacitus (1970, TST),
Danubian Papers (1971, DP) and Historia Augusta Papers (1983, HAP). Footnotes abridged. Passages in
square brackets are editorial additions. All translations from Latin and Greek are
taken from the Loeb
Classical Library.
Personal
Names in Annales I–VI [1949, TST VI]
JRS xxxix (1949), 6–18
[...]
Again, an error here and there, of a
kind not obviously to be explained by a copyist’s confusion of forms and
letters, might be due to the author’s own inadvertence. A Roman senator or a
Roman historian carried in his head an enormous collection of names and
personalities, for that was a necessary equipment in either profession if a man
were not to incur the deadly reproach of ignorance about the res publica in one at least of its
aspects, namely knowing who was who in politics. Prosopography is not a modern
invention. Though Tacitus was a scrupulous investigator, as witness his note on
an obscure fellow – ‘originem non repperi [whose antecedents I have not discovered.]’
(Ann. VI. 7. 4) – the very variety and
complexity of the material might cause a senator or a historian to make a slip
about a name, in speech or in writing.
How Tacitus
Came to History [1955, TST II]
published in Greece and Rome IV (1957), 160–7.
It is a question worth the asking, at
what season in his life a man comes to the writing of history, with what
equipment for the task and under what compulsion. Cornelius Tacitus did not
discover his vocation until he had passed the age of forty. Was that late or
early? Late, in the opinion of some scholars, late and almost anomalous. Gaston
Boissier avowed his surprise on the first page of his Tacite, a book published in the year 1903, and held in merited
esteem for its combination of elegance and judgement. And, more recently (in
1947), Ernst Kornemann, the last survivor of that notable company, the pupils
of Theodor Mommsen, affirmed it is an axiom that Tacitus came late to history.
Impressive testimony, but it derives
from misconceptions. One can easily divine what was in the minds of those men –
and one can discover their national prepossessions. Literary talent is an early
blossom in the favouring climate of France, whereas Germany in the modern world
created the schools and system of historical research. The professional
historian begins when young his apprenticeship to the trade, acquires the tools
for research, masters what is euphemistically called the ‘literature on the
subject’, and, working to direction, will no doubt produce before long a solid
contribution to learning.
Rome was very different. History took
its origin from political life, and from the political class. It was first
written by senators, and it continued for a long time to be the jealous
preserve of the governing order. They drew upon mature experience of men and
affairs, they fought again the battles of the Forum and the Curia. If they
composed in retirement, it was not always in tranquillity, or tempered with
charity. They knew too much to be hopeful; and pessimism might be sharpened by
personal rancour.
Political vicissitudes can be the
making of an historian. Sallust almost confesses it in his first work, the Catilina. In his youth, he says, he
responded to the call of action and honour and glory. But the times were evil,
and he had been corrupted by ambition. Now at last he had come out of the
turmoil. He was cured (‘ubi animus ex multis miseriis atque periculis requievit
[it was not my plan to waste my precious leisure in indolence and sloth, nor
yet to spend my life by devoting myself to the slavish employments of turning
the soil or hunting]’[1]),
and had resolved to pass what remained of life far from politics. He would put
leisure to good use. Not hunting or agricultural pursuits. He would write
history.
Sallust had been a turbulent tribune
of the plebs; he incurred feuds, and he made enemies. Expelled from the Senate,
he came back as a partisan of Caesar, commanded troops, nearly perished in a
soldiers’ mutiny, and ended his career as a governor of a province in Africa.
When Sallust retired, it was to a palace, to the gardens on the Esquiline that
perpetuate his name in imperial Rome. On a cool estimate Asinius Pollio can
also be reckoned among the profiteers of the revolutionary age. An orator, a
soldier, and a diplomat, he forswore politics soon after his consulate in 40
B.C., and refused to take sides ever again. Sallust was in his middle forties
when he wrote his first historical monograph, and some time elapsed after
Pollio’s consulate before Pollio embarked on that famous history of his own
epoch, ‘motum ex Metello consule civicum [the civil strife that began with
Metellus’ consulship][2]’.
To Sallust and Pollio there can be no
greater contrast than Livy. He had no share in the res publica, no public office that established his dignity,
deepened his understanding – and justified the writing of Roman history. He
came from a private station, from the schools of rhetoric, where he learned the
craft of words, and perhaps taught it.
Livy did not like the Sallustian
manner of writing. And indeed, if Sallust’s style was detestable, that was not
the worst thing about him. The politician who turned moralist, the Sabine
sermonizer of dubious conduct, the comfortable author of pessimistic history –
a disquieting figure. And Pollio the consular was little better: a Republican
who survived the Republic, enjoying riches and esteem under a régime he
professed to disavow, but proud, savage, and censorious.
Livy was repelled by those detractors
of humanity; and, while acknowledging the exciting appeal of recent and
contemporary history, he prefers to turn aside and seek consolation in ancient
and happier times, escaping from ‘the tribulations which our age has witnessed
through so many years’. He trusts that the annals of an earlier Rome will prove
salubrious and edifying. Writers like Sallust and Pollio had been eager to show
up the dark and devious ways of men and governments....
There are other contrasts. Livy was
young – only about thirty when he began (if the traditionally accepted date of
birth, 59 B.C., is to be followed). He had not been anywhere: there is no sign
that he had ever left Italy, and he seems to have spent most of his long life
quietly, in his native Patavium.
It follows that Livy in a number of
respects is an eccentric in the line of the Roman historians. Cornelius
Tacitus, however, was a senator and a consul. His career as a senator before
the consulate coincides almost exactly with the fifteen years of Domitian’s
reign (81–96). Not only was he familiar with the political and social life of
the capital – he had been abroad at least once in the service of the State, for
three or four years (and perhaps more than once). Tacitus knew the provinces
and the Empire.
If any testimony be needed of the
benefits of foreign travel, let Edward Gibbon be cited, who, bringing his
continental tour to a suitable climax explains how he first came to conceive
the great design – ‘it was at Rome on the 15th of October 1764, as I
sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were
singing Vespers in the Temple of Jupiter’. Gibbon was then twenty-seven. It was
in the same season of life that an illustrious historian[3]
in a later age contemplated in the vale of Sparta the majestic panorama of
civilizations.
The resemblance might amuse a
philosophic mind (for here a Gibbonian phrase is in keeping) – and the
contrast. And it may happen that the retrospective memory embellishes a little,
or a project is postponed. Three years later we discover Edward Gibbon writing
not about Rome, but about the Swiss republics....
[...]
Trajan was the right man, ‘capax
imperii’. That phrase is not found in the Agricola, but it occurs elsewhere in
the writings of Tacitus more than once, and it is highly significant. To the
least percipient of readers in the modern age the phrase will evoke the Emperor
Galba, whom the insurrections in the west that brought down Nero conveyed to
the power for a brief tenure ending in disaster, ‘omnium consensu capax imperii
nisi imperasset [equal to the imperial office if he had never held it]’[4].
And Galba became startling and contemporary when history repeated itself less
than thirty years later, when another dynasty ended abruptly.
The elevation of Galba was an
accident, the product of the confused events before and after the fall of Nero.
The armies acquiesced, but some were sullen and angry. In Upper Germany the
legions had offered the purple to the commander, Verginius Rufus, who refused:
only the Senate, he said, was competent to confer the power. Verginius affirmed
a principle, and embellished his fame thereafter. In truth the power was beyond
his reach – being the first of his family to enter the governing class, he
lacked prestige and alliances.
Galba had birth, wealth, and a
reputation. Empire found him out. In desperation he chose an associate, whom he
adopted as his son and heir. Not a man who knew government and the armies, but
a young aristocrat of blameless character, Piso Licinianus – who had lived long
in exile. A bad choice, and in any event too late. The legions on the Rhine
already had proclaimed an emperor of their own, Vitellius. Galba perished but
not in battle against Vitellius: he was killed in the Roman Forum by the
Praetorian Guard, whose candidate was Otho. A sequence of wars and
proclamations began, with Otho and Vitellius destroyed in turn before the year
was out.
When a generation had elapsed and the
dynasty of the Flavii went the way of the Julii and Claudii, past history came
to life again, sudden and menacing. How far would the resemblance go? The
conspirators had been able to produce an emperor, M. Cocceius Nerva, whom birth
and social elegance commended, with a long experience at court and all the diplomatic arts. But Nerva had
never seen a province or an army. How long would he last?
Despotism was abolished, and Rome was
born anew. ‘Libertas’ and ‘Roma renascens’ duly appear on the currency – and
other legends that recall 68 and 69. Thus ‘concordia exercituum’, announcing
that the armies are of one mind in loyalty to the government. That assertion
was sinister, and suggestive. The armies had yet to speak. It was everybody’s
secret since Nero’s end that an emperor did not have to be made at Rome.
In the course of the year 97 rumours
were going about – the governor of Syria might be the next emperor. Nothing
happened, and the great armies in the zone of the northern frontiers on Rhine
and Danube showed no overt menace. In the month of October the storm broke. It
originated in the city of Rome.
The Guard rose in mutiny. The soldiers
besieged the Palace, calling for vengeance on the assassins of Domitian. Nerva
complied, and he was forced to render solemn and public thanks to the troops.
He had forfeited all authority, and his government was tottering to its fall.
He could not escape to the armies, but there was one remedy, and he took it.
Mounting the Capitol, he stood before the altar of Jupiter Optimus Maximus,
there to announce that he took a partner in the power. He nominated one of the
generals, Trajan, the governor of Upper Germany. All disturbance abated, and
everybody was happy.
Galba and Nerva: the parallel of an
adoption in extremity was patent – the outcome by contrast felicitous. There
were aristocrats available, among them Calpurnius Crassus whose pedigree
carried names of ancient power, the dynasts Crassus and Pompeius (and he was
nephew of the Piso chosen by Galba), but Nerva passed them over. Trajan
belonged to the new aristocracy of the Empire.
And there were other parallels of
scene and of character between 69 and 97. Now Tacitus was consul in 97, a fact
of vital importance in his conversion from oratory to the writing of history.
Of his actions in the tenure of that office only one thing stands on record. A
letter of his friend Pliny narrates the obsequies of the venerable Verginius
Rufus, who died after a long illness at the age of eighty-three. Verginius was
accorded a public funeral, the laudation being spoken by the consul Cornelius
Tacitus: ‘nam his supremus felicitati eius cumulus accessit, laudator
eloquentissimus [a most eloquent orator, and his tribute put the crowning touch
to Verginius’s good fortune]’[5].
The Senator
as Historian [1956, TST I]
Histoire et historiens dans l’antiquité, Tome IV, Fondation Hardt.
[...]
In the beginning, history was written
by senators (first a Fabius, and Cato was the first to use the Latin language);
it remained for a long time the monopoly of the governing order; and it kept
the firm imprint of its origins ever after. The senator came to his task in
mature years, with a proper knowledge of men and government, a sharp and
merciless insight. Taking up the pen, he fought again the old battles of Forum
and Curia. Exacerbated by failure or not mollified by worldly success, he
asserted a personal claim to glory and survival; and, if he wrote in retirement
from affairs, it was not always with tranquillity of mind.
Sallust had been a tribune of the
plebs, active and turbulent in a year of anarchy, the third consulate of
Pompeius Magnus; he was expelled from the Senate by the censors of 50 B.C.; he
saw warfare and governed a province for Caesar. His career being terminated
(and a fortune amassed), he proposed to put his leisure to good employ, cured
(so he professed) from the errors and ambition of his earlier life, a wiser
man, and liberated from the spirit of party. To go in for hunting or practise
agriculture was ignoble: he would write history. After the two monographs,
Sallust embarked on an ample narration. The subject of his Historiae might be described as the decline of that oligarchy which
Sulla had brought back to power, with Pompeius Magnus at first and for a long
time the enemy of the Optimates, then
their false friend, and leading to catastrophe.
Sallust had not got further than the
year 67 when he died. Asinius Pollio took up the tale, a commander of armies
and a diplomat in high or secret negotiations, a partisan of Caesar and of
Antonius but professing to be a Republican at heart. Soon after his consulship
(40 B.C. ), Pollio forswore
politics, turning to letters. He composed tragedies on mythological subjects
(no trace survives), but soon found a more congenial occupation in recording
the transactions of his own time, a theme which was also the fall of the Roman
Republic, ‘periculosae plenum opus aleae’ [a dangerous gamble at every point][6].
Tacitus came to history in the same
season of life as Sallust and Pollio. His experience was comparable. Not, it is
true, the long agony of the civil wars, but the equivalent – ‘saeva pax’[7]
and a precarious equilibrium. He was consul
suffectus under Nerva in 97, holding
the fasces for a term of two months
somewhere in the second half of that year. A few months pass and he comes
forward with a monograph of his wife’s father, Julius Agricola, consul and
governor of Britain. A first essay, for he intends to go and narrate the reign
of Domitian, the fifteen years of silence and humiliation, ‘quindecim annos,
grande mortalis aevi spatium [fifteen years, during which young men reached old
age][8]’,
to stand as testimony of past enslavement and present felicity.
The political events and arguments of
97 lie behind the Agricola. Tacitus
pays due homage to the happy epoch now dawning: ‘felicitas temporum [the
happiness of the times]’[9].
As would be expected, the treatise is an attack on the dead tyrant. It is also
an attack on political extremists, namely the party of the opposition, the
intractable men and the martyrs, who perished with no advantage to the ‘res
publica’. Tacitus in a passionate outburst goes out of his way to assert that a
man can do his duty to the Commonwealth even under bad emperors. That is a
defence of the cautious and virtuous Agricola. Also a defence of Cornelius
Tacitus, who had made a good career under Domitian. Also (it can be divined) a
defence of somebody else, none other than M. Ulpius Traianus, commander of the
army of Germania Superior, who had been adopted by Nerva as his son and
successor in October of 97.
That is not all. The year 97 (it can
be argued) is also behind the Historiae
of Tacitus. As the subject of his projected work, the eloquent consular
announced the reign of Domitian. As it happened, he went back to 69. The reason
is plain. The brief reign of Nerva had brought the past to life again, sharp
and terrifying. The parallel between Galba and Nerva was inescapable – a weak
emperor, the threat of civil war, the role of the Praetorian Guard, and an
adoption in extremity. The one act failed, the other succeeded. Galba’s choice
was foolish and fatal, but Nerva elected a man who was ‘capax imperii [equal to
the imperial office]’[10].
Consul in 97, Tacitus witnessed the disintegration of a government, the menace
from the army commanders and the veiled coup
d’état that brought Trajan to the power.
The theme of the Histories is the
murderous story of civil war and despotism – the rapid events of 69 followed by
the twenty-seven years’ rule of the Flavian emperors. Enough, perhaps, for one
man’s achievement. An interval elapsed. Tacitus went out to Asia as proconsul
(112/13, summer to summer). At some time after his return he set himself to a
second task.
It would be entertaining to speculate
about his reasons (personal and political), and perhaps fruitless. We know very
little about Cornelius Tacitus. Yet one supposition could be hazarded. In the
late years of Trajan, a man could stand at a point of vantage, with a long
perspective backwards. The time had come to ask when it was that the Principate
took an evil turn, and why, to trace the decline of the dynasty from the
Principate of Tiberius Caesar to the despotism of Nero, to analyse a process
which was at the same time the decline and fall of the Roman aristocracy.
Tacitus proposed to narrate the story of
the Caesars according to the canons and manner of the Republic. Hence the
traditional and annalistic structure. The method labours under sundry disadvantages.
On the one hand, it breaks the unity of large subjects and disperses the
interest. On the other, it produces a catalogue of heterogeneous items. Tacitus
himself comes out with sporadic complaints, and modern scholars have not been
slow to fasten upon the defects and constraints of the annalistic framework.
By contrast, it is the signal
advantages that ought to be emphasized. First, and patently, chronology. How
dispense with dates? Sallust tried in the Bellum
Jugurthinum, and the result is not at all encouraging. Under the Empire, it
might be urged, new and better types of dating offered. Reflection inspires a
doubt. There were various complications in computing the regnal years of emperors,
for example by the tribunicia potestas.
Moreover, eras of that kind would be repulsive to a senator. It was the aim of
Tacitus to write about Rome and the Senate, not merely the dynasty. He did not
want his Roman annals to degenerate into a sequence of imperial biographies.
Let us be grateful for eponymous
consuls. The schema came as a blessing to a compiler, a copyist, or a mere
‘exornator rerum’: it saved him from many of the errors, inherent in his
ignorance or his lack of a living interest in the ‘res publica’. But it could
not hamper a bold, vigorous, and selective writer. Knowledge of government,
artistic skill and architectonic power would prevail.
Tacitus had abundant information, and
he operated with great freedom. About his sources in the Annales, there has been interminable debate, not all of it wise or
profitable. To take the first hexad. Tacitus claims or plainly implies that he
had read all the authors who dealt with Tiberius Caesar, and he can be
believed. The question arises, what value and credit did he accord them? We have
his condemnatory verdict on the writing of history under the Caesars – the
living adulated, the dead defame (I.1). One might therefore be tempted to
refrain from conjuring with names and the unknown. Still less the phantom of
the ‘Single Source’. Or rather (let it be postulated) there is a single source
and a straight path – the archives of the Roman Senate.
Many scholars have doubted whether
Tacitus had recourse to the acta senatus
often, or at all; and peculiar argumentation had been adduced. Was not the
answer before their eyes, in the matter and structure of the Tiberian books?
Observe the sheer mass of senatorial transactions, debates reported at
different stages, debates that led to no conclusion – and the long strings of
personal names attesting the diligence of documentary enquiry and the
ever-vigilant interest of a Roman senator. The years 20, 21, and 22 (III. 20-76) are instructive and
convincing. A full record, though nothing much happened. For the plan of his
work Tacitus needed to fill up the interval between the prosecution of Cn.
Piso, the governor of Syria (that is, the aftermath of Germanicus), and the
death of Drusus Caesar, the son of Tiberius. Other historians might have passed
quickly from the one event to the other.
Having command of material from the acta, Tacitus can expand or contract,
select or omit. And he has free scope with supplementary devices.
First, the speeches. The
pronouncements of Tiberius Caesar were of paramount value, not only for matters
of state but as a clue to the secret nature of that enigmatic ruler. And the
style was not uncongenial. Commenting on the oratorical performance of the
Caesars, Tacitus pays an expert’s tribute – ‘Tiberius artem quoque callebat qua
verba expenderet, tum validus sensibus aut consulto ambiguus [Tiberius was, in
addition, a master of the art of weighing words – powerful, moreover, in the
expression of his views, or, if ambiguous, ambiguous by design]’ (XIII. 3). It could be supposed
that he followed the imperial orations fairly closely; and it might not be
fanciful to look for traces of Tiberius’ manner, and even of his diction.
Tiberius is perhaps the most impressive orator in the Annales.
Tacitus can also invent. He produces a
petition from the imperial minister Aelius Seianus, asking for the hand of a
princess in marriage, and the Emperor’s answer, cautious and temporizing, but
with a note of encouragement towards the end and an amicable hint of plans for
Seianus’ benefit not yet quite ripe for disclosure (IV. 39 f.). No reward (he said) was
too high for the virtues and the loyalty of Seianus: which he would not
hesitate to proclaim to Senate or People, when the time came.
Similarly, speeches from senators. A
historian, Cremutius Cordus, threatened with prosecution, enters the Senate and
delivers a noble oration on history and liberty (IV. 34 f.). Not, one suspects, to
be discovered in the acta senatus...
Next, the digressions. The author was
free to enlarge on all manner of topics that engaged his attention. For
example, when a proposal is made in the Senate to modify one of the Augustan
laws about marriage, the Lex Papia
Poppaea, Tacitus subjoins an excursus on the history of legislation from
the beginning down to the third consulate of Pompeius Magnus – which consulate
he links to the laws enacted in 28 B.C. when Augustus in his sixth consulship
established the Principate (III. 26–8). That was the beginning
of more rigorous control – ‘acriora ex eo vincula [thenceforward the fetters
were tightened]’. Again, when an attempt was made to saddle Tiberius with a
programme of measures against luxury and extravagance, Tiberius in a dispatch
to the Senate deprecates any action of the sort; he points out that the laws of
Augustus were unsuccessful, and he implies that they were misconceived (III. 53 f.). The historian
reinforces the speech with a digression. He affirms that luxury flourished
unabated all through, from the War of Actium to the fall of Nero; and he adds a
diagnosis, explaining the more sober standards of life and conduct that
prevailed in his own time (III. 55).
Speech and digression, carefully
selected incidents or unobtrusive comment, Tacitus compensates for one of the
disadvantages of beginning a history with the year 14: he is able to introduce
references to what preceded, with criticism of Augustus, insidiously. At the
funeral of Augustus the men of understanding, the ‘prudentes’, expatiate upon
the life and work of the Princeps (I. 9 f.). Praise is the smaller
portion. The comments of Tacitus later on in the hexad perhaps add up to
something much more deadly and subversive.
As has been said, senatorial business
in the Annales, by its selection and
arrangement, indicates the senator. Also the frequent names, as witness the
seven men of rank whose ‘sententiae’ are registered by the historian after the
suicide of an alleged conspirator, the silly Scribonius Libo – ‘quorum
auctoritates adulationesque rettuli ut sciretur vetus id in re publica malum [this
union of sounding names and sycophancy I have recorded as showing how long that
evil has been rooted in the State]’ (II. 32).
A sharp eye for personal and family
history surveyed the record of Roman public life in the days of Tiberius
Caesar. First, the nobiles, whose
names evoked the old Republic: many still extant in the early Principate,
having survived the wars of the Revolution, but destined to be destroyed by the
dynasty of Julii and Claudii. Next, families that had come to recent prominence
through the patronage of the Caesars, and were conspicuous in the historian’s
own time. He would be alert to discern their earliest emergence, which was not
always honourable – avid careerists, ruthless prosecutors, or adherents of
Seianus. Many names, and the need for accuracy: he wrote for a subtle and
malicious audience. It is clear enough that a history of Tiberius’ reign
composed by somebody not a senator would be very different from the Annales.
Not merely a Roman senator is there
revealed, but precisely Cornelius Tacitus, consul, XV vir sacris faciundis and proconsul of Asia. It might be worth
looking for the trace of his predilections in odd items – and especially where
the subject matter was not imposed but selected. That is to say, in speeches
and digressions. The Annales disclose
a keen interest in the religious antiquities of the Roman State. Tacitus by the
time of his praetorship (in 88) was one of the quindecimviri who kept the Sibylline Oracles and had the
supervision over cults of extraneous origin. A member of that college knew all
about prophecies, numerical calculations and certain official ceremonies – and
(let it be added) he acquired fresh reasons for a sceptical attitude towards
the conduct of men and governments.
Again, the full documentation about
the affairs of Asia. Debates about temples and the right of asylum or the
vicissitudes of proconsuls (a prosecution or even a murder) help to certify the
ex-consul who had held the twelve fasces
in that province.
[...]
So far the structure and matter of the
Annales (with especial reference to
the first hexad). The style is in keeping. That the manner and words of Roman
historians would tend to reproduce an earlier age is a natural assumption, even
if history had not so often been written by politicians in retirement, acrid if
not resentful, and prone to exalt the past to the detriment of the present. The
Empire enhanced the appeal of antiquity.
With the first six books of the Annales, the style of Tacitus reaches
its peak – less eloquent than in the Historiae,
stronger and tighter, more archaic and more Sallustian. The advance on the Historiae can be easily documented.
Likewise the different manner that becomes more and more perceptible in the
course of the third hexad as extant (XIII–XVIII). Various reasons could be
assigned. Perhaps the author failed to revise, or was cut short by death.
However that may be, there is another reason that could be given some weight. To
a contemporary of Trajan, Tiberius Caesar belonged to a past already far
distant; born in the year of Philippi, he was an anachronism, and was proud to
be such; under his principate there still subsisted ‘quaedam imago rei publicae
[some shadow of the republic]’[11].
Nero, however, was imperial and contemporary – alarmingly so, if one reflected
on who was to succeed Trajan.
[...]
His vocabulary betrays his aversions.
Instead of ‘auctoritas’ he prefers the revealing ‘potentia’, its pejorative
synonym. ‘Aeternitas’ had come to be attached, not only to the Empire of Rome,
but to the divinity of the emperors: the word is admitted once only in the Annales, in reported discourse (XI. 7). Tacitus has a proper
dislike for ‘pius’ and ‘felix’; and ‘felicitas’ is found only twice, each time
in reference to the resplendent success of the same novus homo, namely Seneca (XIII. 43 [sic: 42]; XIV. 53). ‘Providentia’ occurs
once, and that in derision – for nobody could help laughing when the funeral
oration on dead Claudius passed on to an allusion to his ‘providentia’ (XIII. 3). The senator furnishes a
useful (and necessary) antidote to the legends advertised on coins.
Matter and style reflect the senator,
likewise tone and sentiments. The rule of one man was installed at Rome to
abate strife, control the armies and hold the Empire together. That was clear,
and conceded (Hist. I. 1; Ann. I. 9). The non-political
classes acclaimed the new order everywhere, with enthusiasm, but no senator
could bring himself to confess a joyous acceptance: he was resigned, or bitter
(and none the less bitter if he had recently come to high status). What the
Princeps gained, the Senate lost – honour as well as power, and the imperial
administration steadily encroached. Not despotism, to be sure, but the
Principate, so it was proclaimed. The senator will be alert for the contrasts
of name and fact, contemptuous of sporadic subservience or the manifestations
of organized loyalty.
On the face of things, Tacitus might
be claimed a Republican – if it were clear what substance could be given to
that term under the Caesars. One layer deeper, and he is revealed, like so many
others, as an opportunist, advocating the middle path in politics and hoping
that chance or destiny would bring forth some ruler who might be better than
the worst. Men and character matter, not system or doctrine. Hence the
preoccupation with the theme ‘capax imperii’.
‘Urbem Romam’, with these words the Annales begin. The City appears to be at
the centre of a senator’s interest, as under the Republic. That is not,
however, the anachronism it might seem. Rome is still the seat of power,
however much the Palace, the bureaucrats and the managers of secret influence
may tend to supplant the Senate and the senatorial order. Tacitus is a
political historian. Provinces and armies have their proper place – they will
come into the narrative when they count (as they would in Book XVIII of the Annales).
Otherwise, the subjects of Rome and
foreign nations (like the lower classes) have a minor place. The inherited
pride of an imperial people speaks through the mouth of Tacitus, with scorn and
distaste for the foreigner, notably the Greek and the Jew (and for the Greek an
aversion that exaggerates almost to parody the attitudes of old Romans). On the
other hand, he knew and valued the northern barbarians; and, despising the
conventional apologia for Rome’s dominion over the nations, he insists on
showing up the violence and oppression.
No senator could refuse to pay homage
to the tradition of Rome and the Republic. The word ‘priscus’ exercises an
irresistible appeal. Praise of the past was normal and necessary. It did not
always blind a man to the times he lived in, or influence his conduct overmuch.
In a debate about the wives of proconsuls, Valerius Messallinus speaks for the
modern and humane view, deprecating the rigour of traditionalists: the ‘duritia
veterum [old-world harshness]’ was out of place (III. 34). The author himself, in
the digression on luxury, puts in a quiet plea at the end – ‘nec omnia apud
priores meliora, et nostra quoque aetas multa laudis et artium imitanda
posteris tulit [nor, indeed, were all things better in the old time before us;
but our own age too has produced much in the sphere of true nobility and much
in that of art which posterity well may imitate]’ (III. 55).
The writings of Tacitus are fierce and
gloomy. That also (it should seem) is
in the tradition, Sallust having set the tone, and no reason for dissent
emerging subsequently in the history of Rome. Even without the fifteen years of
the Domitianic tyranny, there was enough in the senatorial existence to
predispose a man to a general suspicion of human behaviour and motives, a distrust
of comforting beliefs, a propensity to the darker side. Yet it cannot with any
confidence be assumed that Tacitus was not a robust, balanced, and cheerful
character. The writer and the man are not always the same person.
For, it must be asked at the end, who
is Tacitus? Not only a Republican, an imperialist, a conservative, a pessimist,
but also a descendant of the ancient nobilitas,
so some have fancied. On what grounds? The Annales
show Tacitus preoccupied with the vicissitude of aristocratic families.
Further, he has sundry remarks in dispraisal of Roman knights and novi homines – for example, Aelius
Seianus, paramour of a princess of the dynasty, is styled ‘municipalis adulter
[market-town adulterer]’, and the lady is taken severely to task for bringing
disgrace on herself, her ancestors and descendants (IV. 3).
All of that need indicate one thing
only: the writer conforms to Roman tradition and assumes the manner and the
pride of the Roman nobilitas. Not,
therefore, one of the patrician Cornelii. The truth may be such as would have
appealed to the irony of Cornelius Tacitus himself. He has fooled posterity.
The patria of the historian may be in the provinces of the West, and
further even, his ultimate extraction not colonial but native. Perhaps from
Forum Julii in Narbonensis, the home of Julius Agricola, his wife’s father;
possibly from Vasio of the Vocontii, that elegant and prosperous city. The novus homo and senatorial historian
stands in the line of succession that goes back to Asinius Pollio of the
Marrucini, whose grandfather fought for Italy against Rome in the great
rebellion, to Sallustius Crispus from Amiternum in the Sabine country, to
Porcius Cato, the ‘inquilinus [tenant]’ from Tusculum, consul and censor.
Some Pisones
in Tacitus [1956, TST V]
JRS xlvi (1956), 17–21
[...]
Frequent recourse to labels of
identity did not appeal to the composer of taut and finished prose. He
preferred to operate unobtrusively, by significant allusion. Cornelius Tacitus
wrote for the alert as well as the exacting. Posterity has not always repaid
the compliment.
The Friend of
Tacitus [1957, TST IX]
JRS xlvii (1957), 131–5
The aspiration to fame being open,
avowed, and honourable, it was no scandal if a Roman of consular rank insisted
on a mention in books of history written by a friend and destined (it was
clear) to undying renown. Pliny saw his chance (Epp. VII. 33). There was another way and
device. By publishing his own correspondence, Pliny was able to put in
circulation a kind of autobiography, subtle and unimpeachable. The collection
carries no fewer than eleven letters to the address of Cornelius Tacitus, and
he is referred to in four others. Pliny quietly established a claim to parity
in the field of eloquence.
Posterity responds, recognizing Pliny
as the especial friend of Tacitus. It has not sufficiently been observed that
when Tacitus felt impelled to write about the condition of Roman oratory he
chose to dedicate the treatise to somebody else, to L. Fabius Justus, consul
suffect in 102. The person and the occasion deserve scrutiny. Evidence casual,
heterogeneous, or neglected might be adduced to throw light on the career and
occupations of Fabius Justus, and even to convey what manner of man he was.
[...]
The presumed age of Fabius Justus has
a bearing on the Dialogus. The
dramatic date of the colloquy there reproduced should belong in 74 or 75, as is
indicated by ‘sextam iam felicis huius principatus stationem qua Vespasianus
rem publicam fovet [now the sixth stage of this auspicious reign in which
Vespasian is making the country happy]’ (Dial.
18. 3 [sic: 17. 3]). Perhaps 75 rather than
74, reckoning from the calendar years of Vespasian’s effective rule at Rome,
not from the artificial antedating to 1st July, 69. About the date
of composition, lengthy controversies have obtained. One notion that still
lingers, protected among the safe and accepted beliefs or consecrated in
standard manuals, will have it that the Dialogus
is the earliest of Tacitus’ works, written under Titus, in or about A.D. 80.
That notion ignored the propriety of style to the literary genre. The only
argument was feeble, reposing on a fallacy: the neo-Ciceronian manner (it was
postulated) could only belong to the first stage in the development of the
Tacitean style.
Fabius Justus deals a blow in the
flank, cruel and perhaps unnecessary. The choice products of a Roman education
might be both precocious and pompous. But who shall believe that the young
Tacitus, reporting a conversation that took place five or six years earlier,
would describe himself as then having been ‘adulescens admodum’ [quite a youth]
(Dial. 1. 2)[12],
that he dedicated the treatise to a boy who had just assumed the ‘toga
virilis’?
It would be an easy assumption that
the Dialogus, like sundry works of
prose and verse in the literature of the Romans, was destined for a consul or a
consul-designate – the Fourth Eclogue, the History of Velleius Paterculus, or
the Twelfth Book of Martial. Pliny in 101 and 102 was
elaborating this consular ‘actio gratiarum’. Flocks of fanciers came to the
recitation of the Panegyricus, they
turned up in the foulest of weather, and some asked for more (Epp. III. 13; 18). Fabius Justus, an enlightened and
cultivated person, had deserted eloquence for the career of provinces and
armies. He belongs with Socius Senecio, the friend of Plutarch, with Licinius
Sura, who was an orator and patron of letters before chance or ambition swept
him into war and politics.
Fabius took it as evident and manifest
truth that there were no orators any more, only barristers, advocates, and the
like (Dial. 1. 1). The author of the
Dialogus concurs. He furnishes a diagnosis, balanced and mature, with a
historian’s line of argument. Cornelius Tacitus had been among the leading
speakers, if not the first of them all. No senatorial debate registers his name
subsequent to the prosecution of Marcus Priscus, which he conduced along with
Pliny to its termination in January, 100. Tacitus had found the better way. He
was writing history.[13]
The Political
Opinions of Tacitus [1961, TST X]
Lecture delivered at Hannover
[...]
The dramatic presentation of men and
events discloses the author’s devices and preoccupations, not his innermost
sentiments. The speeches, though often a clue by their selection and emphasis,
cannot safely be invoked to register his own opinions. And finally, as often
and inevitably, save in the most direct and elementary forms of literary
exposition, the man and the writer are not the same person.[14]
Tacitus is a subtle and sophisticated
writer, heir to a long tradition, and writing for men of understanding. The
situations he describes are permeated with all the ambiguities of high politics
– and of human nature – in any age. His manner is majestic and reticent.
Perhaps in himself a complicated character, perhaps not. Who can say? Remote,
austere and enigmatic, on a surface view, yet perhaps in no way a problem in
his comportment towards Rome and the Caesars.
[...]
Tacitus is hostile to tyranny – yet
not always a champion of its enemies and its victims. Commending in the Agricola the patriotic discretion of his
father-in-law, Tacitus goes out of his way to condemn those who sought
ostentatious renown, with no benefit to the Commonwealth (42.
4). The language is admonitory, violent, emotional. Language of that kind
can be a valuable clue, as is elsewhere evident in Tacitus.[15]
This instance avows its source. Under Nerva excessive praise of the martyrs
became an annoyance, revenge a menace to the proper conduct of government. The
anger of Tacitus abated in the sequel, so it appears. One of the main themes of
the Historiae is the conflict between
authority and opinion. It is introduced early in Book IV in the person of
Helvidius Priscus. Tacitus has nothing but praise for his character and his
principles. The only doubt is faint enough and expressed in brief epilogue –
some held that Priscus was over-anxious for personal renown.[16]
Nor would Tacitus fail in the Annales
to offer a sympathetic portrayal of Thrasea Paetus. And who could approve Nero
or the prosecutors who contrived the ruin of this excellent man?
Thrasea stood for ‘dignitas’ and
‘libertas’. Political terminology changes with the times. The old words
subsist, the content is different. Of ‘libertas’ the most valuable survival was
freedom of speech. In defence of that ideal, Tacitus is unequivocal and fervid.
The historian’s avowal is instructive, no less his artistic device. After a
notable digression on history and politics, comparing past and present (IV. 32
f.), the next item is the prosecution of Cremutius Cordus, senator and
historian. Tacitus invents an oration, splendid, vigorous, and coherent. And he
subjoins in his own person a withering comment: how can one sufficiently deride
the brute stupidity of those who think they can suppress opinion?[17]
Tacitus cannot but admire the moral
qualities of the Republican tradition. Is he guilty of excess in this direction
– perhaps a late convert, as it were? Some claim that as he went on Tacitus
became more and more the prisoner of a narrow and moralistic attitude. He was
now less a historian than a preacher. And, a further refinement. He was nearly
sixty when he began to compose the Annales.
The onset of old age made him gloomy and hopeless. To dispel them, an appeal
can be made to various passages in the Annales which indicate that, if
anything, Tacitus went the other way, his moral standards becoming more
tolerant and humane.
From Historiae to Annales the
style tightens and hardens, the manner is more austere and ferocious. The
historian was growing to full awareness of his talent for the grim and
subversive. And from his frequentation with Tiberius Caesar, his sarcasm took
on a sharper edge. But Claudius broadened his sense of humour. Tacitus exhibits
gaiety and goes in for parody. When a wife must be found for Claudius, the
freedmen of the palace produce and argue the names and qualities of noble
ladies (XII.
1 f.). That is travesty of a cabinet council. Agrippina’s claims
prevailing, L. Vitellius addresses the Senate, using and abusing conventional
language (and much verbal malice from the historian) to persuade them that the
emperor should marry his own niece (XII.
5 f.).[18]
These transactions were a fit occasion
for mockery. But Tacitus goes further. He does exempt from criticism the
votaries of ancestral virtue. They can be histrionic, hypocritical, or
detrimental. ‘Severitas’ was laudable. But it can pass into harshness or
rigour, even in men whom Tacitus admires, such as the jurist Cassius Longinus.[19]
And the ostentation of strict discipline in an army commander may be only a
mask for incompetence or may go with subservience to the emperor.[20]
On the other hand, the social graces win
the approbation of the austere historian. Tacitus singles out two men for their
‘elegantia vitae’, namely Pomponius Secundus, the dramatic poet, and Servilius
Nonianus, orator and historian (V.
8. 2; XIV.
19). Like the author himself, not merely men of letters. Pomponius as
legate of Germania Superior earned the ornamenta
triumphalia (XII.
28. 2); and Servilius had been proconsul of Africa.[21]
Further, a courtier, a flatterer, and
a minister of Claudius Caesar can be dispassionately estimated: L. Vitellius
behaved with ‘prisca virtus’ in the governance of provinces (VI.
32. 4). Even a voluptuary earns indulgence if he can show ability, even
Otho. His conduct as governor of Lusitania is described in the Historiae as ‘comiter administrata
provincia [ostensibly a governor]’ (I.
13. 4). In the Annales, however, it earns the high and surprising award:
‘integre sancteque egit [uprightly and without reproach]’ (XIII.
46. 3).
Above all will be noted the generous
space and appraisal accorded to the ‘elegantiae arbiter’ in person, namely
Petronius – who, the historian adds, showed capacity as proconsul of Bithynia
and as consul (XVI.
18. 2). Petronius in his last hours looked for comfort not to philosophers
and discourse of the immortality of the soul but to verse and song (XVI.
19. 2).
The graceful end of Petronius is
intended to stand in artistic contrast to dramatic or even pompous exits like
that of Seneca. But it would be an error to suppose that Tacitus means any
depreciation of Seneca. He accords him a proper recognition – the much-maligned
who none the less did his best in an impossible position. Tacitus in fact
shields the conduct of Seneca. It is not the philosopher that excites his
interest and sympathy, but the statesman. Tacitus knew that compromise is the
essence of civil government.
That theme recurs in various
presentations all through the writings of Tacitus. Not only with Agricola – one
observes a parallel in the reign of Tiberius. An aristocrat, Marcus Lepidus,
steered a safe course, avoiding the extremes of defiance and subservience. His
example encouraged the historian to conceive grave doubts about fatalism and
predestination: the human will can count.[22]
On a lower key, a speaker in the Historiae, parading as a plain honest
man, proclaims a salutary doctrine: one can admire the past, but one ought to
keep in step with the present, pray for a good emperor but put up with what
comes along.[23] That argument is put into
the mouth of Eprius Marcellus, a character far from admirable – in fact the man
who prosecuted Thrasea Paetus and who (the reader would divine) was going to be
responsible for the destruction of Helvidius Priscus.
The irony is typical of Cornelius
Tacitus. If challenged, would he not have been compelled to confess that such
were the principles of expedience which he and others had followed under
Domitian? Tacitus’ view on men and government are ambiguous, necessarily so,
for they reflect the historical situation. And, let it be maintained, they are
not peculiar to himself, but for the most part obvious and predictable.
Tacitus is elusive, and he affects the
reticent manner proper to a historian. It is rare and remarkable when he
introduces a personal avowal. Few among the Romans had the strength, the
honesty, or the insight to liberate themselves from obsession with the past. If
it was not the Republic that caught and hampered them, it was the epoch of
Caesar Augustus. Discussing Roman morals from the War of Actium to his own day,
Tacitus, while coolly dismissing the Augustan programme of reform, traces the
process of change and adds a testimony in conclusion: not all things were
better in the old time.[24]
This is a quiet and masterly understatement.
Elsewhere, in an episode deliberately
selected for high relief, the historian makes his own contribution to a theme
of perennial interest that goes back to Cato’s pronouncement: the long
development of the Roman State through the ages.
Claudius Caesar proposed to bring into
the Senate tribal chieftains from that Gaul which Julius Caesar had subjugated.
The imperial counsellors were hostile. Tacitus invents their objections, shows
them up as the product of narrow prejudice, and makes the ridiculous (XI.
23). On the other hand, he improves the oration of Claudius Caesar in
various ways, an emperor for whom he otherwise lacks respect and tolerance.
This time Claudius speaks as the Imperator should, embodying and declaring the
majesty of Rome (XI.
24).
Impersonating Claudius, the historian
neatly inserts a reference to the first senators that came from Spain and
Narbonensis, and proceeds: ‘their descendants are in our company, they are not
inferior to us in devotion to Rome.’[25]
Tacitus speaks for the new imperial
aristocracy of the western provinces, for Trajan and Hadrian as for Agricola –
and for himself. The avowal is proud and unobtrusive. Cornelius Tacitus is not
a descendant of the patrician Cornelii, but a novus homo, like his predecessors in the line of senatorial
historians (Cato, Sallust, Pollio); and further, not an Italian (it can be
conjectured) but deriving from some town in Narbonensis.
The Historian
Servilius Nonianus [1964, TST VIII]
Hermes xcii (1964), 408–14
Of the Roman annalists in the long
interval between Livy and Tacitus, the record is sparse and casual. For the
most part, little more than names. And the incidence of their mention can be
instructive. Apart from an anecdote in the younger Pliny, only Tacitus attests
the fact that Cluvius Rufus, senator and consul, wrote history; and only
Tacitus certifies Fabius Rusticus by name. That being so, it is expedient as
well as legitimate that learned enquiry should admit here and there an Ignotus of some merit and consequence.
Quintilian furnishes a select list of
the historians worthy to be prescribed for the aspirant to public eloquence (X. 1. 101–4). It was axiomatic that
the two styles tended to be incompatible, and the list is short indeed. After
the classic and inevitable glories of Sallust and Livy the professor registers
Servilius Nonianus and Aufidius Bassus. The next name has fallen out of the
text (Cremutius Cordus is to be supplied), and the count is closed with a
eulogistic and anonymous reference to a writer still among the living, i.e.
Fabius Rusticus.
The author of the Dialogus adduces Aufidius and Servilius as historians of the
imperial age noteworthy for their ‘eloquentia’ (23. 2). Aufidius is an isolated
figure. An Epicurean, serene and confident in the face of extinction, so is he
portrayed by Seneca (Epp. 30). No hint in Seneca that this man
had written history, and no sign anywhere that he might have belonged to the
governing class. Nor are friends, family and connections to be discovered. In
contrast stand the illustrious M. Servilius Nonianus, consul in 35. That
contrast comes out in various ways. An attempt can be made to build up
Servilius, on heterogeneous evidence, and give him substance.
[...]
Tacitus was composing the annals of
decline and fall – not merely a dynasty but an aristocracy brought to ruin. As
he looked back to the early imperial epoch, he might discover here and there, among
the idle and vicious, the inept or the subservient, some aristocrat who
maintained the dignity of his line in a changed world, combining personal
honour with political sagacity. Thus M. Lepidus (cos. A.D. 6), whose comportment induced the historian to put in a
word for the freedom of the will, despite fate and the astrologers (IV. 20. 3). Servilius belonged to an
ancient stock, restored after long eclipse through the patronage of the
Caesars. He made a more than adequate response, by ‘bonae artes’. Some other nobiles, it is true, did not neglect the
study of eloquence or the law. Aemilius Scaurus (suff. 21), the great-grandson of the princeps senatus, had splendid talents as an orator – which he put
to an evil use, behaving like a prosecutor of low degree and disgracing his
ancestry (III. 66. 2). Servilius Nonianus,
however, was a historian as well as a public speaker. The senatorial annalist
tends to be a novus homo, in the line
of Cato, Sallust, Pollio. A nobilis
is something of a paradox in that tradition.
Tacitus, who had himself passed from
oratory to the writing of history, will have been alive to that paradox. The
surviving noblemen in his own day could not compete.
Historians can be exploited as useful
documents for social history; and the figure of Servilius opens guidance to the
opinions and the personality of Cornelius Tacitus. According to a widely held
persuasion, this historian fell into disillusion, he grew ever grimmer with the
years, and more rigorous in his moral standards.
It is hazardous to equate the writer
and the man. The tone and colouring of the Annales
is largely determined by a tradition of historiography, and by the transactions
narrated. Indeed, it can be contended that Tacitus gained in tolerance as he
went on, and even in humour.[26]
Let there be cited that masterpiece of parody and gaiety, the oration in which
L. Vitellius explained to the Senate why the Emperor ought to be joined in
matrimony to his own niece (XII. 5 f.).
Tacitus admires the social graces no
less than honour and dignity. Observe his sympathetic portrayal of the way
Valerius Asiaticus ordered his end, whom Vitellius and Messalina destroyed, the
dull Claudius concurring (XI. 3). That type of admiration
shows a verifiable enhancement in his writings. Exalting poetry against oratory
in the Dialogus, he matches Pomponius
Secundus with Domitius Afer, the advantage going to the former because of
‘dignitas vitae [personal standing]’ (13. 3). At the first
presentation of Pomponius in the Annales
his prime quality has become ‘elegantia morum [refinement of character]’ (V. 8. 2). Now it is precisely
‘elegantia vitae [refinement of life]’ that sets off Servilius against Afer (XIV. 19).
That should suffice, even were there
not the full and explicit portrayal of the ‘elegantiae arbiter’ himself, T.
Petronius (XVI. 18 f.): a deterrent, it should
seem, of conventional and schematic notions.
An unobtrusive item can be added to
show how the historian’s views broadened. From the outset he was ready to make
concessions in favour of bad men if they had any active talent. In the Historiae, referring to Otho in
Lusitania, the author states ‘comiter administrata provincia [ostensibly as
governor]’ (I. 13. 4). Now ‘comitas’, an amicable term, might in a governor
cover connivance or slackness. There is a wide gap between ‘comitas’ and Otho’s
conduct as registered in the Annales
– ‘integre sancteque egit [uprightly and without reproach]’ (XIII. 46. 3).
‘Elegantia vitae’ therefore opens a
path to the comprehension of Cornelius Tacitus. The reference to Servilius
Nonianus is indeed summary – perhaps he had appeared somewhere in the lost
books. Similarly, Domitius Afer. For parallel, the excellent Pomponius Secundus
passes from the scene without any evocation. A previous tribute from the
historian suffices, when he earned the ornamenta
triumphalia: ‘modica pars famae eius apud posteros in quis carminum gloria
praecellit [a slender portion of his fame in the eyes of posterity, with whom
the glory of his verse ranks higher]’ (XII. 28. 2). Poetry is the supreme
title to fame, better than the service of the State. Hence also, by implication,
the writing of Roman history.
[1] [Sallust, Catilina 4.]
[2] [Horace, Odes II.1.1.]
[3] [Arnold J. Toynbee, most likely.]
[4] [Histories I.49. Other translations include “equal to empire” (Church and
Brodribb, 1876), “possessed the makings of a ruler” (Wellesley, 1964, Penguin),
“had the qualifications to be a ruler” (Fyfe/Levine, 1912/97, Oxford).]
[5] [Pliny, Letters II.1.6-7.]
[6] [Horace, Odes II.1.6.]
[7] [Probably a reference to “pace
saevum”, Histories I.2, variously
translated as “even in peace full of horrors” (Church and Brodribb, 1876),
“horrible even in peace” (Moore, 1925, Loeb), “even in peace sinister”
(Wellesley, 1964, Penguin), “a tale of horror even during times of peace”
(Fyfe/Levine, 1912/97, Oxford).]
[8] [Agricola, 3.2.]
[9] [The Loeb edition has “felicitatem
temporum”, Agricola 3.1, LCL 35, p. 30.]
[10] [Histories I.49. See above note 4.]
[12] [The Loeb edition has
“iuvenis admodum”, Dialogus 1.3, LCL 35, p. 230.]
[13] It must, however, be added
that indications in the letters of Pliny point to a date later than 101 or 102.
Thus, the reference to Dial. 9. 6, in Epp. IX.
10. 2[-3]: ‘itaque poemata quiescent quae tu inter nemora et lucos
commodissime perfici putas [peace reigns over the poems which you fancy are
only too easy to finish in the woods and groves]’. Further, the book which
Tacitus sent to Pliny for his comments (VII.
20). Tacitus in his covering missive wrote ‘ut magistro magister [one
master to another]’ and ‘un discipulo discipulus [one pupil to another]’ (VIII.
7. 1). The book should therefore be an oration or a treatise about oratory.
What is the solution? Perhaps the Dialogus;
and perhaps, originally designed for the consulship of Fabius Justus, it was
being revised for publication c. 106. However it be, the age, character, and
occupations of the dedicant retain their relevance.
[14] That has not,
unfortunately, impeded the reconstruction of a poet’s character and biography
from his poems – for example, the satirist Juvenal.
[15] Thus the violent outburst
in Germ. 33. 2: ‘maneat, quaeso, duretque
gentibus, si non amor nostri, at certe odium sui, quando urgentibus imperii
fatis nihil iam praestare fortuna maius potest quam hostium discordiam [long
may it last, I pray, and persist among the nations, this – if not love for
us—at least hatred for each other: since now that the destinies of the Empire
drive it on, Fortune can guarantee us nothing better than discord among our
foes]’ Also the attack on the Greeks because their histories ignored Arminius –
‘Graecorum annalibus ignotus, qui sua tantum mirantur [he is an unknown being
to the Greek historians, who admire only the history of Greece]’ (Ann. II. 80 [sic: 88]. 3).
[16] Hist. IV. 6. 1: ‘erant quibus adpetentior
famae videretur, quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriae novissima exuitur [some
thought that he was rather too eager for fame, since the passion for glory is
that from which even philosophers last divest themselves]’. Nor is severe
censure to be discovered in the historian’s comment on Thrasea – ‘sueta
firmitudine animi et ne gloria intercideret [through his usual firmness of
temper, and a desire not to let slip the credit he had earned]’ (Ann. XIV. 49. 3).
[17] Ann. IV. 35. 5: ‘quo magis socordiam
eorum inridere libet, qui praesenti potentia credunt extingui posse etiam
sequentis aevi memoriam. Nam contra punitis ingeniis gliscit auctoritas, neque
aliud externi reges aut qui eadem saevitia usi sunt, nisi dedecus sibi atque
illis gloriam peperere [a fact which moves us the more to deride the folly of
those who believe that by an act of despotism in the present there can be
extinguished also the memory of a succeeding age. On the contrary, genius
chastised grows in authority; nor have alien kings or the imitators of their
cruelty effected more than to crown themselves with ignominy and their victims
with renown]’.
[18] Note the choice language:
‘maritandum principem’, which recalls the title of an Augustan law; the
‘sanctimonia’ of Agrippina, a word elsewhere applied by Tacitus only to elderly
Vestal Virgins; and the fact that she is providentially a widow, ‘provisu deum’
(it was alleged that she had poisoned her previous husband, Passienus Crispus).
[19] Ann. XIII. 48. This is relevant to the
estimate of his speech urging that all the slaves in the household of Pedanius
Secundus should be put to death (XIV.
43 f.).
[20] Thus the verdict of Q.
Veranius (XIV.
29. 1).
[21] CIL VIII. 24585a and AE 1932, 24.
[22] Ann. IV. 20. 3: ‘unde dubitare cogor, fato
et sorte nascendi, ut cetera, ita principum inclinatio in hos, offensio in
illos, an sit aliquid in nostris consiliis liceatque inter abruptam contumaciam
et deforme obsequium pergere iter ambitione ac periculis vacuum [a circumstance
which compels me to doubt whether, like all things else, the sympathies and
antipathies of princes are governed in their incidence by fate and the star of
our nativity, or whether our purposes count and we are free, between the
extremes of bluff contumacy and repellent servility, to walk a straight road,
clear of intrigues and of perils]’.
[23] Hist. IV. 8. 2: ‘se meminisse temporum
quibus natus sit, quam civitatis formam patres avique instituerint; ulteriora
mirari, praesentia sequi; bonos imperatores voto expetere, qualiscumque
tolerare [For his own part he remembered the time in which he was born, the
form of government that their fathers and grandfathers had established; headmired
the earlier period, but adapted himself to the present; he prayed for good
emperors, but endured any sort]’.
[24] Ann. IV. 55. 5: “nec omnia apud priores
meliora, sed nostra quoque aetas multa laudis et artium imitanda posteris tulit
[nor, indeed, were all things better in the old time before us; but our own age
too has produced much in the sphere of true nobility and much in that of art
which posterity well may imitate]”. Let it also be added that this is a historian
who deprecated excessive zeal for ancient history – ‘dum vetera extollimus
recentium incuriosi [who glorify the ancient days and show little concern for
our own]’ (II.
88. 3).
[25] Ann. XI. 24. 3: ‘num paenitet Balbos ex
Hispania nec minus insignis viros e Gallia Narbonensi transivisse? Manent
posteri eorum nec amore in hanc patriam nobis concedunt.’ This emphatic
pronouncement concludes the first half of the Claudian oration – and ought to
be printed as the end of a paragraph. [The Loeb editor – LCL 312, pp. 288-9 –
didn’t print it so.]
