What is the reason for writing history? The role of the Historian
This harkened us back to Herodotus see the beginning of the book. Seeks out digressions – willing to follow rabbit trails. – Ken
Tacitus gives us at least three statements about his goals for writing the Annals:
(I, 1) “without rancor or bias” – specifically bias based in fear
(III, 65) “It seems to me a historian’s foremost duty to ensure that merit is recorded, and to confront evil words and deeds with the fear of posterity’s denunciations.”
(IV, 33)
“Similarly, now that Rome has virtually been transformed into an autocracy, the investigation and record of these details concerning the autocrat may prove useful. Indeed, it is from such studies – from the experience of others – that most men learn to distinguish right and wrong, advantage and disadvantage. Few can tell them apart instinctively.”
Illuminate the people and recognize ambitions in its various shapes to counter judge the actions of men so that the good and evil may be judged and preserved for posterity – see Sue for the actual quote. A historian can teach moral lessons instead of just facts and dates (as several of our chums experienced). A subjective view is required to teach morals, whereas objective history of needs only facts and figures (but can still bias the reader).
Quote from http://faculty.isi.org/blog/post/view/id/180/ Towards the end of his second term as President, Thomas Jefferson received a letter from his granddaughter, Anne Cary Bankhead, who mentioned that she had been reading from the works of the Roman historian Tacitus (c. AD 55-117). In his reply, Jefferson wrote: “Tacitus I consider the first writer in the world without a single exception. His book is a compound of history and morality of which we have no other example” (1808).
Sue’s compilation of biographical notes from various sources is below.
GAIUS CORNELIUS TACITUS
EARLY LIFE
• born ca. AD 55-57, possibly in northern Italy or southern Gaul. Some even suggest he was born in Spain.
• born into a wealthy, upper-class family of the equestrian class. His father was most likely the Cornelius Tacitus who was procurator (chief financial agent) of Belgica and Germania.
• studied rhetoric under Quintilian, this being the classic course of study for an aspiring politician. A fellow student was his life-long friend, Pliny the Younger.
*****
Equestrian class (equites): Also called knights. The basis for this class was economic (in contrast to senatorial class, which was political). A man could be formally enrolled in the equestrian order if he could prove that he possessed a stable minimum amount of wealth (property worth at least 400,000 sesterces); by extension his family members were also considered equestrians. However, if an equestrian was elected to a magistracy and entered the Senate, he moved up to the senatorial class; this was not particularly easy or frequent. Equestrians were primarily involved in the types of business prohibited to senators.
Belonging to one of these upper classes had many significant consequences for Romans besides prestige, for social class determined one’s economic and political opportunities, as well as legal rights, benefits and penalties. Rome had nothing comparable to our middle class; the gulf between the two upper classes and the much larger lower classes was immense. However, as long as one was a freeborn Roman citizen there was at least a slight possibility of moving into the equestrian class through the acquisition of wealth. Entry into the senatorial class, even for wealthy equestrians, was extremely difficult, since for centuries a small number of elite families had monopolized this class.
During the Empire, most of the social classes continued. There was a new and tiny class at the very top of the social pyramid, comprising the emperors and their families. From the time of Augustus, the state was identified with the imperial household (domus), and the women belonging to that household naturally became associated with imperial status, imperial titles such as Augusta and mater castrorum (“mother of the military camps”), and even some forms of power, although these women (like all Roman women) were formally excluded from political offices and the emperors consistently stressed their domestic roles.
The nature of the senatorial class also changed during the Empire. Although the Senate and magistrates continued to exist, they no longer had any real political power, and their membership in this class depended ultimately on the favor of the emperor.
Nevertheless rank retained its importance and became even more clearly marked and formalized. In the third century CE, the law explicitly divided Romans into two groups, the honestiores (“more honorable people,” including senators, equestrians, municipal officials, and soldiers) and the humiliores (“more insignificant people,” including all other groups).
*****
• in AD 77 married the only daughter of Gnaeus Julias Agricola, an eminent Roman general involved in the conquest of Britain and about whom Tacitus later wrote a biography/elegy.
CAREER
• Context: A student during the last years of the reign of Nero. Rome was still suffering from the big fire of 64. In 69, the civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors broke out, culminating in the accession of Vespasian, the first of the Flavian emperors. These events may have contributed early on to Tacitus’ gloomy worldview. He knew what it meant when a government collapses.
• Most of the older aristocratic families failed to survive the proscriptions that took place at the end of the Republic, and in his Histories Tacitus makes it clear that he owes his official career to the Flavians (Vespasian, Titus, Domitian).
• was appointed quaestor (supervised financial affairs) in 81 or 82 and then was admitted to the Senate. This body had lost much of the power it held under the Republic, but Tacitus and a few others held to old traditions about what it meant to be Roman: the empire should expand, barbarians should be conquered, civilization should be propagated. These ideas were becoming unpopular, however. Military conquests were becoming too costly in taxes, human lives, governance, mutinies.
• under Domitian, Tacitus served as praetor, and between 89 and 93 he must have commanded a legion or governed a province. The Senate and emperor were on bad terms at that point—it was a good time to be away from Rome. Tacitus (and his property) survived Domitian’s reign of terror (81–96), but the experience left him jaded and perhaps ashamed at his own complicity, giving him the hatred of tyranny that is so evident in his works. Still, Tacitus continued to benefit from imperial patronage. He was appointed consul in 97 by Nerva, the old senator who had been made emperor after Domitian was assassinated.
• during this time, reached the height of his fame as an orator when he delivered the funeral oration for the famous veteran soldier Lucius Verginius Rufus (remarkable for refusing power after his military successes and retreating to an estate to become a man of letters).
• the following year, wrote and published the Agricola and Germania.
• afterward, absented himself from public life, but returned during Trajan’s reign (Nerva’s successor).
• In 100, prosecuted, along with his long-time friend Pliny the Younger, Marius Priscus (proconsul of Africa) for corruption. Priscus was found guilty and sent into exile; Pliny wrote a few days later that Tacitus had spoken “with all the majesty which characterizes his usual style of oratory.” Both men received a special vote of thanks from the senate for their conduct of the case.
• lengthy absence from politics and law followed while he wrote the Histories and the Annals.
• in 112 or 113, was appointed by Trajan to the highest civilian governorship, that of the Roman province of Asia in Western Anatolia
• died as early as 116, but maybe as late as 125 or even 130. Unknown whether he had any children. The Augustan History reports that the emperor Marcus Claudius Tacitus claimed him for an ancestor and provided for the preservation of his works, but like much of the Augustan History, this story may be fraudulent.
HISTORIAN/WRITER
• considered the most important historian of the Roman Empire
• respected for his analysis of a wide range of sources, including the work of other historians, biographies, interviews, pamphlets, speeches, minutes of the Senate and inscriptions. Most of these sources have not survived.
• known for the brevity and compactness of his prose, as well as for his penetrating psychological insights
• blends straightforward descriptions of events, moral lessons, and tightly focused dramatic accounts
• influence of rhetoric allowed him to argue on more than one side of an issue
Prose
• His Latin style has a grandeur and eloquence (thanks to his education in rhetoric) yet is extremely concise.
• Sentences are rarely flowing or beautiful, but their point is always clear. Example: Annals I, 63—contemporaries wrote about military engagements with lots of embellishment. Not Tacitus.
• Ronald Mellor describes Tacitus’ style as having “a tone of the utmost gravity with intimations of melancholy and violence lurking just under the surface. It carries a moral and political authority that impresses, even intimidates the reader.” His “remarkable combination of nobility and intimacy, of gravity and violence is enormously effective at conveying the underlying sense of fear that pervades the Histories and the Annals.”
• He mostly keeps to a chronological narrative order, but where he does use broad strokes, for example, in the opening paragraphs of the Annals, he uses a few condensed phrases which take the reader to the heart of the story. In the opening paragraph he sweeps the reader through almost 500 years of history.
Psychological portraits
• focuses on the inner motivations of the characters, often with penetrating insight
• Moses Hadas says, “Always Tacitus strives to penetrate into the thoughts and motives of the actors in his drama. It is Tacitus’ skill in delineating characters, particularly intense and theatrical Roman characters, that is apt to strike the reader as his outstanding achievement.”
• hard to say how much of his insight is correct, and how much is convincing only because of his rhetorical skill
• keen to expose hypocrisy and dissimulation; for example, 1.72 and 4.64–66
“No bias?”
• political career was largely spent under the emperor Domitian. His experience of the tyranny, corruption, and decadence of that era (81–96) may explain the moral indignation, bitterness, and irony of his political analysis. He draws attention to the dangers of power without accountability, love of power untempered by principle, and the apathy and corruption engendered by the wealth generated by the empire.
• hated imperial power and tries to paint every emperor as a corrupt despot, but hated civil war and anarchy even more
• nostalgic for the virtues of republican Rome.
• For Tacitus, dictatorship and moral decline went hand in hand. Oppressive rule caused moral degeneracy, and moral degeneracy allowed oppressive rule.
• felt Senators had squandered their cultural inheritance—that of free speech—to placate their (rarely benign) emperor
• does not fear to praise and to critique the same person, often noting what he takes to be their more-admirable and less-admirable properties. One of Tacitus’s hallmarks is refraining from conclusively taking sides for or against persons he describes, which has led some to interpret his works as both supporting and rejecting the imperial system.
LEGACY
• was not much read in late antiquity, and even less in the Middle Ages
• His antipathy toward the Jews and Christians of his time — he records with unemotional contempt the sufferings of the Christians at Rome during Nero’s persecution — made him unpopular in the Middle Ages.
• Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio rediscovered him in 14th century and by 16th century, when his works were translated into English, Tacitus commanded the attention of countless political writers.
• has come to be considered the greatest Roman historian, but it is as a political theorist that he has been and remains most influential outside the field of history.
Writing Style
The way Tacitus wrote – observation on his writing style:
Much more than annals
Closer to investigative journalism than expected.
Offering more than one opinion or perspective from the audience
Like a soap opera; Germanicus the hero; mellow dramatic; dramatic irony – build suspense for a certain outcome when history already revealed that the hero does not win in the end
Story telling – depicting tension between personalities
Nero
Pat mentioned that Nero’s family was quite warped, and this generated a small amount of sympathy for Nero. Cindy noted that Nero loved to be on stage, but actors were considered very low in the social structure. Pat noted that Nero went to the Greek Olympics to do his act. Sue felt better about American politics after reading about Rome’s governance during and after Nero’s reign.
Why is this a Great Book.
It has survived so long and does not have much competition. It has captured history of a particularly colorful time period. Valuable writing because it is close to the period; interesting/compelling way of writing; and culture relevant and of interest to modern day readers. The life of the first emperor, Augustus, coincides with the earthly life of Jesus.