Tacĭtus
Publius Cornelius. (The praenomen, Publius, is given in the best
MS. [Med. I.]; and in an inscription.) One of the greatest of the Roman writers of history.
The time and place of his birth are unknown. He was a little older than the younger Pliny ,
who was born A.D. 61. His father was probably Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman
eques, who is mentioned as a procurator in Gallia Belgica, and who died in 79 (Pliny ,
Epist. vii. 76). Tacitus was first promoted by the emperor Vespasian, and he
received other favours from both Titus and Domitian (
Hist. i. 1). The most probable account is that Tacitus was
appointed
tribunus militum laticlavius by Vespasian, quaestor by Titus,
and praetor by Domitian. In 78 he married the daughter of the famous general, C. Iulius
Agricola, to whom he had been betrothed in the preceding year, while Agricola was consul. In
the reign of Domitian, and in 88, Tacitus was praetor, and he assisted as one of the
quindecimviri at the Ludi Saeculares which were celebrated in that year (
Ann. xi. 11). Agricola died at Rome in 93, but neither Tacitus nor the
daughter of Agricola was then with him. It is not known where Tacitus was during the last
illness of Agricola. In the reign of Nerva, 97, Tacitus was
appointed consul suffectus, in the place of T. Virginius Rufus, who had died in that year, and
whose funeral oration he delivered. We know that Tacitus had attained oratorical distinction
when the younger Pliny was commencing his career. He and Tacitus were appointed in the reign
of Nerva (A.D. 99) to conduct the prosecution of Marius, proconsul of Africa. Tacitus and
Pliny were most intimate friends. In the collection of the letters of Pliny there are eleven
letters addressed to Tacitus. The time of the death of Tacitus is unknown, but he appears to
have survived Trajan, who died 117. Nothing is recorded of any children of his, though the
Emperor Tacitus claimed a descent from the historian, and ordered his works to be placed in
all public libraries.
Extant works of Tacitus
1. Vita Agricolae
The life of Agricola, which was written after the death of Domitian (A.D. 96), as we may
probably conclude from the introduction, which was certainly written after Trajan's
accession. This life is justly admired as a specimen of biography. It is a monument to the
memory of a noble man and an able commander and administrator, by an affectionate
son-in-law, who has portrayed, in his peculiar manner and with many masterly touches, the
virtues of one of the most illustrious of the Romans.
2. Historiae
These were written after the death of Nerva (A.D. 98) and before the
Annales. They comprehended the period from the second consulship of Galba
(A.D. 68) to the death of Domitian (A.D. 96), and the author designed to add the reigns of
Nerva and Trajan. The first four books alone are extant in a complete form, and they
comprehend only the events of about one year. The fifth book is imperfect, and goes no
further than the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, and the war of Civilis in
Germany. It is not known how many books of the
Historiae there were, but it
must have been a large work if it was all written on the same scale as the first five
books.
3. Annales
These commence with the death of Augustus (A.D. 14), hence
ab excessu divi
Augusti, and comprise the period to the death of Nero (A.D. 68)—a space of
fifty-four years. The greater part of the fifth book is lost, and also the seventh, eighth,
ninth, tenth, the beginning of the eleventh, and the end of the sixteenth, which is the last
book. These lost parts comprised the whole of Caligula's reign, the first five years of
Claudius, and the last two of Nero.
4. De Moribus et Populis Germaniae
Usually called the
Germania, a treatise describing the Germanic nations. It
is of little value as a geographical description; the first few chapters contain as much of
the geography of Germany as Tacitus knew. The main subject is the description of the
political institutions, the religion, and the habits of the various
tribes included under the name Germani. The value of the information contained in this
treatise has often been discussed, and its credibility attacked; but we may estimate its
true character by observing the precision of the writer as to those Germans who were best
known to the Romans from being near the Rhine. That the hearsay accounts of more remote
tribes must partake of the defects of all such evidence is obvious; and we cannot easily
tell whether Tacitus embellished that which he had heard obscurely told. But to consider the
Germany as a fiction, or as a purely political tract, is one of those absurdities which need
only be recorded, not refuted.
Dialogus de Oratoribus.
If this dialogue is the work of Tacitus, and it probably is, it must be his earliest work,
for it was written in the sixth year of Vespasian. The style is more easy than that of the
Annales—more diffuse, less condensed; but there is an obvious
difference between the style of the
Dialogus and the
Historiae—nothing so striking as to make us contend for a different
authorship. Besides this, it is nothing unusual for works of the same author, which are
written at different times, to vary greatly in style, especially if they treat of different
matters. The oldest MSS. also attribute the
Dialogus to Tacitus. (See
Gudeman's introduction to his edition of the work.) The treatise is an essay, in the form of
a dialogue, giving an account of the decay of oratory under the Empire.
Assessment.
The
Annales of Tacitus, the work of a mature age, contain the chief events
of the period which they embrace, arranged under their several years. There seems no peculiar
propriety in giving the name of
Annales to this work, simply because the
events are arranged in the order of time. In the
Annales of Tacitus, the
Princeps or Emperor is the centre about which events are grouped. Yet the most important
public events, both in Italy and the provinces, are not omitted, though everything is treated
as subordinate to the exhibition of imperial power. The
Historiae, which were
written before the
Annales, are in a more diffuse style, and the treatment of
the extant part is different from that of the
Annales. Tacitus wrote the
Historiae as a contemporary; the
Annales as not a
contemporary. They are two distinct works, not parts of one, which is clearly shown by the
very different proportions of the two works: the first four books of the
Historiae comprise about a year, and the first four books of the
Annales comprise fourteen years.
The moral dignity of Tacitus is impressed upon his works; the consciousness of a love of
truth, of the integrity of his purpose. His great power is in the knowledge of the human
mind, his insight into the motives of human conduct; and he found materials for its exercise
in the history of the emperors, and particularly Tiberius, whose strange career and
enigmatical personality fascinated him. The
Annales are filled with dramatic
scenes and striking catastrophes. He laboured to produce effect by the exhibition of great
personages on the stage; but as to the mass of the people we learn little from Tacitus. The
style of Tacitns is peculiar, though it bears some resemblance to In the
Annales it is concise, vigorous, and pregnant with meaning; laboured, but
elaborated with art, and stripped of every superfluity. A single word sometimes gives effect
to a sentence; and if the meaning of the word is missed, the sense of the writer is not
reached. Such a work is probably the result of many transcriptions by the author. Tacitus is
generally brief and rapid in his sketches; but he is sometimes almost too minute when he
comes to work out a dramatic scene; and he displays all the conscious rhetoric of his age.
The condensed style of Tacitus sometimes makes him obscure, but it is a kind of obscurity
that is dispelled by careful reading. Yet a man must read carefully and often, in order to
understand him; and it cannot be supposed that Tacitus was ever a popular writer. He is often
intensely epigrammatic, and exhibits the qualities of style that are found in the typical
writers of the Silver Age. Many of his pregnant phrases have passed into the world's
anthology of quotations, such as
Omne ignotum pro magnifico and
Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. In his view of the condition of Roman
society he is thoroughly pessimistic, and by contemplating only one section of it he is led
into an unconscious exaggeration which the reader should correct by the reading of the
contemporary and friend of Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, whose more pleasing picture of the
time is a wholesome check upon any too sweeping condemnation of the imperial period of Rome's
social history.
Manuscripts
The manuscripts of Tacitus are few and unsatisfactory. For the first six books of the
Annales only one source exists—the Codex Mediceus (I.) of the ninth
century, and found about 1520. From this bks. vii.-ix. are lost, as are
Historiae v.-xiv. For what remains of these, a second Codex Mediceus (II.) of
the eleventh or twelfth century is the only authority. The
Germania and
Dialogus are found in two manuscripts—one at Leyden (Codex
Leidensis [Perizonianus]), and the other in the Vatican. The
Agricola is found
in two transcriptions of an earlier MS. Both of these are in the Vatican. On the codices of
Tacitus, see the introduction to the edition of the
Dialogus by Michaelis
(1868), and Gudeman
(1894), and in Ritter's edition
(1864).
Bibliography
Editions of the complete works of Tacitus are the
editio princeps by
Puteolanus
(Milan, c. 1476); Lipsius
(Antwerp, 1574); Gronovius
(Amsterdam, 1672); Bekker, with variorum notes, 2 vols.
(Leipzig,
1831); Ritter
(last ed. Bonn, 1864); Döderlein, 2 vols.
(Halle, 1841-47); Orelli, 2 vols.
(Zürich, 1846, variously
revised and republished, 1859, 1877); and texts by Halm
(1884); and
Müller
(Prague, 1885).
Separate editions with English notes are those of the
Annales by Furneaux, 2
vols. (Oxford, 1891- 92); Allen
(Boston, 1890); of the
Historiae
by Simcox
(London, 1876), Godley
(London, 1887-90), and Spooner
(London, 1891); of the
Agricola and
Germania by
Frost
(London, 1861), Church and Brodribb
(London, 1889), by
Haverfield (announced), and by Hopkins
(New York and Boston, 1893); of the
Dialogus by Peterson
(Oxford, 1893), and especially by Gudeman
(New York and Boston, 1894), a most exhaustive and elaborate work, with
extremely valuable prolegomena; also a compact and convenient edition by Bennett
(New
York and Boston, 1894). There are English translations of Tacitus by Gordon
(London, 1728-31), Murphy
(London, 1793), and by Church and
Brodribb (London, 1876- 77). There is a fine lexicon to Tacitus by Gerber and Greef, still
appearing in parts. An older lexicon (complete) is that of Boetticher
(1832).
On Tacitus, see Urlichs,
De Taciti Vita (Würzburg,
1879); J. Müller,
Philos. und relig. Anschau-
ungen des Tacitus (Feldkirch, 1874); and Schiller,
Geschichte d. röm. Kaiserzeit, i. 586
(Gotha, 1883). On
his diction, etc., see Dräger,
Ueber Syntax und Stil des
Tacitus (3d ed. Leipzig, 1882); Wolff,
Die Sprache des
Tacitus (Frankfurt, 1879); Gericke,
De Abundanti Dicendi Genere
Tacitino (Berlin, 1882), and the numerous monographs cited in
Teuffel-SchwabeWarr, ii. 333, 16. See also the short studies by Donne
(1873) and
Church and Brodribb
(1881).
