The History of Roman Literature / From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius

by Charles Thomas Cruttwell

CHAPTER VII.

THE REIGNS OF NERVA AND TRAJAN (96-117 A.D.).

The death of Domitian was the end of tyranny in Rome. Under Nerva a new régime was inaugurated. Liberty of speech and action was allowed, and authors were not slow to profit by it. The forced repression of so many years had matured, not quenched, the talent of the greatest writers. Virtuous men had pondered in gloomy silence over the wickedness of the time, and they now gave to the world the condensed result of their bitter reflections. Amid the numerous talents of the period three have sent down to us a large portion of their works. These three are all writers of the highest mark, and two of them of commanding genius. For grace, urbanity, and polish, Pliny yields only to Cicero; for realistic intensity directed to a satiric purpose, Juvenal yields to no writer whatever; for piercing insight into the human heart and an imagination which casts its characters as in a white-hot furnace, Tacitus well deserves the name of Rome's greatest historian. Chronologically speaking, Pliny is posterior to the other two. But he is so good a type of this comparatively happy age that he may well come before us first. The other two, occupied with past regrets, reflect in their tone of mind an earlier time.

C. PLINIUS CAECILIUS SECUNDUS, the nephew of Pliny the elder, was born at Novocomum [1] 62 A.D. When he was eight years old his father died, and two years after his uncle adopted him. In the interim he was assigned to the care of his guardian, that Virginius Rufus of whom Tacitus deigned to be the panegyrist. He was brought early to Rome, and placed under Quintilian and other celebrated teachers, among whom was Nicetes of Smyrna, one of the foremost rhetoricians of the day. He served his first campaign in Syria, but seems to have given his time to philosophy more than soldiering. He was even more emphatically a man of peace than Cicero, and it is not easy to fancy him wielding the sword, though we can well picture him to ourselves resplendent in full dress uniform, well satisfied with his appearance, and trying his best to assume the martial air. While in Asia he spent much time with the old philosopher Euphrates, of whose daily life he has given a pleasing description in the tenth letter of his first book.

On his return he studied for the bar, and pleaded with success. He passed through the several offices of state, and prided himself not a little on the fact that he attained the consulate and pontificate at an earlier age than Cicero. Somewhat later he was elected to the college of augurs, an honour which prompts him to remind the world that Cicero had been augur too! In 98 A.D., when Trajan had been two years emperor, Pliny was raised for the second time to the consulate, and was admitted to some share of his sovereign's confidence. The points, it is true, on which he was consulted were not of the most important, but he was extremely pleased, and has recorded his pleasure in more than one of his charming letters. In 103 he was sent to fill the office of proconsul in Pontus and Bithynia; and while there, he kept up the interesting correspondence with Trajan, to which the tenth book of his letters is devoted.

Though eloquence was not what it had been, it still remained the highest career that an ambitious man could adopt. Even under the tyrants it had served as the keenest weapon of attack, the surest buckler of defence. The public accusation, which had once been the stepping-stone to fame, had changed its name, and become delation. And he who hoped to parry its blows must needs have been able to defend himself by the same means. Pliny was ahead of all his rivals in both departments of eloquence. He was the most telling pleader before the centumviral tribunal, and he was the boldest orator in the revived debates of the senate. His best forensic speech, his De Corona, as he loved to style it, was that on behalf of Accia Variola, a lady unjustly disinherited by her father, whom Pliny's eloquence reinstated in her rights. In the senate Pliny rose to even higher efforts. He rejoiced to plead the cause of injured provinces against the extortion of rapacious governors, who (as Juvenal tells us) pillaged the already exhausted wealth of their helpless victims. On more than one occasion Pliny's boldness was crowned with success. Caecilius Classicus, who had ground down the Baeticenses, was so powerfully impeached by him that, to avoid conviction, he sought a voluntary death, and what was better, the confiscated property was returned to its owners. The still worse criminal, Marius Priscus, who in exile "enjoyed the anger of the gods," [2] was compelled by Pliny and Tacitus to disgorge no small portion of his plunder. When carried away by his subject Pliny spoke with such vehemence as to endanger his delicate lungs, and he tells us with no small complacency that the emperor sent him a special message "to be careful of his health." But his greatest triumph was the accusation of Publicius Certus, a senator, and expectant of the consulship. The fathers, long used to servitude, could not understand the freedom with which Pliny attacked one of their own body, and at first they tried to chill him into silence. But he was not to be daunted. He compelled them to listen, and at last so roused them by his fervour that he gained his point. It is true that he risked neither life nor fortune by his boldness; but none the less does he deserve honour for having recalled the senate to a tardy sense of its position and responsibilities.

Roman eloquence was now split into two schools or factions, one of which favoured the ancient style, the other the modern. Pliny was the champion of reaction: Tacitus the chief representative of the modern tendency. Unfortunately, Pliny's best oratory has perished, but we can hardly doubt that its brilliant wit and courtly finish would have impressed us less than they did the ears of those who heard him. One specimen only of his oratorical talent remains, the panegyric addressed to Trajan. This was admitted to be in his happiest vein, and it is replete with point and elegance. The impression given on a first reading is, that it is full also of flattery. This, however, is not in reality the case. Allowing for a certain conventionality of tone, there is no flattery in it; that is, there is nothing that goes beyond truth. But Pliny has the unhappy talent of speaking truth in the accents of falsehood. Like Seneca, he strikes us in this speech as too clever for his audience. Still, with all its faults, his oratory must have made an epoch, and helped to arrest the decline for at least some years. It is on his letters that Pliny's fame now rests, and both in tone and style they are a monument that does him honour. They show him to have been a gentleman and a man of feeling, as well as a wit and courtier. They were deliberately written with a view to publication, and thus can never have the unique and surpassing interest that belongs to those of Cicero. But they throw so much light on the contemporary history, society, and literature, that no student of the age can afford to neglect them. They are arranged neither according to time nor subject, but on an aesthetic plan of their author's, after the fashion of a literary nosegay. As extracts from several have already been given, we need not enlarge on them here. Their language is extremely pure, and almost entirely free from that poetical colouring which is so conspicuous in contemporary and subsequent prose-writing.

The tenth book possesses a special interest, as containing the correspondence between Pliny while governor of Bithynia and the emperor Trajan, to whose judgment almost every question that arose, however insignificant, was referred. [3] As he says in his frank way: "Solemne est mihi, Domine, omnia de quibus dubito ad te referre." [4] The letter which opens with these words is the celebrated one on the subject of the Christians. Perhaps it may not be out of place to translate it, as a highly significant witness of the relations between the emperors and their confidential servants. It runs thus:—

"I had never attended at the trial of a Christian; hence I knew not what were the usual questions asked them, or what the punishments inflicted. I doubted also whether to make a distinction of ages, or to treat young and old alike; whether to allow space for recantation, or to refuse all pardon whatever to one who had been a Christian; whether, finally, to make the name penal, though no crime should be proved, or to reserve the penalty for the combination of both. Meanwhile, when any were reported to me as Christians, I followed this plan. I asked them whether they were Christians. If they said yes, I repeated the question twice, adding threats of punishment; if they persisted, I ordered punishment to be inflicted. For I felt sure that whatever it was they confessed, their inflexible obstinacy well deserved to be chastised. There were even some Roman citizens who showed this strange persistence; those I determined to send to Rome. As often happens in cases of interference, charges were now lodged more generally than before, and several forms of guilt came before me. An anonymous letter was sent, containing the names of many persons, who, however, denied that they were or had been Christians. As they invoked the gods and worshipped with wine and frankincense before your image, at the same time cursing Christ, I released them the more readily, as those who are really Christians cannot be got to do any of these things. Others, who were named to me, admitted that they were Christians, but immediately afterwards denied it; some said they had been so three years ago, others at still more distant dates, one or two as long ago as twenty years. All these worshipped your image and those of the gods, and abjured Christ. But they declared that all their guilt or error had amounted to was this: they met on certain mornings before daybreak, and sang one after another a hymn to Christ as God, at the same time binding themselves by an oath not to commit any crime, but to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery, perjury, or repudiation of trust; after this was done, the meeting broke up; they, however, came together again to eat their meal in common, being quite guiltless of any improper conduct. [5] But since my edict forbidding (as you ordered) all secret societies, they had given this practice up. However, I thought it necessary to apply the torture to some young women who were called ministrae, [6] in order, if possible, to find out the truth. But I could elicit nothing from them except evidence of some debased and immoderate superstition; so I deferred the trial, and determined to ask your advice. For the matter seemed important, especially since the number of those who run into danger increases daily. All ages, all ranks, and both sexes are among the accused, and the taint of the superstition is not confined to the towns; it has actually made its way into the villages. But I believe it possible to cheek and repress it. At all events it is certain that temples which were lately almost empty are now well attended, and sacred festivals long disused are being revived. Victims too are flowing in, whereas a few years ago such things could scarcely find a purchaser. From this I infer that vast numbers might be reformed if an opportunity of recantation were allowed them."

Trajan's reply, brief, clear, and to the point, as all his letters are, is as follows:—

"I entirely approve of your conduct with regard to those Christians of whom you had received information. We can never lay down a universal rule, as if circumstances were always the same. They are not to be searched for; but if they are reported and convicted, they must be punished. But if any denies his Christianity and proves his words by sacrificing to our divinity, even though his former conduct may have laid him under suspicion, he must be allowed the benefit of his recantation. No weight whatever should be attached to anonymous communications; they are no Roman way of dealing, and are altogether reprehensible."

Pliny died in 113. He shone in nearly every department of literature, and thought himself no inelegant poet. His vanity has led him to record some of his verses, but they only show that he had little or no talent in this direction. His long and prosperous life was marked by no reverse. Popular among his equals, splendid in his political successes, in his vast wealth, and his friendship wife, the emperor, Pliny is almost a perfect type of a refined pagan gentleman. In some ways he reminds us of Xenophon. He was in complete harmony with his age; he had neither the harassing thoughts of Seneca, nor the querulousness of his uncle, nor the settled gloom of Tacitus, to overcast his bright and happy disposition. Few works in all antiquity are more pleasing than his friendly correspondence. We learn from it the names of a large number of orators and other distinguished literary men, of whom, indeed, Rome was full. VOCONIUS ROMANUS, [7] SALVIUS LIBERALIS, [8] C. FANNIUS, [9] and CLAUDIUS POLLIO, [10] were among the most renowned. They are mentioned as possessing every gift that could contribute to the highest eloquence; but as Pliny's good nature leads him to praise all his friends indiscriminately, we cannot lay much stress on his opinion. In jurisprudence we meet with PRISCUS NERATIUS, JUVENTIUS CELSUS, and JAVOLENUS PRISCUS. The two former were men of mark, and obtained the consulate. The last was less distinguished, and had the misfortune to offend Pliny by an ill-timed jest. [11] Once, when Statius had given a reading, and had just left the hall, the audience asked Passienus Paulus, who had a manuscript ready, to take his place. Paulus was somewhat diffident, but finally consented, and began his poem with the words, "You bid me, Priscus…," on which Javolenus, who was sitting near, called out, "You mistake! I do not bid you!" The audience greeted this sally with a laugh, and so put an end to the unlucky Paulus's recitation. Pliny contemptuously remarks that it is doubtful whether Javolenus was quite sane, but admits that there are people imprudent enough to trust their business to him. [12] We may think a single jest is somewhat scanty evidence of dementia.

Grammar was in this reign actively pursued. FLAVIUS CAPER was the author of a treatise on orthography, and another "on doubtful words," both of which we possess. He seems to have been a learned man, and is often quoted by the grammarians of the fourth and fifth centuries. VELIUS LONGUS also wrote on orthography, and, as we learn from Gellius, a treatise De Usu Antiquae Lectionis. All the chief grammarians now exercised themselves on the interpretation of Virgil, who was fast rising into the position of an oracle in nearly every department of learning, an elevation which, in the time of Macrobius, he had completely attained. Of scientific writers we possess in part the works of three; that of HYGINUS on munitions, and another on boundaries (if indeed this last be his), which are based on good authorities; that of BALBUS On the Elementary Notions of Geometry; and perhaps that of SICULUS FLACCUS, De Condidonibus Agrorum, all of which are of importance towards a knowledge of Roman surveying. It is doubtful whether Flaccus lived under Trajan, but in any case he cannot be placed later than the beginning of Hadrian's reign.

The only poet of the time of Trajan who has reached us, but one of the greatest in Roman literature, is D. JUNIUS JUVENALIS (46-130? A.D.). He was born during the reign of Claudius, and thus spent the best years of his life under the régime of the worst emperors. His parentage is uncertain, but he is said to have been either the son or the adopted son of a rich freedman, and a passage in the third Satire [13] seems to point to Aquinum as his birth-place. We have unfortunately scarcely any knowledge of his life, a point to be the more regretted, as we might then have pronounced with confidence on his character, which in the Satires is completely veiled. An inscription placed by him in the temple of Ceres Helvina, at Aquinum (probably in the reign of Domitian), has been published by Mommsen. It contains one or two biographical notices, which show that he held positions of considerable importance. [14] We have also a memoir of him, attributed to Suetonius by some, but to Probus by Valla, which tells us that until middle life he practised declamation as an amateur, neither pleading at the bar nor opening a rhetorical school. We are informed also that under Domitian he wrote a satire on the pantomime Paris, which was so highly approved by his friends that he determined to give himself to poetry. He did not, however, publish until the reign of Trajan. It was in the time of Hadrian that some of his verses on an actor [15] were recited, probably, by the populace in a theatre, in consequence of which the poet, now eighty years of age, was exiled under the specious pretext of a military command, the emperor's favourite player having taken offence at the allusion. From a reference to Egypt in one of his later satires, [16] the scholiast came to the conclusion that this was the place of his exile. But it is more likely to have been Britain, though in this case the relegation would have taken place under Trajan. [17] He appears to have died soon after from disgust, though here the two accounts differ, one bringing him back to Rome, and making him survive until the time of Antoninus Pius. The obvious inference from all this is that we know very little about the matter. In default of external evidence we might turn to the Satires themselves, but here the most careful sifting can find nothing of importance. The great vigour of style, however, which is conspicuous in the seventh Satire makes it clear that it was not the work of the poet's old age. Hence the Caesar referred to cannot be Hadrian. He must, therefore, be some earlier emperor, and there can be little doubt it is Trajan. Under Trajan, then, we place the maturity of Juvenal's genius as it is displayed in the first ten Satires. The four following ones show a falling off in concentration and dramatic power, and are no doubt later productions, when years of good government had softened his asperity of mind. The fifteenth, sixteenth, and to a certain extent the twelfth, show unmistakable signs of senility. The fifteenth contains evidence of its date. The consulship of Juncus (127 A.D.) is mentioned as recent. [18] We may therefore safely place the Satire within the two following years. The sixteenth, which treats of the privileges of military service, a very promising subject, has often been thought spurious, but without sufficient reason. The poet speaks of himself as a civilian, appearing to have no goodwill towards the camp, and as Juvenal had been in the army, it is argued that he would scarcely have written so. But to this it may be replied that Juvenal chose the subject for its literary capabilities, not from any personal feeling. As an expert rhetorician, he could not fail to see the humorous side of the relations between militaire and civilian. The feebleness of the style, and certain differences from the diction usual with the author, are not sufficient to found an argument upon, and have besides been much exaggerated. They would apply equally, and even with greater force, to the fifteenth.

The words "ad mediam fere aetatem declamavit," as Martha has justly remarked, form the key to Juvenal's literary position. He is the very quintessence of a declaimer, but a declaimer of a most masculine sort. Boileau characterises him in two epigrammatic lines:

"Juvénal élevé dans les cris de l'école
Poussa jusqu'à l'excès son mordant hyperbole."

Poet in the highest sense of the word he certainly is not. The love of beauty, which is the touchstone of the poetic soul, is absent from his works. He rather revels in depicting horror and ugliness. But the other qualification of the poet, viz. a mastery of words, [19] he possesses to a degree not surpassed by any Roman writer, and in intensity and terseness of language is perhaps superior to all. Not an epithet is wasted, not a synonym idle. As much is pressed into each verse as it can possibly be made to bear, so that fully to appreciate the Satires it is necessary to have a commentary on every line. Even now, after the immense erudition that has been expended on him, many passages remain obscure, not only in respect to allusions, but even in matters of language. [20] The tension of his style, which is never relaxed, [21] represents not only great effort, but long-matured and late-born thought. In the angry silence of forty years had been formed that fierce and almost brutal directness of description which paints, as has been well said, with a vividness truly horrible. In preaching virtue, he first frightens away modesty. There is scarce one of his poems that does not shock even where it rebukes. And three of them are so hideous in their wonderful power that it is impossible to read them with any pleasure, though one of these (the sixth) is perhaps the most vigorous piece of writing in the entire Latin language. For compressed power it may he compared to the first chorus of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, but here the likeness ceases. While the Athenian, even among dreadful scenes, rises to notes of sweet and almost divine pathos, the Roman's dark picture is not relieved by one touch of the beautiful, or one reminiscence of the ideal.

The question naturally arises, What led Juvenal to write poetry after being so long content with declamation? He partly answers us in his first Satire, where he tells us that it is in revenge for the poetry that has been inflicted on himself:

"Semper ego auditor tantum nunquamne reponam?"

But it arises also from a higher motive—

"Facit indignatio versum
Qualemcunque potest, quales ego vel Cluvienus."

These two qualities, vexation (vexatus toties, i. 2) and indignation, are the salient characteristics of Juvenal. How far the vexation was righteous, the indignation sincere, is a question hard to answer. There is no denying the power with which they are expressed. But to submit to this power is one thing, to sift its author's heart is another. After a long and careful study of Juvenal's poems, we confess to being able to make nothing of Juvenal himself. We cannot get even a glimpse of him. He never doffs the iron mask, the "rigidi censura cachinni;" he has so long hidden his face that he is afraid to see it himself or to let it be seen. Some have thought that in the eleventh and twelfth Satires they can find the man, and have been glad to figure him as genial, simple, and kind. But it is by no means certain that even these are not mere rhetorical exercises, modelled on the Horatian epistles, but themselves having no relation to any actual event. The fifteenth, again, represents a softer view of life, the thirteenth and fourteenth a higher faith in providence; in these, it has been thought, appears the true nature, which had allowed itself to lie hid among the denunciations of the earlier satires. But, in truth, the character of Juvenal must be one of the incognita of literature. It is a retaliation on Satire's part for the intimate knowledge she had allowed us to gain of Horace and Persius through their works. [22]

In manner Juvenal is the most original of poets; in matter he is the glorifier of common-place. His strength lies in his prejudices. He is not a moralist, but a Roman moralist; the vices he lashes are not lashed as vices simpliciter, but as vices that Roman ethics condemn. This one- sided patriotism is the key to all his ideas. In an age which had seen Seneca, Juvenal can revert to the patriotism of Cato. The burden of his complaints is given in the third Satire:

"Non possum ferre Quintes Graecam Urbem." [23]

While the Greeks lead fashion, the old Roman virtues can never be restored. If only men could be disabused of their strange reverence for all that is Greek, society might be reconstructed. The keen satirist scents a real danger; in half a century from his death Rome had become a Greek city.

In estimating the political character of Juvenal's satire we must not attach too much weight to his denunciation of former tyrants. In the first place "tyrannicide" was a common-place of the schools: [24] Xerxes, Periander, Phalaris, and all the other despots of history, had been treated in rhetoric as they had treated others in reality; Juvenal's tirade was nothing new, but it was something much more powerful than had yet been seen. In the second place the policy of Trajan encouraged abuse of his predecessors. He could hardly claim to restore the Republic unless he showed how the Republic had been overthrown. Pliny, the courtly flatterer, is far more severe on Domitian than Juvenal; and in truth such severity was only veiled adulation. When Juvenal ridicules the senate of Domitian, [25] we may believe that he desired to stimulate to independence the senate of his day; and when he speaks of Trajan, it is in language of enthusiastic praise. [26] Flattery it is not, for Juvenal is no sycophant, nor would Trajan have liked him better if he had been one. Indeed, with all his invective he keeps strictly to truth; his painting of the emperors is from the life. It is highly coloured, but not out of drawing. Juvenal's Domitian is nearer to history than Tacitus's Tiberius.

It is in his delineations of society that Juvenal is at his greatest. There is nothing ideal about him, but his pictures of real life, allowing for their glaring lights, have an almost overpowering truthfulness. Every grade of society is made to furnish matter for his dramatic scenes. The degenerate noble is pilloried in the eighth, the cringing parasite in the fifth, the vicious hypocrite in the second, the female profligate in the sixth. It is rarely that he touches on contemporary themes. His genius was formed in the past and feeds on bitter memories. As he says, he "kills the dead." [27] To attack the living is neither pleasant nor safe. Still, in the historic incidents he resuscitates, a piercing eye can read a reference to the present. Hadrian's favourite actor saw himself in Paris. Freedmen and upstarts could read their original in Sejanus. [28] Frivolous noblemen could feel their follies rebuked in the persons of Lateranus and Damasippus. [29] Even an emperor might find his lesson in the gloomy pictures of Hannibal and Alexander. [30] So constant is this reference to past events that Juvenal's writings may be called historic satire, as those of Tacitus satiric history.

The exaggeration of Juvenal's style if employed in a different way might have led us to suspect him of less honesty of purpose than he really has. As it is, the very violence of his prejudices betrays an earnestness which, if his views had been more elevated, we might have thought feigned. A man might pretend to enthusiasm for truth, or holiness; he would hardly pretend to enthusiasm for national exclusiveness, [31] or for the dignity of his own profession. [32] When Juvenal attacks the insolent parvenu, [33] the Bithynian or Cappadocian knight, [34] the Greek adventurer who takes everything out of the Roman's hands, [35] the Chaldean impostor, [36] we may be sure he means what he says.

It is true that all his accusations are not thus limited in their scope. Some are no doubt inspired by moral indignation; and the language in which they are expressed is noble and well deserves the praise universally accorded to it. But in other instances his patriotism obscures his moral sense. For example, the rich upstarts against whom he is perpetually thundering, are by no means all worthy of blame. Very many of them have obtained their wealth by honourable commerce, which the nobles were too proud to practise, and the rewards of which they yet could not see reaped without envy and scorn. [37] The increasing importance of the class of libertini, so far from being an unmixed evil, as Juvenal thinks it, was productive of immense good. It was the first step towards the breaking down of the party-wall of pride which, if persisted in, must have caused the premature ruin of the Empire. It familiarised men's minds with ideas of equality, and prepared the way for the elevation to the citizenship of those vast masses of slaves who were fast becoming an anachronism.

Popular feeling was ahead of men like Juvenal and Tacitus in these respects. In all cases of disturbance the senate and great literary men sided with the old exclusive views. The emperors, as a rule, interfered for the benefit of the slave: and this helps us to understand the popularity of some even of the worst of their number.

Juvenal, then, was not above his age, as Cicero and Seneca had been. He does protest against the cruel treatment of slaves by the Roman ladies; but he nowhere exerts his eloquence to advocate their rights as men to protection and friendship. Nor does he enter a protest against the gladiatorial shows, which was the first thing a high moralist would have impugned, and which the Christians attacked with equal enthusiasm and courage. We observe, however, with pleasure, that as Juvenal advanced in years his tone became gentler and purer, though his literary powers decayed. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Satires evince a kindly vein which we fail to find in the earlier ones. Some have fancied that in the interval he became acquainted with the teaching of Christianity. But this is a supposition as improbable as it is unsupported.

On the style of Juvenal but little need be added. Its force, brevity, and concision have already been noticed, At the same time they do not seem to have been natural to him. Where he writes more easily he is diffuse and even verbose. The twelfth and fifteenth Satires are conspicuous examples of this. One is tempted to think that the fifteenth, had he written it twenty years earlier, would have been compressed into half its length. The diction is classical; but like that of Tacitus, it is the classicality of the Silver Age. It shows, however, no diminution of power, and the gulf between it and that of Fronto and Apuleius in the next age is immense. Juvenal's language is based on a minute study of Virgil; [38] his rhythm is based rather on that of Lucan, with whom in other respects he shows a great affinity. His verse is sonorous and powerful; he is fond of the break after the fourth foot. Though monotonous, its weight makes it very impressive; it is easily retained in the memory, and stands next to that of Virgil and Lucretius as a type of what the language can achieve.

The resentment that goaded Juvenal to write satire seems also to have inspired the pen of C. CORNELIUS TACITUS. [39] He was born 54 A.D., or, according to Arnold, 57 A.D., probably in Rome. His father was perhaps the same who is alluded to by Pliny [40] as procurator of Belgian Gaul. It is, at any rate, certain that the historian came of a noble and wealthy stock; his habit of thought, prejudices, and tastes all reflect these of the highest and most exclusive society. He began the career of honours under Vespasian [41] by obtaining his quaestorship, and, some years later, the aedileship. The dates of both these events are uncertain—another instance of the vagueness with which writers of this time allude to the circumstances of their own lives. We know that at twenty-one he married the daughter of Cn. Julius Agricola, and that he was praetor ten years afterwards. He was also quindecimvir at the secular games under Domitian (88 A.D.). For some years he held a military command abroad, perhaps in Germany. On his return he was constant in his senatorial duties [42] and we find him joined with Pliny in the accusation of Marius Priscus, which was successful but unavailing. Under Nerva (97 A.D.) he was made consul; but soon retired from public life, and dedicated the rest of his days to literature, having sketched out a vast plan of Roman history the greater part of which he lived to fulfil. The year of his death is uncertain. Brotier, followed by Arnold, thinks he was prematurely cut off before the close of Trajan's reign, but it is possible he lived somewhat longer, perhaps until 118 A.D.

The first remark one naturally makes on reading the life of Tacitus, is that he was admirably fitted by his distinguished military and political career for the duties of a historian. Gibbon said that his year in the yeomanry had been of more service to him in describing battles than any closet study could have been; and Tacitus has this great advantage over Livy that he had helped to make history as well as to relate it. His elevation to the rank of senator enabled him to understand the iniquity of Domitian's government in a way that would otherwise have been impossible; and of the complicity shown by the servile fathers in their ruler's acts of crime, he speaks in the Agricola with something like the shame of repentance. His character seems to have been naturally proud and independent, but unequal to heroism in action. Like almost all literary minds he shrunk from facing peril or discomfort, and tried to steer a course between the harsh self-assertion of a Thrasea [43] and the cringing servility of the majority of senators. This led him to become dissatisfied with himself, with the world, and with Divine Providence, [44] and has left a stamp of profound and rebellious melancholy on all his works.

As a young man he had studied rhetoric under Aper Secundus, [45] and perhaps Quintilian. He pleaded with the greatest success, and Pliny gives it as his own highest ambition to be ranked next, he dare not say second, to Tacitus. [46] Nor was his deliberative eloquence inferior to his judicial. We learn, from Pliny again, that there was a peculiar solemnity in his language, which gave to all he uttered the greatest weight. The panegyric he pronounced on Virginius Rufus, the man who twice refused the chance of empire, "the best citizen of his time," was celebrated as a model of that kind of oratory. [47]

The earliest work of his that has reached us is the Dialogus de caussis corruptae Eloquentiae, composed under Titus, or early under Domitian. It attributes the decay of eloquence to the decay of freedom; but believes in a future development of imperial oratory under the mild sway of just princes, founded not on feeble and repining imitation of the past, but on a just appreciation of the qualifications attainable in the present political conditions and state of the language. The argument is conducted throughout with the greatest moderation, but the conclusion is decided in favour of the modern style, if kept within proper bounds. The time of the dialogue is laid in 75 A.D.; the speakers are Curiatius Maternus, Aper Secundus, and Vipstanus Messala. The point of debate is one frequently discussed in the schools of rhetoric, and the work may be considered as a literary exercise; but the author must have outgrown youth when he wrote it, and its ability is such as to give promise of commanding eminence in the future. The style is free and flowing, and full of imitations of Cicero. This has caused some of the critics to attribute it to other authors, as Pliny the younger and Quintilian, [48] who were known to be Ciceronianists. But independently of the fact that it is distinctly above the level of these writers, we observe on looking closely many indications of Tacitus's peculiar diction. [49] The most striking personal notice occurs in the thirteenth chapter, where the author announces his determination to give up the life of ambition, and, like Virgil, to be content with one of literary retirement. This seems at first hard to reconcile with the known career of Tacitus; but as the dialogue bears all the marks of early manhood, the resolve, though real, may have been a passing one only; or, in comparison with what he felt himself capable of doing, the activity actually displayed by him may have seemed as nothing, and to have merited the depreciatory notice he here bestows upon it.

The work next in order of priority is the Agricola, a biography of his father-in-law, composed near the commencement of Trajan's reign, about 98 A. D. The talent of the author has now undergone a change; he is no longer the bright flowing spirit of the Dialogus, who acknowledged the decline while making the most of the excellences of his time; he has become the stern, back-looking moralist, the burning panegyrist, whose very pictures of virtue are the most withering rebukes of vice. This treatise represents what Teuffel calls his Sallustian epoch; i.e., a phase or period of his mental development, in which his political and moral feeling, as well as his literary aspirations, led him to recall the manner of the great rhetorical biographer. The short preface, in which occurs a fierce protest against the wickedness of the time just past, reminds us of the more verbose but otherwise not dissimilar introduction to the Catiline: and the subordination of general history to the main subject of the composition is earned out in Sallust's way, but with even greater completeness. At the same time the Silver Age is betrayed by the extremely high colouring of the rhetoric, especially in the last chapters, where an impassioned outpouring of affection and despair seems by its prophetic eloquence to summon forth the genius that is to be. Already, in this work, [50] we find that Tacitus has conceived the design of his Historiae, to which, therefore, the Agricola must be considered a preliminary study.

As yet, Tacitus's manner is only half-formed. He must have acquired by painful labour that wonderful suggestive brevity which in the Annals reaches its culmination, and is of all styles the world of letters has ever seen, the most compressed and full of meaning. The Germania, however, in certain portions [51] approximates to it, and in other ways shows a slight increase of maturity over the biography of Agricola. His object in writing this treatise has been much contested. Some think it was in order to dissuade Trajan from a projected expedition that he painted the German people as foes so formidable; others that it is a satire on the vices of Rome couched under the guise of an innocent ethnographic treatise; others that it is inspired by the genuine scientific desire to investigate the many objects of historic and natural interest with which a vast and almost unknown territory abounded. But none of these motives supplies a satisfactory explanation. The first can hardly be maintained owing to historical difficulties; the second, though an object congenial to the Roman mind, is not lofty enough to have moved the pen of Tacitus; the third, though it may have had some weight with him, would argue a state of scientific curiosity in advance of Tacitus's position and age, and besides is incompatible with his culpable laziness in sifting information on matters of even still greater ethnographic interest. [52]

The true motive was no doubt his fear lest the continual assaults of these tribes should prove a permanent and insurmountable danger to Rome. Having in all probability been himself employed in Germany, Tacitus had seen with dismay of what stuff the nation was made, and had foreseen what the defeat of Varus might have remotely suggested, that some day the degenerate Romans would be no match for these hardy and virtuous tribes. Thus, the design of the work was purely and pre-eminently patriotic; nor is any other purpose worthy of the great historian, patrician, patriot, and soldier that he was. At the same time subsidiary motives are not excluded; we may well believe that the gall of satire kindles his eloquence, and that the insatiable desire of knowledge stimulates his research while inquiring into the less accessible details of the German polity. The work is divided into two parts. The first gives an account of the situation, climate, soil, and inhabitants of the country; it investigates the etymology of several German names of men and gods, describes the national customs, religion, laws, amusements, and especially celebrates the people's moral strictness; but at the same time not without contrasting them unfavourably with Rome whenever the advantage is on her side. The second part contains a catalogue of the different tribes, with the geographical limits, salient characteristics, and a short historical account of each, whenever accessible.

Next come the Histories, which are a narrative of the reigns of Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, written under Trajan. This work, of which we possess only four entire books, with part of the fifth, consisted originally of fourteen books, and was the most authentic and complete of all his writings. The loss of the last nine and a half books must be considered irreparable. In the Germania he had shown the power of that liberty which the barbarians enjoyed, had indicated their polity, in which, even then the germs of feudalism, chivalry, the worship of the sex, troubadour minstrelsy, fairy mythology, and, above all, representative government, existed. In the Historiae he paints with tremendous power the disorganisation, of the Roman state, the military anarchy which made the diadem the gift of a brutal soldiery, and revealed the startling truth that an emperor could be created elsewhere than at Rome.

At this period his style still retains some traces of its former copious flow; it has not yet been pressed tight into the short sententiae, which were its final and most characteristic development, and which in the Annals dominate to the exclusion of every other style.

The Annals, ab excessu divi Augusti, in sixteen books, treated the history of the Empire until the extinction of the Claudian dynasty. They contain two separate threads of history, one internal, the other external. The latter is important and interesting; but the former is both in an immeasurably greater degree. It has been likened to a tragedy in two acts, the first terminating with the death of Tiberius, the second with the death of Nero. Tacitus in this work shows his personal sympathies more strongly than in any of the others. He appears as a Roman of the old school, but still more, as an oligarchical partisan. Not that he indulged in chimerical plans for restoring the Republic. That he saw was impossible; nor had he much sympathy with those who strove for it. But his resignation to the Empire as an unavoidable evil does not inspire him with contentment. His blood boils with indignation at the steady repression of the liberty of action of the old families, which the instincts of imperialism forced upon the monarchs from the very beginning; nor do the general security of life and property, the bettered condition of the provinces, and the long peace that had allowed the internal resources of the empire to be developed, make amends for what he considers the iniquitous tyranny practised upon the higher orders of the state. Thus he writes under a strong sense of injustice, which reaches its culmination in treating of the earlier reigns. But this does not provoke him into intemperate language, far less into misrepresentation of fact; if he disdained to complain, he disdained still more to falsify. But he cannot help insinuating; and his insinuations are of such searching power that, once suggested, they grasp hold of the mind, and will not be shaken off. Of all Latin authors none has so much power over the reader as Tacitus. If by eloquence is meant the ability to persuade, then he is the most eloquent historian that ever existed. To doubt his judgment is almost to be false to the conscience of history. Nevertheless, his saturnine portraits have been severely criticised both by English and French historians, and the arguments for the defence put forward with enthusiasm as well as force. The result is, that Tacitus's verdict has been shaken, but not reversed. The surpassing vividness of such characters as his Tiberius and Nero forbids us to doubt their substantial reality. But once his prepossessions are known and discounted, the student of his works can give a freer attention to the countervailing facts, which Tacitus is too honourable to hide.

After long wavering between the two styles, he adopted the brilliant one fashionable in his time, but he has glorified it in adopting it. Periods such as those of Pliny would be frigid in him. He still retains some traces (though they are few) of the rhetorician. In an interesting passage he complains of the comparative poverty of his subject as contrasted with that of Livy: "Ingentia illi bella, expugnationes urbium, fusos captosque reges libero egressu memorabant; nobis in arcto et inglorius labor. Immota quippe aut modice lacessita pax maestae urbis res et princeps proferendi imperii incuriosus;"—[53] but he certainly had no cause to complain. The sombre annals of the Empire were not less amenable to a powerful dramatic treatment than the vigorous and aggressive youth of the Republic had been. Nor does the story of guilt and horror depicted in the Annals fall below even the finest scenes of Livy; in intensity of interest it rather exceeds them.

Tacitus intended to have completed his labours by a history of Augustus's reign, which, however, he did not live to write. This is a great misfortune. But he has left us his opinion on the character and policy of Augustus in the first few chapters of the Annals, and a very valuable opinion it is. What makes the historian more bitter in the Annals than elsewhere, is the feeling that it was the early emperors who inaugurated the evil policy which their successors could hardly help themselves in carrying out. When the failure of Piso's conspiracy destroyed the last hopes of the aristocracy, it was hardly possible to retain for the later emperors the same intense hatred that had been felt for those whose tyranny fostered, and then remorselessly crushed, the resistance of the patrician party. The Annals, therefore, though the most concentrated, powerful, and dramatic of Tacitus's works, hardly rank quite so high in a purely historical point of view as the Histories; as Merivale has said, they are all satire.

At the same time, his facts are quite trustworthy. We know from Pliny's letters that he took great pains to get at the most authentic sources, and beyond doubt he was well qualified to judge in cases of conflicting evidence. These diverse excellences, in the opinion of Niebuhr and Arnold, place him indisputably at the head of the Roman historians. We cannot better close this account than in the eloquent words of a French writer: [54] "In Tacitus subjectivity predominates; the anger and pity which in turn never cease to move him, give to his style an expressiveness, a rich glow of sentiment, of which antiquity affords no other example. This constant union between the dramatic and pathetic elements, together with the directness, energy, and reality of the language, must act with Irresistible force upon every reader. Tacitus is a poet; but a poet that has a spirit of his own. Was he as fully appreciated in his own day as he is in ours? We doubt it. The horrors, the degeneracy of his time, awake in his brooding soul the altogether modern idea of national expiation and national chastisement. The historian rises to the sublimity of the judge. He summons the guilty to his tribunal, and it is in the name of the Future and of Posterity that he pronounces the implacable and irreversible verdict."

The poetical and Greek constructions with which Tacitus's style abounds, the various artifices whereby he relieves the tedium of monotonous narrative, or attains brevity or variety, have been so often analysed in well-known grammatical treatises that it is unnecessary to do more than allude to them here.