Page:Tacitus; (IA tacituswilliam00donnrich).pdf/24

12 captive; or if they turned from these to treat of domestic affairs, they had before them an unlimited field for digression in the dissensions between the consuls and the tribunes, the agrarian laws, the corn-laws, and the contests between the commons and the patricians. The matter on which I am occupied is circumscribed and unproductive of renown to the author—a state of undisturbed peace, or only interrupted in a limited degree, the sad condition of affairs in the city, and a prince indifferent about extending the bounds of the empire." He sighed for the brave days when some province almost yearly was annexed to the commonwealth. The manly virtues of a past age blinded him to its faults, and in his aversion to a single rule he forgot the vices of a divided one.

The names of some of his friends have been preserved—that of Justus Fabius, to whom he addressed the 'Dialogue on the Orators,' and that of Asinius Rufus, both friends also of Pliny. From Pliny we derive the best part of our slight knowledge of the historian, to whom he addresses eleven of his letters. Between him and Tacitus the strictest intimacy existed. Each of them submitted his writings to the other's inspection, and Pliny is never weary of applauding the harmony, frankness, and good faith which pervaded their intercourse from first to last. Pliny ever prophesied great things of the historical works on which Tacitus was engaged, and furnished him with materials, as, for example, two letters on the eruption of Vesuvius. Of the two we know not which was the survivor, but we are able to say that no cloud ever dimmed the brightness of their friendship.