Tacĭtus
M. Claudius. A Roman emperor, who ruled from the 25th September,
A.D. 275, until April, A.D. 276. He was elected by the Senate after the death of Aurelian, the
army having requested the Senate to nominate a successor to the imperial throne. Tacitus was
at the time seventy years of age, and was with difficulty persuaded to accept the purple. The
high character which he had borne before his elevation to the throne he amply sustained during
his brief reign. He endeavoured to repress the luxury and licentiousness of the age by various
sumptuary laws, and he himself set an example to all around by the abstemiousness, simplicity,
and frugality of his own habits. The only military achievement of this reign was the defeat
and expulsion from Asia Minor of a party of Goths who had carried their devastation across the
peninsula to the confines of Cilicia. He died either at Tarsus or at Tyana, about the 9th of
April, 276. His life is given in the
Historia Augusta.
