Tacitus (c. 56 - c. 120) was a Roman historian, senator and orator, generally regarded as the greatest of the Roman historians. [1] His two major works, the Annals and the Histories, cover the empire from the death of Augustus to the death of Domitian and survive only in part, but they remain the fullest narrative source for the period. He also wrote the biography Agricola, the ethnographic Germania and the Dialogue on Oratory. [2]
Life and career
Little is known of Tacitus's origins. He was born around the year 56, probably in Gallia Narbonensis or northern Italy, into a family of equestrian rank that had recently entered public life. [1] He received the standard rhetorical education of the Roman elite and made his early reputation as an advocate and orator.
In 77 he married the daughter of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the general and governor of Britain whose life he later wrote. He held office under the Flavian emperors, served as praetor in 88, and was away from Rome during part of the repressive final years of Domitian's reign. He was consul suffect in 97 under Nerva and, around 112 or 113, proconsul of the province of Asia. [2] He was a friend and correspondent of Pliny the Younger, whose letters supply much of what is known about him. He is thought to have died around 120.
Minor works
Tacitus's first published works appeared in 98. The Agricola is a biography of his father-in-law that doubles as an indictment of tyranny, and it contains the speech attributed to the Caledonian leader Calgacus with its judgement on Roman conquest: they make a desert and call it peace. [3]
The Germania is a short ethnographic account of the peoples beyond the Rhine, valuable as a rare early description of northern Europe and often read as an implicit criticism of Roman decadence. The Dialogus de oratoribus examines the decline of public oratory under the empire.
The Histories and the Annals
The Histories, written first, covered the years from 69 to 96, beginning with the civil war of the year of the four emperors. Only the first four books and part of the fifth survive, carrying the narrative through 70. [2]
The Annals, his last and most ambitious work, treats the earlier period from the death of Augustus in 14 to the death of Nero in 68. Substantial portions are lost, including the whole of Caligula's reign, but the surviving books contain his most celebrated writing: Tiberius's withdrawal to Capri, the fall of Sejanus, the murder of Agrippina and the great fire of Rome. [4] A passage in the fifteenth book, describing Nero's persecution of Christians after the fire, is among the earliest non-Christian references to the execution of Jesus.
Method and style
Tacitus declared that he would write sine ira et studio, without anger or partiality, though his narrative is plainly shaped by a senatorial and republican sympathy and by hostility to the corrupting effects of autocratic power. [1] He worked from official records, earlier historians and oral report, and often gives competing versions of events.
His prose is famously compressed, asymmetrical and epigrammatic, avoiding the balanced periods of Ciceronian Latin. The result is a style that concentrates moral judgement into very few words.
Legacy
Tacitus's works survived the Middle Ages in a small number of manuscripts and were rediscovered and printed in the Renaissance, after which they became central to European political thought. [3] Writers on statecraft drew on him for analysis of how power is acquired and disguised, and the Germania had a long and at times damaging later reception in German nationalist writing. He remains an indispensable source for the history of the first century of the Roman Empire. [4]
