Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/916

* TACITUS. 802 TACKING. merely the year 69 and a part of 70. Of the Annuls thei'e is extant only about one-half, and til is does not give a continuous narrative. After the fifth chapter of the fifth book there is a lacuna which marks the loss of the events of 29- 31. Tacitus probably ended this book with the death of Sejanus, so that the beginning of the sixth book is also lacking. The seventh to the tenth, the beginning of the eleventh, and the close of the sixteenth are also missing, and we thus lose all of the reign of Caligula, the first five years of Claudius, and the last two years of Nero. In the Annals Rome and the Princeps form the centre about which are grouped the events of a history which is not that alone of Rome, but of the associated provinces. The Medicean manu- script designates the work Ab Excessu Dili Aii- jliisti, and this is no doubt the original title. In the Hisiories Tacitus writes as a contemporary, and therefore with a surer touch, and he gives full play to his dramatic power.s in his descrip- tion of what is quite familiar to him. The An- lulls represent the culminating task of his life- time and are the work of the period of his full The great power of Tacitus as an historian is due to his skill in discerning the motives which lead men to act, and his 'deep psychological in- sight' is very marked. He studies men, not things, and hence he is skilled in character paint- ing. A marked feature of the Tacitean spirit is the tendency to impute a base or unworthv mo- tive to all the actions of those men whom he describes. This is particularly true of his treat- ment of Tiberius. Certain it is that Tacitus writes of Roman society as a pessimist, and we may obtain a juster view bj' turning to the more attractive picture jiresented by his friend and contemporary Pliny the Younger. Tacitus earl}- recognized that the style taught in the schools of rhetoric was not adequate for his history, and he thereupon evolved one of his own. There are three distinguishing features of Tacitus's style — conciseness, variety, and poetical coloring. There is not a superfltious word, and his condensation sometimes causes obscurity. 'e nay say that his conciseness corresponds to his thought, for there is nothing artificial in it, and the style is characteristic of the writer. Tacitus's fondness for variety is found in his word posi- tions, and in his variation in forms and con- structions. The poetical coloring came from his study of the Augustan poets, particularly Vergil, ^lany words and expressions may be traced to Vergil, and this is true particularly of the minor writings and the His'tories. The manuscripts of Tacitus are the Codex Mediceus (I.), dating from the ninth century and containing a part of the Aiinah : and the Codex Jlediceus (II.) of the eleventh or twelfth cen- turies containing what remains of the other bonks nf the Annnls and Uisfories. The Ocrmnnin and Dialorjus are obtained from a manuscript in the Vatican based on an earlier one of the ninth century and again from a manuscript at Leyden. dating from the fifteenth century. The Anricola is found in two transcriptions of the fifteenth cen- tury now in the Vatican. The editio princeps is by Puteolanus of IVIilan. about 1476. The best text is that of C. Halm in the "Teubner Series" (Leipzig. 1886). Important editions are the Annals, with English notes by H. Fiirneaux (Ox- ford, 1891-92; vol. i., 2d ed. 1896); Allen, The Annals of Tacitus, i.-vi. (Boston, 1890) ; Nipper- dey and Andresen, Ab Excessu Did Augasii (Berlin, 1892); Codley, The Histories (New York, 1891); Spooner '( London, 1891); Froat, Agricola and tlerjuania (ib., 1801) ; Hop- kins (Boston, 1893) ; Furneaux, The Agricola (Oxford, 1896); Gudeman (Boston, 1899); id.. Dialogiis (ib., 1894) ; and Peterson (Oxford, 1893). The lexicons for Tacitus are Boetticher's (1832) and the great work of Gerlier and Greef (completed 1903). An excellent English trans- lation is that by Church and Brodribb (London, 1870-77). TACKING (from tack, from OF. taque. taehe, dialectic Fr. tachc, nail, tack; so called because of the part of the sail to which the ro]ie is at- tached), AND WEARING (from wear, AS. icer- ian. Goth, nasjaii, (IIKt. irerjrin. to clothe; con- nected with Lat. vesiis, Gik. itrtirji, esthSs, elotli- ing, Skt. i-as, to put on clothing). A vessel is said to be on the starboard tack when she is sailing with the wind on her starboard side, and on the port tack when the wind is on her port side, she is elose-hanled on either tack when she is sailing as near to the wind as the set of her sails permits. The operation of changing from one tack to the other is called tacking if the vessel comes up head to wind and then falls off on the other tack, and ireariiig or gghing if she falls off — bringing the wind astern — and then conies up to the wind on the new tack. 2 Position: After tacking; Vessel on port tack. r-'' Position: Before tacking; Vessel on starboard tack. It is evident from the sketches that in tacking there is a gain to windward — if the vessel is a weatherly one and well managed — while in wearing there is a loss, because part of the time the ship is running away from the wind. There- fore, tacking is always preferred when practi- cable. While all properly built vessels will tack under ordinary conditions of sea and wind, there are times when the sea is very rough and the wind so strong that little sail can be carried: or the wind may be too light to give sufficient headway for tacking; or the vessel may be im- properly sparred or ballasted. In these cases ircnring is necessarily resorted to. In vessels carrying fore-and-aft sails only the operation of
 * le'elopment as a writer.