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CAIUS CORNELIUS TACITUS spent his early manhood in the public service. Vespasian, who died 79, gave him a financial post in Northern Gaul. Under Titus he was quæstor, under Domitian, prætor. During the short reign of Nerva, who died in 98, he held the consulship. He married the daughter of Julius Agricola, governor of Britain under Domitian. Tacitus wrote a biography testifying to his deep respect for his father-in-law. The marriage would seem to have been a happy one. He was an intimate friend of the younger Pliny, as Pliny's letters show.
In his later life, Tacitus wrote the history of Rome from the death of Augustus to that of Domitian (Annals and Histories A.D. 14--A.D. 96). But only a portion of his work has come down to us. Besides his biography of Agricola, he wrote a description of the German tribes, contrasting their hardy virtues, purity of life, and respect for women with the corruption and feebleness in the Roman world of his time. Of Christianity he judged superficially and harshly. Mystical expectations of a future life seemed to him not the way to make good citizens in this.
As Thucydides analyzed societies and social crises, so Tacitus penetrated to and revealed the springs of individual character. His portraits are drawn with the fewest possible lines, but unmistakably. Take this of Galba for instance:--
"His character was moderate, free from vice, yet not virtuous. Not careless of fame, yet no braggart; not covetous; sparing of his own wealth, niggardly of the State's. Friends and dependants, if good, he left uncriticized; if evil, he was culpably blind. But his birth and the confusion of the times shielded him, so that apathy passed for wisdom. In youth he gained a soldier's reputation in Germany; as proconsul he ruled Africa with moderation, and afterwards North Spain not less well. In private life he seemed too great for privacy, and would have been universally considered competent for supreme power had he never held it."
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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