THE life of ancient Rome’s greatest historian, Publius Cornelius Tacitus, is known in broad outline, but many of the important details are either missing or contentious. Even his name is uncertain. The only surviving manuscript of the opening books of the Annals, the Medicean, dating to the ninth century AD and carrying considerable authority, calls him Publius, and that name has become more or less established by tradition. But Sidonius Apollonaris, a bishop and poet of considerable standing in the fifth century, creates an element of doubt, giving him the praenomen Gaius. A letter about Tacitus written by his good friend Pliny the Younger (Ep. 9.23) suggests very strongly that the two men came from the same general area. Pliny was a native of Como, in northern Italy. Tacitus may likewise have originated from the Gallic area of northern Italy or perhaps from the highly Romanized province of Gallia Narbonensis in what is now southern France. His forebears would at some point have received citizenship under the patronage of a now unknown Roman official with the distinguished nomen of ‘Cornelius’ who would have continued to be honoured in the names of the descendants of the newly enfranchised Italians (just as many ‘Gallic’ Italians bore Julius Caesar’s nomen Julius). The final element of his name, the cognomen ‘Tacitus’, is not a common one, and it is very possible that the historian is the son of the Cornelius Tacitus, equestrian procurator (financial officer) of Gallia Belgica, mentioned by his friend’s uncle, Pliny the Elder, in his encyclopaedic work, the Historia Naturalis (NH 7.76). If this identification is correct, it would make Tacitus a member of the equestrian class, in the rank below that of senator, and his entry into the Roman Senate would have marked him as a novus homo, a ‘new man’, who obtained access to that body despite having no senators in his family line.
A number of rules prescribed the age at which ambitious Romans could enter the various magistracies open to them. Since we know the dates when Tacitus assumed some of his offices (see below), we can be reasonably confident that he was born not long after ad 55 and would thus have come into the world just after Nero succeeded Claudius as emperor. Nero committed suicide in 68. Tacitus as a young boy could well have witnessed first-hand the crisis that then afflicted Italy and southern Gaul as a succession of military leaders vied to replace the last, discredited, member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The ultimate victory of Vespasian, emperor 69–79, brought a period of relative calm. It is during his reign that we have the first datable event of Tacitus’ life. In 77 he married the daughter of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, soon to be appointed governor of Britain. We also know that he was able to go to Rome to begin a public career. We have some details of that career from his own writing. In a striking line of the Histories, he credits three emperors with his progress. He claims that his public life was ‘begun by Vespasian, enhanced by Titus, and still further advanced by Domitian’ (Hist. 1.1.3). Scholars supplement this statement with information derived from a marble funerary inscription that has long been known but only recently identified by the distinguished historian Géza Alföldy as almost certainly belonging to the tomb of Tacitus.1 The inscription reveals that the deceased was a member of a board of ten, with responsibility for judging lawsuits. This was one of the standard minor magistracies, known as the ‘vigintivirate’, held by young men at the beginning of their public careers, presumably in Tacitus’ case under Vespasian. The next office in the inscription is lost, but may well have been that of tribune (military officer) in a legion, a common form of service for young men ambitious for a public career. Tacitus says that his career was enhanced under Titus, which may mean that in about 81 he held the quaestorship. This office, open under Augustus to men in at least their twenty-fifth year and generally involving financial duties, was a key stage in a public career, since it gave the holder access to the Senate. The Rome inscription speaks of the deceased as having been ‘quaestor of Augustus’, a signal honour, since of the twenty quaestors elected only two had this special designation, being chosen personally by the emperor to represent him in the Senate during his absences. It would, in that case, have been very appropriate to acknowledge the special favour of Titus. The quaestorship was often followed by one of two offices, that of aedile, concerned mainly with municipal administration, or of tribune, appointed to protect the rights and interests of the plebeians. The inscription speaks of Tacitus having followed this second option. As the third element of imperial favour, Tacitus also says that he was advanced by Domitian. This is doubtless explained by a comment in the Annals that in 88 he obtained the praetorship (Ann. 11.11). Eighteen praetors were elected annually at this period, their duties relating to the administration of justice.
At the same time as he was praetor, Tacitus tells us, he was also a member of an important priestly college, the board of fifteen charged with supervising certain religious ceremonies (quindecimvir sacris faciundis), an important duty in 88, when Domitian chose to celebrate the Secular Games, one of the most important events in Rome’s calendar. Between 89 and 93 Tacitus was absent from Rome, perhaps with some military responsibility or as governor of a minor province. His absence, at a time when Domitian’s autocracy was at its most vicious, was propitious, since that period saw the execution of a number of important Romans. He seems to have returned to Rome by the autumn of 93, and was present there during the treason trials taking place in the city.2 Whether he was absent for the next three years we have no way of telling, but in any case the situation was much improved for the senatorial order in general by the assassination in September 96 of Domitian, to be succeeded by Marcus Cocceius Nerva. Perhaps the elderly Nerva’s most significant contribution to Roman history was his adoption in 97 of Marcus Ulpius Traianus, the future emperor Trajan, who would succeed Nerva in January 98 and usher in an era deemed by Gibbon, perhaps not totally without justification, as the happiest period of human history. The year 97 was also important for Tacitus personally, since towards the end of it he held the most senior administrative post available in Rome, the consulship, in accordance with the practice whereby the two consuls appointed initially in any year (ordinarii) would assume office on 1 January but often step down and be succeeded by ‘suffect’ consuls. The consulship was open to men aged 42 and older unless they had ex-consuls in their family line, which made it available from a much earlier age, possibly 32. As consul, Tacitus delivered the oration at the funeral of the highly regarded Lucius Verginius Rufus (Pliny, Ep. 2.1).
There would have been several options open for Tacitus after his consulship but we have no record of any immediate office. We do know that, along with Pliny the Younger, he represented the province of Africa against its former governor Marius Priscus on a charge of extortion in a case that began in early 99 and ended in January 100 (Pliny, Ep. 2.11). Pliny opened, speaking for five hours. Tacitus did the summing up, and Pliny testifies to his impressive and persuasive eloquence. They were successful, and Cornutus Tertullus, the consul-designate for the following year, spoke before the Senate of their commendable performance.
Pliny is our richest source of information on Tacitus’ character and personality. He wrote eleven letters to Tacitus, and mentions him in three more. Their tone is intimate, and Pliny speaks warmly of their close friendship, expressing pleasure that their names will forever be linked through their writings (Ep. 9.14). He is especially taken by an anecdote that Tacitus told him, of how a stranger asked Tacitus his identity, and when the reply was, ‘Surely you know me from my writing’, the stranger wanted to know if he was Tacitus or Pliny (Ep. 9.23). Pliny also says he desires immortality by the inclusion of one of his cases in Tacitus’ history, which he believes, presciently, will be eternal, although this proved not to be true of Pliny’s case, if it was ever included (Ep. 7.33). He receives a speech sent to him by Tacitus for criticism (Ep. 8.7), but concedes his friend’s superiority as an orator (Ep. 7.20). In one letter Pliny gives his view of the right length for speeches, long and full rather than brief, but he tellingly says that his mind could be changed by Tacitus (Ep. 1.20). Pliny seeks his friend’s assistance in finding teachers for a school he is attempting to fund at Comum, his birthplace (Ep. 4.13). He agrees to support a young candidate for office as a favour to Tacitus (Ep. 6.9). There is also a good deal of light banter. Pliny laments that he cannot do serious work when relaxing in the country (Ep. 9.10), but he also reports that when he went on a hunting trip he took his writing materials with him, for which he expects to be teased (Ep. 1.6). Other letters show Pliny communicating with Tacitus as a historian. In two, he responds to requests for detailed accounts of the eruption of Vesuvius, during which his uncle, the Elder Pliny, lost his life (Ep. 6.16, 20).
Tacitus was absent from Rome in 104 and 105 (Pliny, Ep. 4.13). He may have held some administrative post in a province, but we have no way of knowing. Beyond his joint prosecution of Marius Priscus, there is only one further public service recorded after the consulship, in an inscription from the province of Asia when Tacitus was governor there, probably 112/13.3 The proconsulship of Asia was generally regarded, with Africa, as one of the twin pinnacles of the senatorial career. It has been suggested that this tenure of office in Asia explains Tacitus’ great interest in events in that province. No further office is known. Nor do we know the date of Tacitus’ death. He almost certainly survived Trajan. But how long he survived into Hadrian’s reign is far from certain. At best we can perhaps say that he died between 117 and 130.
The earliest Roman history in any form approaching the modern concept of history can be dated to the end of the third century BC, when Quintus Fabius Pictor, a patrician member of the Senate, produced a history written in Greek, a work that foreshadowed successive histories by placing stress on Roman character as an important element in Rome’s worldly success. Further histories were written in Greek, but by the second century the tradition was established of history written in Latin. The celebrated man of firmness, Marcus Porcius Cato, censor (magistrate in charge of public morality, among other things) in 184 BC, wrote a history of Rome in Latin in seven books. Its early part, to which the generic title of Origines most properly belongs, dealt with the origins of Rome and other cities of Italy. By Book 4 he had reached the First Punic War (264–241) and in the final book he included contemporary events, right down to the year of his death (149). His work has survived only in fragments, but their pervasive attitude is one of a deep conservatism, a trait that would be found in subsequent historians. There was much historical activity in the years following Cato’s death, but Cicero could still write disparagingly in 55 BC in his work ‘On the Orator’ (De Oratore 2.52) that the earlier Roman histories were no more than an ‘annalistic confection’. If Cicero’s comment was justified at the time, however, the situation was very soon rectified by the publication of the first two works of Roman history written in Latin to have survived, Caesar’s Civil War (Bellum Civile) and Gallic War (Bellum Gallicum). These are composed in brilliant, uncluttered narrative, meant at least in part to serve a purpose beyond pure historical exposition, that of justifying Caesar in the action he took against not only his foreign enemies, but also his political foes. Moreover, as if further to counter the slur on Roman historiography, shortly after Caesar’s death in 44 Sallust undertook his Catilina, a masterly account of the notorious conspiracy of 63 BC headed by a disaffected member of the nobility, Lucius Sergius Catilina. It is suffused by the notion of the role that virtus plays in human affairs, and particularly in the political decline that occurred in Rome in the decades down to Catiline. Sallust’s descriptions of aristocratic behaviour show him to be deeply troubled by the moral decadence of Rome and of the old Roman aristocracy, whose degeneracy he paints in the blackest colours. Sallust’s next work, the Jugurtha, focuses more on military narrative. But here, too, he dwells upon the feebleness of the Senate and of the aristocracy. He reverted to the themes of moral decline in his final work, the annalistic Histories, which has survived only in fragments. Sallust is considered to have had a considerable influence on Tacitus, in his Latin style and in his view of history as a demonstration of social disintegration.
Perhaps second only to Tacitus in stature as a Roman historian is Livy, who began his magisterial work on Roman history about ad 27. The work covered an enormous time-span, from the founding of Rome—hence its title Ab Urbe Condita—down to the death of Drusus, son of Livia, in 9 BC. Thirty-five books survive of the 142 Livy wrote. It could perhaps be argued that the very scale of Livy’s history precluded any deep analysis of sources, and by and large he seems to have been satisfied simply to draw on previous authorities. Livy was undoubtedly a great stylist, praised for his ‘milky richness’ (lactea ubertas) as Quintilian described it in his great work on oratory, the Institutio Oratoria, but Livy cannot claim an important place in the development of historiography, and Quintilian concedes that Sallust was the greater historian.
In its structure, Livy’s history was annalistic, meaning that its narrative was organized on a year-by-year basis. This method was by no means Livy’s innovation. It is difficult to say when annalistic Roman history was first written. It may not have been before the mid-second century BC in a meaningful sense, but certainly an influential landmark seems to have been reached in that period with the composition of annales maximi by Publius Mucius Scaevola, the chief priest (Pontifex Maximus), in eighty books, from Rome’s origins to his own day. In this work Scaevola set out formally on a year-by-year basis the chief business of the state, military, civil, and religious. In fact, an annalistic structure made much sense for republican history, since the change of consul would have major impact on the affairs of the state.
Of the historians between Livy and Tacitus, only Velleius Paterculus has survived in substance. Born in about 19 BC, of equestrian stock, Velleius pursued a military career, before moving through the senatorial ranks to the praetorship in ad 16. His Historiae Romanae is a compendium of Roman history from the legendary past, as far back as the Trojan War, down to ad 30. The earlier parts are missing and must have been summary indeed. He becomes more detailed as he reaches his own day, focusing very much on the figure of Tiberius. His esteem for his old commander has won him many detractors, but it is only fair to note that his coverage of Rome’s second emperor, which contrasts with the darker picture given by Tacitus, is limited to Tiberius’ successful period as a military commander and to the earlier part of his reign, before things started to go awry.
On Nerva’s accession, Tacitus pondered the idea of an account of the grim period of Domitian that had preceded it, but in 97–8, when he was in his early forties, he opted to write first a shorter piece, inspired by affection, the Agricola. This was intended to record the career of his father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who died in 93 (Agr. 3) and in keeping with the traditions of ancient biography it is something of a eulogy of its subject. Agricola’s reputation was based largely on his governorship of Britain and much of the work is devoted to those seven years. But the book is also an attack on Domitian, whose repressive regime may well have coloured Tacitus’ general views on the principate. He records how Domitian spitefully held back Agricola, and at the beginning of the Agricola he speaks of the problems of recovering his voice after fifteen years of forced silence. But for all that, there is no evidence that Tacitus or his career suffered under Domitian; in fact, that career may have flourished. As noted above, Tacitus credits the emperor in the Histories for his personal advancement.
Already in the Agricola Tacitus was beginning to manifest his distinctive Latin style, and this would reach its fullest expression later, in the Annals. That style is in many ways remarkable, and perhaps no other ancient writer has imposed his mark so distinctively on the language. Tacitean Latin is always recognizable as such. Like Sallust, Tacitus rejected Ciceronian verbosity in favour of pointed concision and trenchant epigrams. Moreover, in both vocabulary and syntax, he showed a penchant for the unusual and the striking. He went out of his way to use words that were poetic and archaic. It might be argued that archaisms were intended to evoke an earlier, perhaps purer, age but much of the time it seems that he was intent on producing a startling effect. In this also he was perhaps a disciple of Sallust, who was reputed to have hired an assistant to scour Cato for archaisms that he could use.
The Agricola was followed soon after by the Germania, an ethnographic study of the peoples of Germany, contrasting their simple integrity with the decaying morals of Rome of Tacitus’ own time. It is also seen by some scholars as a missive to Trajan about the enormous danger to Rome posed by the Germans, whom Domitian claimed to have subdued, with more triumphs than victories as Tacitus worded it (Germ. 37). If so, it missed its mark, since Trajan preferred to maintain the Domitianic myth, and placed his military focus on Dacia and the Danube frontier then turned to Parthia. The Germania may have been followed by the Dialogus de Oratoribus (Dialogue on Orators), on the familiar theme of the decline of the standards of oratory. This work pretends to reflect a discussion that Tacitus had heard in the year 75. It lacks much of the distinctiveness of Tacitus’ style, and some have argued that it should be placed early in Tacitus’ career or that it was not written by him at all. The broad consensus of modern scholars, however, is that the work is by Tacitus, probably written after the Germania.
If Tacitus did indeed write the Dialogus just after the turn of the century, he may already have been working on the great historical survey adumbrated in the Agricola (Agr. 3.3). At some point Pliny sent Tacitus an account (Ep. 6.16) of the eruption of Vesuvius in August 79, to assist in a historical work Tacitus was then writing. This work must clearly have been the Histories. It takes its beginning from the point when the consuls took up office, on 1 January 69, while the latter half of 68 after the death of Nero is covered in a brief retrospective. This arrangement is testimony to Tacitus’ strong commitment to the ‘annalistic’ format of his great historical works, where events are generally followed in sequence through the course of the year. The exception is that in the Annals events on the frontiers, in areas like Britain and the Parthian empire, are grouped in small clusters of years, in violation of the annalistic scheme, a diversion that is sometimes, though not invariably, signalled by Tacitus himself (6.38, 12.40, 13.9). The Histories ended with the death of Domitian in 96. We know from Pliny that Tacitus was writing this work in 106/7 and that Pliny was convinced that it would be immortal (Ep. 7.33.1).
In the preface to the Histories, Tacitus declared it as his intention, when he had finished the task in hand, to go back to the happier times under Nerva and Trajan (Hist. 1.1.4). He seems, however, to have abandoned this plan and in his most celebrated work, the Annals, went back to the death of Augustus to write the history of the succeeding emperors to the death of Nero (ad 14–68). We do not know when he began this, but we do have an indication that he was already well into the work in 116, since his reference to the Euphrates at Ann. 4.5 suggests that he wrote this section after Trajan’s final defeat of the Parthians, which belongs to that year. Together, the Histories and Annals made up thirty books, but there is no agreement on how they were divided.4 Traditionally, sixteen are assigned to the Annals, fourteen to the Histories, although some scholars assign two more to the Annals, arguing for a hexadic structure, with six books allotted to Tiberius, six to Caligula and Claudius, and the same number to Nero. Of the thirty books referred to by St Jerome, some half have survived, the first five books of the Histories down to ad 70 (the last in a fragmentary state), Books 1–6 of the Annals (Book 5 being very fragmentary) covering the reign of Tiberius, and Books 11–16 (the first and last books in this final grouping are not complete) beginning midway through Claudius’ reign and breaking off two years before the end of Nero’s. We cannot even be sure that Tacitus had finished the Annals before his death.
Tacitus’ method seems now to have undergone something of a modification. He discards the long Preface employed in the Histories, beginning the Annals with a very short prefatory comment on Rome’s earlier history and with the briefest of programmatic statements, namely that he will say a few words about Augustus, then cover Tiberius and the rest (Ann. 1.1). Elsewhere, he reveals that it was his intention, should he have time later, to write the history of Augustus (see Ann. 3.24). He did not cover this reign in detail in the Annals, perhaps because he thought that the accession of Tiberius was of such great symbolic importance in marking the point where the personal autocracy of Augustus became the institutionalized autocracy of Rome. It is also noteworthy that in this later work he feels somewhat freed from the annalistic shadow, through not obliging himself to begin with the consuls of ad 15. The transition of power from Augustus to Tiberius is more crucial than blind adherence to strict annalistic procedure.
Tacitus’ views as a historian are patent in the Annals. He was deeply opposed to the principate as a constitutional form, and committed to the republican system of senatorial government. This is not to say that he could not recognize the benefits brought to Rome by the relatively enlightened reigns of Nerva and Trajan, but it was a system that was bound to have a corrosive effect on the ruled, if not necessarily on the ruler. We should be careful of Tacitus’ famous claim to write sine ira et studio, ‘without rancour or bias’ (Ann. 1.1), an echo of the claim made in the Histories, ‘without partiality and without hatred’ (Hist. 1.1). It is indeed the case that in only a very few instances do we need to feel that he has presented facts with deliberate dishonesty. But behind the ‘facts’ lurk his own prejudices. His ascription of motives, and his reporting of rumours and supposedly widely held beliefs, have an inevitable impact on the reader. Ironically, Tacitus seems to have flourished under the imperial system, even under the despised and despotic Domitian, and his consulship and his governorship of Asia show him in many ways to have been a ‘company man’. The antipathy towards the system that emerges from the Annals is thus all the more surprising. It was a system under which he seems to have done so well.
There is general agreement that the great masterpiece of the Annals is the account of Tiberius, who is depicted as a deeply complex and fundamentally deceptive individual. His natural shyness is characterized as arrogance, his acts of generosity as hypocritical. To some degree the apparently unique fullness and complexity of Tiberius’ portrait may be accidental. No reign has survived intact, but a smaller portion of Tiberius is missing than of any other emperor and, importantly, only in his case do we have both the beginning and the end (almost all of Book 5 and the beginning of Book 6 are lost, so we have a gap of about two years between ad 29 and 31). In a sense, it can be said that the tone is set in the preliminary chapters, when Augustus seductively and hypocritically strips the Romans of their political independence. Tacitus concedes that under Augustus there was ‘no fear for the moment’ (1.4) and in the reported discussions that attended his funeral many pointed to the great benefits of the Augustan age and the limited use that Augustus had made of force (1.9). But Augustus had established a system that was inherently corrupt, and Tacitus’ great achievement was to trace the degradation of Roman politics through the course of Tiberius’ reign, to show that his character and personality were unable to withstand this debasing force of the imperial system. Few rulers provide as powerful an object lesson of the truth of Lord Acton’s much repeated sententia about the corrupting effect of absolute power.
In his obituary of the emperor at the end of Book 6, Tacitus divides Tiberius’ life into various phases. He excelled as a private individual, and as a military commander, under Augustus. The first part of his reign, down to about ad 22, was in many respects positive. He at least put on a show of virtue while his natural and adopted sons, Drusus and Germanicus, were alive. He then went into a phase of mixed good and evil during the lifetime of his mother Livia. We thus see his character evolve in his relationship with other people who seemed to exercise some restraint over him.
This early phase is covered in the first three books, which form a triad, balancing the second triad, Books 4–6, which covers the disastrous second half of the reign, when Tiberius slips into an ever more despicable despotism. The division is distinctly marked at the beginning of Book 4, where we learn that in this year (ad 23) a change for the worse occurred, the cause being the evil effect of Sejanus. In 26 Sejanus persuaded Tiberius to leave Rome, ultimately for the island of Capri. The loss of much of Book 5 is most unfortunate, since it would have traced the growth of Sejanus’ power, leading to the pinnacle of his success, when he joined Tiberius as a colleague in the consulship in January 31. We also lose the fall of Sejanus in October of that year. Under the influence of Sejanus, Tiberius lapsed into savagery, although he kept his lusts concealed. Finally, freed of him, Tiberius rushed headlong into crime and scandal, as he became increasingly bitter and distrustful. In this final phase we realize that, ironically, Sejanus had exercised a restraining influence of sorts.
After Book 6, the loss of Books 7–10, and the first part of 11, means that the entire account of Caligula (37–41) is missing. Scattered references to that emperor from elsewhere in the Annals, alluding to his ‘monstrous personality’ (6.20) or ‘disturbed mind’ (13.3), leave no doubt that Tacitus would have been hostile. In their broad structure, the books that treat the reigns of Claudius and of Nero after him follow the same pattern as those of the first half of the extant Annals. They exhibit the same mixture of military and domestic affairs, and within the latter domestic context the same blend of relations between the emperor and the Senate, and the emperor and his family (and close advisers). We are missing roughly half of Claudius’ reign, down to mid-47. Whether the early lost books presented a more sympathetic Claudius we cannot, in their absence, know. When the narrative resumes, the emphasis has begun to fall on the efforts of those in the court to manipulate the emperor, namely his freedmen and his wives. In the Tiberian books, by contrast, while Livia is a powerful figure, her role is played out largely in the background. Women like Messalina and Agrippina the Younger take centre stage in the Claudian period. And while Tiberius was swayed by a Sallustius or a Sejanus, under Claudius it is freedmen like Narcissus and Pallas who seem to be shaping ‘policy’. As a consequence, Claudius does not have the forceful and dominant role of Tiberius.
The last four extant books of the Annals cover all but the last two years of Nero’s reign. At one level, the beginning of the reign seems promising, as Nero is guided by Seneca and Burrus, and seeks to rule prudently and generously, deferring to the Senate. But Nero, like Tiberius, had come to power through a mother’s machinations and, ominously, the beginning of his reign, like that of Tiberius’, is marked by murder. Very soon the narrative changes to the theme of sexual indulgence, cruelty, and self-degradation on the stage. The extant Annals break off in the midst of a reign of terror against the senators. Thus, while we may discern the same theme of the corruption of power as we did during Tiberius’ reign, Nero is in fact treated quite differently. Both Nero and Tiberius are amoral tyrants who cause fear and dread in their subjects. But Tiberius had once been a great man, and had he not become emperor that greatness would probably have survived intact. His flaws did not become apparent until he assumed power, when his character did not have the strength to resist the corrupting forces of the system devised by Augustus. Nero was merely despicable, lacking any redeeming qualities. There is also a subtle change in technique observable from the earlier to the later books. The focus moves somewhat from the personality of the emperor and his direct impact on events to colourful set-pieces that are recognized as superb examples of dramatic narrative: the marriage of Messalina and Silius, the murder of Agrippina, the fire of Rome. The Pisonian conspiracy is given an extended narrative treatment missing in any of the other treason accounts of Tiberius’ reign. Thus there is in the latter part of the extant Annals a dramatic tension and literary art that is generally not found in the earlier books.
There is no general agreement on the use that Tacitus made of documentary evidence. Although for the modern historian primary evidence is supreme, and the modern historian will feel obliged, wherever possible, to consult primary archives, there was no such zeal among ancient historians, who saw their role as much more that of improving on the work of their predecessors. Tacitus does on occasion use direct oral evidence. At Ann. 3.16, he reports being told by older men how Gnaeus Cornelius Piso was often seen carrying a document (it supposedly held secret instructions from Tiberius against Germanicus) and also hearing from his elders the otherwise incredible account of what happened at the wedding of Messalina and Gaius Silius (Ann. 11.27).
The evidence for Tacitus’ use of archival as opposed to oral information is far from clear-cut. To a degree the problem is the shadowy nature of some of this archival evidence. That is certainly the case of the daily record, the acta diurna. Its contents are a matter of considerable speculation, but, usefully for the historians of the period, it would doubtless have contained much information on the activities of the imperial family. Tacitus refers to his use of it on a number of occasions (Ann. 3.3, 13.31, 16.22), commenting on one occasion (13.31) on the trivial nature of its contents. We are on somewhat surer ground with the deliberations of the Senate, recorded in the acta senatus. We know that when the actual senatorial decrees (consulta) had been passed copies of their texts were deposited in the treasury, and it is likely that the same happened to general proceedings, the acta, although we do not know how detailed the reports might have been. Scholars like Ronald Syme have argued that Tacitus’ achievements as a historian can be attributed to a large degree to his extensive use of senatorial records. Many of the details preserved in the Annals, such as the motions and the counterproposals with names attached to them, suggest a familiarity with such material, but whether they come from direct personal consultation or through an intermediary cannot be determined. There is, however, only one instance of Tacitus’ referring to his own direct consultation of the records, at Ann. 15.74, where he says that he finds in the records of the Senate (commentarii senatus) that the consul-designate Cerialis Anicius proposed a temple to the deified Nero.
Recently discovered decrees have allowed us to make a comparison between Tacitus and the primary evidence. The decree passed by the Senate on 10 December following the trial of Piso on the charge of murdering Germanicus (the senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre) in ad 20 is now known to us from fragments discovered in Spain since the 1980s, arguably the most important Latin epigraphic discovery of the twentieth century. It has offered an excellent opportunity to test Tacitus’ account of the trial and its aftermath. It does indicate that he had drawn considerably on the senatorial decree and in many respects represents it faithfully, for instance in the acknowledgement that the decision to stay proceedings against Plancina, Piso’s wife, came about through the intervention of Livia. But while it is undisputed that his account does ultimately derive from the decree, we once again cannot be sure if he examined it in person. Of course, we know that in the case of this decree copies were made on bronze and posted throughout the empire, so even a close familiarity with the text does not mean that the original acta were consulted. A somewhat different story is told by another document known to us from Spanish discoveries, the Tabula Siarensis, recreated from bronze fragments found in 1982 in the Spanish town of Siara, supplementing an inscription already known since 1947 from the town of Heba in Etruria (the Tabula Hebana). These list the honours approved by the Senate for the late Germanicus towards the end of ad 19. Tacitus clearly had access to the decree, but because it suited his agenda to create the impression that Germanicus was wronged, even after death, he chooses to present the information in such a way as to create a distinctly negative impression of Tiberius (and his mother). He asserts that they were absent from the ceremonies that took place in Rome to mark the death, and that even Germanicus’ mother Antonia did not take part (under pressure from Tiberius and Livia, he claims). But the extant record of the honours shows that Tiberius was actively involved in selecting tributes for Germanicus, and consulted Antonia and Livia among others. Tacitus comments on the public displeasure that Germanicus received only modest funerary ceremonies in Rome (Ann. 2.83, 3.3–5). But the Tabula records a mass of honours. To highlight only one example, Tacitus notes that there were complaints at the absence of eulogies. But the Tabula records that eulogies were in fact delivered in the Senate, and by none other than Tiberius himself (along with his son Drusus). Thus Tacitus’ knowledge of primary evidence is no guarantee that he will faithfully replicate it.
When it came to recording the spoken word, we do know that Tacitus exercised the privilege claimed by Greek and Roman writers to rewrite speeches rather than reproduce the originals. This is nicely illustrated by Claudius’ speech on the introduction of the Gauls into the Roman Senate, where we can compare Tacitus’ version (Ann. 11.24) with the record of the actual speech, substantially preserved in bronze panels at Lyons,5 to which Tacitus would almost certainly have had direct access, should he have chosen to avail himself of it. It is hard to conclude that he did not make use of the original speech since there are so many points in common. That said, his version is barely even a loose paraphrase of the original. Clearly the historian saw it as his role to capture the spirit of the occasion rather than to present a documentary record of it.
Similarly, it was not the general practice of ancient historians to identify their secondary sources. Tacitus rarely mentions his sources by name. He will more often refer vaguely to scriptores (writers) or even more vaguely to such groups as quidam (‘certain people’; see 1.29, 2.40), and when he does on the rare occasion mention a source by name it is often on issues that are, surprisingly, not of great political or historical importance. His main motive seems not to be to establish the integrity of a statement on a weighty matter, but rather to engage in a form of one-upmanship with his predecessors. Sometimes he makes use of speeches and private memoirs. He cites the journals of the great commander Corbulo about the state of the Parthian and Roman forces when the latter were blockaded in Armenia (15.16). When he cites the memoirs of Agrippina the Younger for evidence that her mother sought permission from Tiberius to remarry (Ann. 4.53), he proudly asserts that the information had not been noted by the scriptores annalium. He refers to Tiberius’ speeches on two occasions (1.81, 2.63), and once quotes one of his letters (6.6), accurately, we can surmise, since it reappears almost verbatim in Suetonius (Tib. 67.1).
For the later parts of the Annals Tacitus would have used writers close to his own period. One of these is familiar to modern readers. Pliny the Elder, uncle of Tacitus’ friend Pliny the Younger, was a man of equestrian rank who held a number of procuratorships under Vespasian and ended up as commander of the fleet at Misenum in Campania. As noted earlier, he died during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. The elder Pliny was a prolific writer, who wrote a history of the Bella Germaniae (The German Wars) in twenty books, to which Tacitus refers. In the story of Agrippina’s famous stance at the surviving bridge over the Rhine as she welcomed the retreating Roman troops, Tacitus cites that work (Ann. 1.69). Pliny also wrote an annalistic history in thirty-one books, totally lost, which Tacitus would almost certainly have used, since we know he did draw on Pliny’s encyclopedic Historia Naturalis for general historical information, for instance in the description of Agrippina presiding at the Fucine lake in a golden cloak (12.56; Pliny, NH 33.63; see also Dio 60.33.3).
Other Tacitean sources are little more than names. Cluvius Rufus is thought to have been a suffect consul under Caligula. He performed as the herald of Nero for his performances in Rome, and was assigned the same responsibility when Nero went on his Greek tour in 67 (Suetonius, Nero 21.2; Dio 63.14.3). His history may have covered the reigns of Claudius and Nero and some have seen him as Tacitus’ main source for that section of the Annals. All Tacitus’ references to him relate to the reign of Nero, although Syme argues that he might have been used in the lost Caligulan or Claudian chapters. Another historian mentioned by name is Fabius Rusticus, whom Tacitus describes as the most eloquent of the moderns, as Livy was of the ancients. Fabius published a history in ad 83/4, but we do not know where it began or ended. Some have suggested that he might have continued a history written by Seneca the Elder.
There is no general agreement on how widely Tacitus consulted these secondary sources. One school of thought is that he tends to rely on a single authority, the other, a view promoted by Syme, is that he would weigh up a number of different sources and then reach an independent opinion. They are rarely named. At Ann. 14.2 he balances the claims of Fabius Rusticus and Cluvius Rufus (supported by other unnamed authorities) about whether it was Nero or his mother Agrippina who initiated their incestuous relationship, and at Ann. 13.20 he cites these two along with the elder Pliny on the issue of whether Nero questioned Burrus’ loyalty in ad 55. Fabius Rusticus is cited as the sole authority for the claim that Gavius Silvanus, the praetorian tribune charged with issuing the death writ to Seneca in 65, sought the clearance of the praetorian prefect before going ahead (Ann. 15.61), while Pliny’s claim that Antonia, Claudius’ daughter, lent her weight to the Pisonian conspiracy is treated with considerable scepticism (15.53). The relationship between Tacitus and our other two important sources for the Julio-Claudian period is far from settled. Tacitus and Suetonius are generally thought to be independent of each other, despite a number of similarities. The case that Dio made use of Tacitus is perhaps somewhat stronger, but it is also possible that all three writers drew on independent sources that are now lost.
For all the acclaim garnered by Tacitus’ works in their day from an individual like Pliny, their survival owes as much to chance as to their perceived importance. There is in fact little evidence that Tacitus had much of an impact on immediately succeeding generations. His namesake, the emperor Tacitus of the third century, imagined himself to be descended from the historian and felt obliged to issue an order that copies of his works should be made to rescue him from the neglect (incuria) of readers.6 Admittedly, in the fourth century Ammianus Marcellinus defined his own work as a continuation of Tacitus, which might point to a revival of interest, but Ammianus seems to have been an exception. Christian writers generally scorned Tacitus because of his anti-Christian bias, and while the fifth-century historian and theologian Orosius might quote liberally from him (from the Histories) he had little respect for him as a historian. In the sixth century the chronicler Cassiodorus’ reference to ‘a certain Cornelius’ when citing the Germania (45.4–5) suggests that Tacitus had by then sunk into a considerable obscurity. 7
During the Middle Ages copies of the Annals would certainly have been made, but there is no evidence that they were known outside the monasteries. Of these copies, remarkably, only two have survived, containing roughly the first and second halves of the work. The earliest is the first Medicean, written in the ninth century, possibly in Fulda, containing Books 1–6. The later Medicean, embracing Books 11–16 (and all of the extant Histories), was written in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino in the eleventh century, and remained virtually unknown until it was brought to Florence by Boccaccio in the second half of the fourteenth century. These two manuscripts are the source of all we know of the text of both the Annals and the Histories (the ‘minor’ works of Tacitus were transmitted in a single manuscript of which only a small portion has survived, copied in Fulda or the neighbouring monastery at Hersfeld in the ninth century).
Printed editions of the Annals began in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and consisted of only the later books, those preserved in the second Medicean, the source for the editions. The first Medicean did not come to light for some six hundred years after it was copied, when it was purchased by Pope Leo X and brought to Rome. Under the auspices of the Pope, a text of Annals 1–6, based directly on the first Medicean, was published in 1515. It was not in fact until 1607 that a ‘complete’ text of the Annals, based on both primary manuscripts, was produced.
In the fifteenth century the morally uplifting works of Cicero and Livy were generally favoured, but already from the beginning of that century we see Tacitus making inroads. In 1404 the republican Leonardo Bruni cited him for evidence of how despotic emperors had crushed the virtues and inherent genius of the Roman people. In Italy, his impact began to be felt perhaps most strongly after the foreign invasions and the ruthless sack of Rome in 1527. The old ideals of Cicero and Livy now seemed out of vogue and Tacitus’ dark political visions of the cruelty and hypocrisy of rulers resonated with writers like Francesco Guicciardini, who saw in Tacitus a disturbing double message, that he could teach decent people the prudence needed to live under tyrants, but could also teach tyrants how to impose their tyranny. The late sixteenth century saw a great surge of interest in Tacitus and in the early part of the next century more editions of him were produced than of any other ancient Greek or Roman historian. The spread of absolutism and of institutions like the Inquisition saw him as a champion of liberties. Alternatively, he could also be seen as a threat to the established order. Jesuit thinkers saw him as a menace and attacked him for his disloyalty and for his questioning of authority.
While a writer like Tacitus can capture the mood of the times and as a consequence be much cited and quoted by other writers to buttress their views, actual influence is more difficult to substantiate. It is perhaps only in Germany that Tacitus can be seen to have influenced history. In the fifteenth century Pope Pius II used the newly rediscovered Germania in a letter to the Chancellor of Mainz to counter charges of corruption of the papacy. While Pius did have his supporters, acquaintance with the Germania produced results opposite to what he had sought and stirred a nascent German nationalism. Anti-clerical writers contrasted the virtues of the Germans of old with the vices of both ancient and contemporary Rome. The publication in 1515 of the early books of the Annals created a German hero, Arminius, who became a symbol of German nationalism and leader of a people who were untainted both morally and racially. Renamed Hermann by Martin Luther, he became the symbol of German nationalism. The Hermann of the famous monumental Hermannsdenkmal, erected in the mid-nineteenth century, supposedly near the site of the Varian disaster in the Teutoburg Forest, and in our own time a sacred monument of veneration by white supremacists, is a phenomenon that descends in a direct line from Tacitus’ Arminius.
Happily, Tacitus’ effect has generally been much more benign. His name seems omnipresent from the Renaissance on. The scholarly James I of England alludes to him constantly in his 1603 Precepts on the Arts of Governing. Francis Bacon thought he could not be outranked for his moral stance or for his wisdom. Montaigne admired his political insights; Edward Gibbon was so indebted to him that his magnificent prose style, with its linguistic subtleties and sophisticated ironies, reads almost like a translated text of Tacitus. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, opponents in many spheres, were united in admiring Tacitus more than any other ancient author. It is the case that in the nineteenth century, as the study of history became much more professional, more ‘scientific’, the reputation of Tacitus as a historian declined, given that his emotionalism and deep prejudices were seen to have coloured his judgement. In particular, he was subjected to criticism by the great German scholar Mommsen. This hostility has since waned. Tacitus’ experience of the destructiveness of tyranny has made the Annals a work of special relevance to the contemporary reader in the light of our experience of the last century. The dark pessimism engendered by two world wars, and especially the deep cynicism that marked the second half of the twentieth century, when governments sought to hide reality under a veneer of hypocritical ‘spin’, is totally in tune with the dark message of the Annals and its grim picture of imperial duplicity. Moreover, our view of history is now more sophisticated. In an age when ‘scientific’ history has been unscrupulously exploited by authorities in the service of political agenda, Tacitus’ claims to freedom from bias are still met with scepticism but also with the acknowledgement that no historical writing can possibly be untainted by the ira and studium that he forswore. As a consequence, since the Second World War Tacitus has enjoyed something of a renaissance, among both lay and scholarly readers. A digital survey of books in the British Library published on him since 1945 reveals no fewer than 261 items. This is admittedly a rough and ready statistic, but perhaps a good sign that Tacitus’ work is indeed on course to acquire the immortality that his friend Pliny predicted.