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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.

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