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). All translations from Latin and
Greek are taken from the Loeb
Classical Library.
How Tacitus
Came to History [1955, TST II]
Lecture given at the University of
London, 3 November 1955,
published in Greece and Rome IV (1957), 160–7.
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 force 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’.
The Senator
as Historian [1956, TST I]
Lecture given at Vandoeuvres, 1956, reprinted
from
Histoire et
historiens dans l’antiquité,
Tome IV, Fondation Hardt.
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’ 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’, 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’. 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’. 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.
