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Rh good terms. Yet if the character he draws of Domitian in the 'Agricola,' or where there is occasion to mention him in the 'History,' be a portrait and not a caricature, it is hard to conceive how he managed to serve such a master without flattering him as Martial, Statius, and other poets of the age did; or, if he did not fatter him, how he contrived to keep his head on his shoulders. There is no doubt that in the year 88 he was Prætor, and assisted as one of the fifteen officials (quindecemviri) at the celebration of the secular games in that year.

Eleven years earlier, in 77, Tacitus was betrothed to the daughter of Julius Agricola, and in the next year they were married, just before his father-in-law left Rome to govern Britain. It is pleasant to infer from his writings that his marriage was a happy one; or that at least he had no cause for repenting of it. Speaking of his betrothed he says of her that she was "even then a maiden of noble promise." Both Agricola and his son-in-law were, to all appearance, fortunate in their partners for life. Not many of his friends and acquaintance were perhaps so lucky, since it was an age when to divorce a wife or a husband was nearly as common as to take one, if there be any truth in the verse of Martial or Juvenal, or in the anecdotes of Suetonius. A son who died in his infancy was the only fruit of Tacitus's marriage. The emperor of that name is reported to have claimed to be a descendant of the historian; and Sidonius Apollinaris, a writer in the fifth century of our era, addresses a letter to Polemius in which he reminds him of his illustrious ancestor, Tacitus. On grounds equally slender a father has been found for the historian, one