It is the office of genius and learning, as of light, to illustrate
other things, and not itself. The writers, who, of all others perhaps,
have told us most of the world, just as it has been and is, have told us
least of themselves. Their character we may infer, with more or less
exactness, from their works, but their history is unwritten and must for
ever remain so. Homer, though, perhaps, the only one who has been argued
out of existence, is by no means the only one whose age and birthplace
have been disputed. The native place of Tacitus is mere matter of
conjecture. His parentage is not certainly known. The time of his birth
and the year of his death are ascertained only by approximation, and very
few incidents are recorded in the history of his life; still we know the
period in which he lived, the influences under which his character was
developed and matured, and the circumstances under which he wrote his
immortal works. In short, we know his times, though we can scarcely
gather up enough to denominate his life; and the times in which an author
lived, are often an important, not to say, essential means of elucidating
his writings.
CAIUS CORNELIUS TACITUS was born in the early part of the reign of Nero,
and near the middle of the first century in the Christian Era. The
probability is, that he was the son of Cornelius Tacitus, a man of
equestrian rank, and procurator of Belgic Gaul under Nero; that he was
born at Interamna in Umbria, and that he received a part of his education
at Massilia (the modern Marseilles), which was then the Athens of the
West, a Grecian colony, and a seat of truly Grecian culture and
refinement. It is not improbable that he enjoyed also the instructions of
Quintilian, who for twenty years taught at Rome that pure and manly
eloquence, of which his Institutes furnish at once such perfect rules,
and so fine an example. If we admit the Dialogue de Claris Oratoribus to
be the work of Tacitus, his beau-idéal of the education proper for an
orator was no less comprehensive, no less elevated, no less liberal, than
that of Cicero himself; and if his theory of education was, like
Cicero's, only a transcript of his own education, he must have been
disciplined early in all the arts and sciences--in all the departments
of knowledge which were then cultivated at Rome; a conclusion in which we
are confirmed also by the accurate and minute acquaintance which he
shows, in his other works, with all the affairs, whether civil or
military, public or private, literary or religious, both of Greece and
Rome.
The boyhood and youth of Tacitus did, indeed, fall on evil times.
Monsters in vice and crime had filled the throne, till their morals and
manners had infected those of all the people. The state was distracted,
and apparently on the eve of dissolution. The public taste, like the
general conscience, was perverted. The fountains of education were
poisoned. Degenerate Grecian masters were inspiring their Roman pupils
with a relish for a false science, a frivolous literature, a vitiated
eloquence, an Epicurean creed, and a voluptuous life.
But with sufficient discernment to see the follies and vices of his age,
and with sufficient virtue to detest them, Tacitus must have found his
love of wisdom and goodness, of liberty and law, strengthened by the
very disorders and faults of the times. If the patriot ever loves a
well-regulated freedom, it will be in and after the reign of a tyrant,
preceded or followed by what is still worse, anarchy. If the pure and the
good ever reverence purity and goodness, it will be amid the general
prevalence of vice and crime. If the sage ever pants after wisdom, it is
when the fountains of knowledge have become corrupted. The reigns of Nero
and his immediate successors were probably the very school, of all
others, to which we are most indebted for the comprehensive wisdom, the
elevated sentiments, and the glowing eloquence of the biographer of
Agricola, and the historian of the Roman Empire. His youth saw, and felt,
and deplored the disastrous effects of Nero's inhuman despotism, and of
the anarchy attending the civil wars of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. His
manhood saw, and felt, and exulted in the contrast furnished by the
reigns of Vespasian and Titus, though the sun of the latter too soon went
down, in that long night of gloom, and blood, and terror, the tyranny of
Domitian. And when, in the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, he enjoyed the
rare felicity of thinking what he pleased, and speaking what he thought,
he was just fitted in the maturity of his faculties, and the extent of
his observation and reflections, "to enroll slowly, year after year, that
dreadful reality of crimes and sufferings, which even dramatic horror, in
all its license of wild imagination, can scarcely reach, the long
unvarying catalogue of tyrants and executioners, and victims that return
thanks to the gods and die, and accusers rich with their blood, and more
mighty as more widely hated, amid the multitudes of prostrate slaves,
still looking whether there may not yet have escaped some lingering
virtue which it may be a merit to destroy, and having scarcely leisure to
feel even the agonies of remorse in the continued sense of the
precariousness of their own gloomy existence." [Brown's Philosophy of the
Mind.]
Tacitus was educated for the bar, and continued to plead causes,
occasionally at least, and with not a little success, even after he had
entered upon the great business of his life, as a writer of history. We
find references to his first, and perhaps his last appearance, as an
advocate, in the Letters of Pliny, which are highly complimentary. The
first was, when Pliny was nineteen, and Tacitus a little older (how much
we are not informed), when Tacitus distinguished himself, so as to awaken
the emulation and the envy, though not in a bad sense, of Pliny. The last
was some twenty years later, when Tacitus and Pliny, the tried friends of
a whole life, the brightest ornaments of literature and of the forum,
were associated by the choice of the Senate, and pleaded together at
the bar of the Senate, and in the presence of the Emperor Trajan, for
the execution of justice upon Marius Priscus, who was accused of
maladministration in the proconsulship of Africa. Pliny says, that
Tacitus spoke with singular gravity and eloquence, and the Senate passed
a unanimous vote of approbation and thanks to both the orators, for the
ability and success with which they had managed the prosecution (Plin.
Epis. ii. 11)
We have also the comments of Pliny on a panegyrical oration, which
Tacitus pronounced, when consul, upon his predecessor in the consular
office, Verginius Rufus, perhaps the most remarkable man of his age,
distinguished alike as a hero, a statesman, and a scholar, and yet so
modest or so wise that he repeatedly refused the offer of the imperial
purple. "Fortune," says Pliny, "always faithful to Verginius, reserved
for her last favor, such an orator to pronounce a eulogium on such
virtues. It was enough to crown the glory of a well spent life" (Plin.
Epis. ii. 1).
The speeches in the historical works of Tacitus, though rather concise
and abstract for popular orations, are full of force and fire. Some of
them are truly Demosthenic in their impassioned and fiery logic. The
speech of Galgacus before the Briton army, when driven into the extremity
of Caledonia by the Romans under Agricola, can hardly be surpassed for
patriotic sentiments, vigorous reasoning, and burning invective. The
address of Germanicus to his mutinous soldiers (in the Annals) is not
less remarkable for tender pathos. The sage and yet soldierlike address
of the aged Galba to his adopted son Piso, the calm and manly speech of
Piso to the body guard, the artful harangue of the demagogue Otho to his
troops, the no less crafty address of Mucianus to Vespasian, the headlong
rapidity of Antonius' argument for immediate action, the plausible plea
of Marcellus Eprius against the honest attack of Helvidius Priscus, and
the burning rebukes of the intrepid Vocula to his cowardly and
treacherous followers--all these, in the Histories, show no ordinary
degree of rhetorical skill and versatility. Indeed, the entire body of
his works is animated with the spirit of the orator, as it is tinged also
with the coloring of the poet. For this reason, they are doubtless
deficient in the noble simplicity of the earlier classical histories; but
for the same reason they may be a richer treasure for the professional
men at least of modern times.
Of his marriage with the daughter of Agricola, and its influence on his
character and prospects, as also of his passing in regular gradation
through the series of public honors at Rome, beginning with the
quaestorship under Vespasian, and ending with the consulship under Nerva,
Tacitus informs us himself (A. 9, His. i. 1), barely alluding to them,
however, in the general, and leaving all the details to mere conjecture.
We learn to our surprise, that he not only escaped the jealousy of the
tyrant Domitian, but was even promoted by him to the office of
Quindecimvir and Praetor (Ann. ii. 11). Beyond these vague notices, we
know little or nothing of his course of life, except that Pliny says
(Epist. iv. 13), he was much esteemed by the learned and the great at
Rome, who went in crowds to his levees. Of the time of his death, we can
only conjecture, that he died before the Emperor Trajan, but after his
friend Pliny--the former, because, had he outlived the Emperor, he would
probably have executed his purpose of writing the history of his reign
(His. i. 1); the latter, because, if he had not survived his friend,
Pliny, who lamented the death of so many others, would not have failed to
pay the last tribute to the memory of Tacitus.
It is generally admitted, though without direct testimony, that Tacitus
died not without issue. That excellent prince, M. Claudius Tacitus,
deduced his pedigree from the historian, and ordered his image to be set
up, and a complete collection of his works to be placed in the public
archives, with a special direction that twelve copies should be made
every year at the public expense. It is greatly to be regretted that such
praiseworthy precautions should have failed to preserve for us that
treasure entire!
The age of Tacitus is usually styled the silver age of Roman Literature;
and it merits no higher title, when compared with the golden age of
Augustus. It was the good fortune of Augustus to gain the supremacy at
Rome, when society had reached its maximum of refinement, and was just
ready to enter upon its stage of corruption and decline. Hence his name
is identified with that proud era in literature, in producing which he
bore at best only an accidental and secondary part. In the literature of
the Augustan age, we admire the substance of learning and philosophy
without the show, the cultivation of taste without the parade of
criticism, the fascination of poetry without its corruption, and the use
of eloquence without its abuse. Grecian refinement was no longer
despised; Grecian effeminacy had not yet prevailed. The camp was not now
the home of the Romans; neither were the theatres and the schools. They
had ceased to be a nation of soldiers, and had not yet become a nation of
slaves. At no other period could Rome have had her Cicero, her Livy, and
her Virgil.
The silver age produced no men who "attained unto these first three." But
there are not wanting other bright names to associate with Tacitus,
though most of them lived a little earlier than he. There was Seneca, the
Philosopher, whose style, with its perpetual antitheses, is the very
worst of the age, but his sentiments, perhaps more or less under the
influence of Christianity, approach nearer to the Christian code of
morals than those of any other Latin author. There were Martial and
Juvenal, whose satires made vice tremble in its high places, and helped
to confer on the Romans the honor of originating one species of literary
composition, unknown to the Greeks. There were Suetonius and Plutarch;
the one natural, simple, and pure in his style, far beyond his age, but
without much depth or vigor of thought; the other involved and affected
in his manner, but in his matter of surpassing richness and incalculable
worth. There was the elder Pliny, a prodigy of learning and industry,
whose researches in Natural History cost him his life, in that fatal
eruption of Vesuvius which buried Herculaneum and Pompeii. There was also
the judicious Quintilian, at once neat and nervous in his language,
delicate and correct in his criticisms, a man of genius and a scholar, a
teacher and an exemplar of eloquence. Finally, there were the younger
Pliny and Tacitus, rival candidates for literary and professional
distinction, yet cherishing for each other the most devoted and
inviolable attachment, each viewing the other as the ornament of their
country, each urging the other to write the history of their age, and
each relying chiefly on the genius of the other for his own immortality
(Plin. Epis. vii. 33). Their names were together identified by their
contemporaries with the literature of the age of Trajan: "I never was
touched with a more sensible pleasure," says Pliny, in one of his
beautiful Letters [Eleven of these are addressed to Tacitus, and two
or three are written expressly for the purpose of furnishing materials
for his history.] (which rival Cicero's in epistolary ease and
elegance), "than by an account which I lately received from Cornelius
Tacitus. He informed me, that at the last Circensian Games, he sat next
a stranger, who, after much discourse on various topics of learning,
asked him whether he was an Italian or a Provincial. Tacitus replied,
'Your acquaintance with literature must have informed you who I am.'
'Aye,' said the man, 'is it then Tacitus or Pliny I am talking with?' I
cannot express how highly I am pleased to find, that our names are not
so much the proper appellations of individuals, as a designation of
learning itself" (Plin. Epis. ix. 23). Critics are not agreed to which
of these two literary friends belongs the delicate encomium of
Quintilian, when, after enumerating the principal writers of the day,
he adds, "There is another ornament of the age, who will deserve the
admiration of posterity. I do not mention him at present; his name will
be known hereafter." Pliny, Tacitus, and Quintilian, are also rival
candidates for the honor of having written the Dialogue de Claris
Oratoribus, one of the most valuable productions in ancient criticism.
As a writer, Tacitus was not free from the faults of his age. The native
simplicity of Greek and Latin composition had passed away. An affected
point and an artificial brilliancy were substituted in their place. The
rhetoric and philosophy of the schools had infected all the departments
of literature. Simple narrative no longer suited the pampered taste of
the readers or the writers of history. It must be highly seasoned with
sentimentalism and moralizing, with romance and poetry. Tacitus,
certainly, did not escape the infection. In the language of Macaulay, "He
carries his love of effect far beyond the limits of moderation. He tells
a fine story finely, but he cannot tell a plain story plainly. He
stimulates, till stimulants lose their power." [See a fine article on
history, Ed. Her., 1828. Also in Macaulay's Miscellanies.] We have taken
occasion in the notes to point out not a few examples of rhetorical
pomp, and poetical coloring, and even needless multiplication of words,
where plainness and precision would have been much better, and which
may well surprise us in a writer of so much conciseness. Lord Monboddo,
in a very able, though somewhat extravagant critique on Tacitus, has
selected numerous instances of what he calls the ornamented dry style,
many of which are so concise, so rough, and so broken, that he says,
they do not deserve the name of composition, but seem rather like the
raw materials of history, than like history itself (Orig. and Prog.
of Lang., vol iii. chap. 12).
Still, few readers can fail to pronounce Tacitus, as Macaulay affirms,
and even Lord Monboddo admits him to be, the greatest of Latin
historians, superior to Thucydides himself in the moral painting of his
best narrative scenes, and in the delineation of character without a
rival among historians, with scarcely a superior among dramatists and
novelists. The common style of his narrative is, indeed, wanting in
simplicity, and sometimes in perspicuity. He does not deal enough in the
specific and the picturesque, the where, the when and the how. But when
his subject comes up to the grandeur of his conceptions, and the strength
of his language, his descriptions are graphic and powerful. No battle
scenes are more grand and terrific than those of Tacitus. Military men
and scholars have also remarked their singular correctness and
definiteness. The military evolutions, the fierce encounter, the doubtful
struggle, the alternations of victory and defeat, the disastrous rout and
hot pursuit, the carnage and blood, are set forth with the warrior's
accuracy and the poet's fire; while, at the same time, the conflicting
passions and emotions of the combatants are discerned, as it were, by the
eye of a seer--their hidden springs of action, and the lowest depths of
their hearts laid bare, as if by the wand of a magician. In the painting
of large groups, in the moral portraiture of vast bodies of men under
high excitement and in strenuous exertion, we think that Tacitus far
surpasses all other historians. Whether it be a field of battle or a
captured city, a frightened senate or a flattering court, a mutiny or a
mob, that he describes, we not only see in a clear and strong light the
outward actions, but we look into the hearts of all the mixed multitude,
and gaze with wonder on the changing emotions and conflicting passions by
which they are agitated.
His delineations of individual character are also marked by the same
profound insight into the human soul. Like the old Latin Poet, he might
have said,
"Homo sum; nihil _humani_ a me alienum puto."
There is scarcely a landscape picture in his whole gallery. It is full of
portraits of _men_, in groups and as individuals, every grade of
condition, every variety of character, performing all kinds of actions,
exhibiting every human passion, the colors laid on with a bold hand, the
principal features presented in a strong light, the minuter strokes
omitted, the soft and delicate finish despised. We feel, that we have
gained not a little insight into the character of those men, who are
barely introduced in the extant books of Tacitus, but whose history is
given in the books that are lost. Men of inferior rank even, who appear
on the stage only for a short time, develope strongly marked characters,
which are drawn with dramatic distinctness and power, while yet the
thread of history is never broken, the dignity of history never
sacrificed. And those Emperors, whose history is preserved entire,--with
them we feel acquainted, we know the controlling principles, as well as
the leading events of their lives, and we feel sure that we could predict
how they would act, under almost any imaginable circumstances.
In a faithful portraiture of the private and public life of the
degenerate Romans, there was much to call for the hand of a master in
_satire_. And we find in the glowing sketches of our author, all the
vigor and point of a Juvenal, without his vulgarity and obscenity; all
the burning indignation which the Latin is so peculiarly capable of
expressing, with all the vigor and stateliness by which the same language
is equally characterized. Tacitus has been sometimes represented as a
very Diogenes, for carping and sarcasm--a very Aristophanes, to blacken
character with ridicule and reproach. But he is as far removed from the
cynic or the buffoon, as from the panegyrist or the flatterer. He is not
the indiscriminate admirer that Plutarch was. Nor is he such a universal
hater as Sallust. It is the fault of the times that he is obliged to deal
so much in censure. If there ever were perfect monsters on earth, such
were several of the Roman Emperors. Yet Tacitus describes few, if any, of
them without some of the traits of humanity. He gives us in his history
neither demons nor gods, but veritable men and women. In this respect, as
also in his descriptions of battles, Tacitus is decidedly superior to
Livy. The characters of Livy are distinguishable only as classes--the
good all very good, the bad very bad, the indifferent very indifferent.
You discover no important difference between a Fabius and a Marcellus,
further than it lies on the face of their actions. In Tacitus, the
characters are all individuals. Each stands out distinctly from the
surrounding multitude, and not only performs his own proper actions, but
is governed by his own peculiar motives. Livy places before us the
statues of heroes and gods; Tacitus conducts us through the crowd of
living men.
In an attempt to sketch the most striking features of Tacitus, as a
writer, no critic can omit to mention his sage and pithy maxims.
Apothegms abound on every page--sagacious, truthful, and profound in
sentiment, in style concise, antithetic and sententious. Doubtless he is
excessively fond of pointed antithesis. Perhaps he is too much given to
moralizing and reflection. It was, as we have said, the fault of his age.
But no one, who is familiar with Seneca, will severely censure Tacitus.
He will only wonder that he should have risen so far above the faults of
his contemporaries. Indeed, Tacitus interweaves his reflections with so
much propriety, and clothes his apothegms with so much dignity--he is so
manifestly competent to instruct the world by maxims, whether in civil,
social, or individual life, that we are far from wishing he had indulged
in it less. His reflections do not interrupt the thread of his narrative.
They grow naturally out of his incidents. They break forth spontaneously
from the lips of his men. His history is indeed philosophy teaching by
examples; and his pithy sayings are truly lessons of wisdom, embodied in
the form most likely to strike the attention, and impress the memory. We
should love to see a collection of apothegms from the pen of Tacitus. It
would make an admirable book of laconics. No book would give you more
ideas in fewer words. Nowhere could you gain so much knowledge, and lose
so little time. The reader of Tacitus, who will study him with pen in
hand, to mark, or refer to the most striking passages, will soon find
himself master of a text book in moral and political science, we might
say a text book in human nature, singularly concise and sententious, and
what is not always true even of concise and sententious writers, as
singularly wise and profound. In such a book, many of the _speeches_
would find a place entire; for many of them are little else than a series
of condensed, well-timed, and most instructive apothegms. [E.g. the
speech of Galba to Piso. His. i. 15, 16.]
But the scholar, who is on the lookout, will find lurking in every
section, and almost every sentence, some important truth in morals, in
politics, in the individual or social nature of man. Neither the editor
nor the teacher can be expected to develope these sentiments, nor even,
in many instances, to point them out. That labor must be performed by the
scholar; and his will be the reward.
No hasty perusal, no single reading of Tacitus, will give a just
conception of the surpassing richness of his works. They must be studied
profoundly to be duly appreciated. They are a mine of wisdom, of vast
extent and unknown depth, whose treasures lie chiefly beneath the
surface, imbedded in the solid rock which must be entered with mining
implements, explored with strong lights, and its wealth brought up by
severe toil and sweat.