Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/983

Rh TACITUS. t)ie shameless rii%an rebels against it. Tim hypo- critical is the common character, or society could noi exist. In the Annals of Tacitus we have all chamcters ; but the hypocritical prevails in a de- spotic government and a state of loose positive morality. There may be great immorality and also great shamelessness, but then society is near its dis- solution. Under the empire there was fear, for the government was despotic ; but there as not universal shamelessness, at least under Tiberius : there was an outward respect paid to virtue. The reign of Tiberius was the reign of hypocrisy in all its forms, and the emperor himself was tlie great adept in the science ; affectation in Tiberius of un- willingness to exercise power, a lesson that he learned from Augustus, and a show of regard to decency ; flattery and servility on the part of the great, sometimes under the form of freedom of speech. To penetrate such a cloud of deception, we must attend even to the most insignificant ex- ternal signs ; for a man's nature will show itself, be he ever so cautious and cunning. In detecting these slight indications of character lies the great power of Tacitus : he penetrates to the hidden thoughts through the smallest avenue. But the possession of such a power implies something of a suspicious temper, and also cherishes it ; and thus Tacitus sometimes discovers a hidden cause, where an open one seems to offer a sufficient explanation. Tacitus employed this power in the history of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Suetonius tells us of a man's vices simply and barely ; Tacitus dis- covers what a man tries to conceal. His Annals are filled with dramatic scenes and striking cata- strophes. He laboured to produce effect by the exhibition of great personages on the stage ; but this is not the business of an historian. The real matter of history is a whole people ; and their ac- tivity or suffering, mainly as affected by systems of government, is that vhich the historian has to contemplate. This is not the method of Tacitus in his Annals ; his treatment is directly biographical, only indirectly political. His method is inferior to that of Thucydides, and even of Polybius, but it is a method almost necessitated by the existence of political power in the hands of an individual, and modern historians, except within the present cen- tury, have generally followed in the same track from the same cause. Tacitus knew nothing of Christianit}', which, says Montaigne, was his misfortune, not his fault. His practical morality was the Stoical, the only one that could give consolation in the age in which he lived. The highest example of Stoical morality among the Romans is the emperor Aurelius. whose golden book is the noblest monument that a Roman has left behind him. Great and good men were not wanting under the worst emperors, and Tacitus has immortalised their names. Germanicus Caesar, a humane man, and his intrepid wife, lived under Tiberius ; Corbulo, an honest and able soldier, fell a victim to his fidelity to Nero. The memory of Agricola, and his virtues, greater than his talents, has been perpetuated by the affection of his son-in- law ; and his prediction that Agricola will survive to future generations is accomplished. Thrasea Paetus and Helvidius Priscus were models of virtue ; and Arria, the wife of Paetus, remembered the vii'- tues of her mother. The jurists of Rome under the empire never forgot the bright example of the Scaevolae of the republic : strange, though true, TACITUS. 971 the great lawyers of Rome were among the best men and the best citizens that she produced. As to the mass of the people we learn little from Ta- citus : they have only become matter for history in recent days. The superficial suppose, that when rulers are vicious the people are so too ; but the mass of the people in all ages are the most virtuous, if not for other reasons, they are so because labour is the condition of their existence. The Satires of Juvenal touch the wealthy and the great, whose vices are the result of idleness and the command of money. Tacitus had not the belief in a moral govern- ment of the world which Aurelius had ; or if he had this belief, he has not expressed it distinctly. He loved virtue, he abhorred vice ; but he has not shown that the constitution of things has an order impressed upon it by the law of its existence, which implies a law-giver. His theology looks something like the Epicurean, as exhibited by Lucretius. A belief in existence independent of a corporeal form, of a life after death, is rather a-hope with him than a conviction. (Compare Agricola^ c. 46, Annals, iii. ] 8, vi. 22, and the ambiguous or corrupt passage, Hist. i. 4.) The style of Tacitus is peculiar, though it bears some resemblance to Sallust. In the Annals it is concise, vigorous, and pregnant with meaning ; la- boured, 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. He leaves something for the reader to fill up, and does not overpower him with words. The words that he does use are all intended to have a mean- ing. Such a work is probably the result of many transcriptions by the author ; if it was produced at once in its present form, the author must have practised himself till he could write in no other way. Those who have studied Tacitus much, end with admiring a form of expression which at first is harsh and almost repulsive. One might con- jecture that Tacitus, when he wrote his Annals, had Dy much labour acquired the ait of writing with difficulty. The materials which Tacitus had for his his- torical writings were abundant ; public docu- ments; memoirs, as those of Agrippina ; histories, as those of Fabius Rusticus and Vipsanius Mes- sala ; the Fasti, Orationes Principum, and the Acta of the Senate ; the conversation of his friends, and his own experience. It is not his practice to give authorities textuall}-, a method which adds to the value of a history, but impairs its effect simply as a work of art. He who would erect an historical monument to his own fame will follow the method of Tacitus, compress his own researches into a nar- row compass, and give them a form which is stamped with the individuality of the author. Time will confer on him the authority which the rigid critic only allows to real evidence. That Tacitus, in his Annals, purposely omitted every thing that could impair the effect of his work as a composition, is evident. The Annals are not longer than an epitome would be of a more diffuse history ; but they differ altogether from those worthless literary labours. In the Annals Tacitus is generally brief and rapid in his sketches ; but he is some- times minute, and almost tedious, when he comes to work out a dramatic scene. Nar does he alto- gether neglect his rhetorical art when he has au