A History of Roman Literature

by Harold North Fowler

Under Nerva (96-98 A. D.) and Trajan (98-117 A. D.) freedom of speech and literary utterance, which had been banished under the tyranny of Domitian, were restored. Nerva and Trajan. Nerva and Trajan were educated men. Nothing remains of Nerva’s poems, which led Martial to call him “the Tibullus of our times,” and Trajan’s history of the Dacian War is also, unfortunately, lost. Trajan’s replies to the letters of the younger Pliny show that he could write in a clear, concise, and business-like manner, but exhibit no further literary qualities. He paid attention to the education of the young and founded the Ulpian library, but was not a man of marked literary tastes. Under Nerva and Trajan literature was allowed to take its own course without hindrance and also without that imperial patronage which sometimes stifles free utterance quite as effectually as severity or intimidation. Nevertheless there was little literary production of any importance. There were many writers, but most of them have left not even their names to posterity. The only authors of literary importance under these emperors are Tacitus, Juvenal, and the younger Pliny.

Cornelius Tacitus[105] was born, according to such evidence as exists, in 55 or 56 A. D. Tacitus. The place of his birth is not recorded, and nothing certain is known of his family; but his education, his career, and his marriage to the daughter of Agricola all combine to indicate that he belonged to a family of some importance. His marriage took place in 78 A. D., one year after the consulship of Agricola. Tacitus began his official career under Vespasian, continued it under Titus, and reached the rank of prætor under Domitian, in 88 A. D. Under Trajan, in 97 A. D., he was appointed consul suffectus, and about 112-116 A. D. he was proconsul of Asia. His death took place probably not long after 117 A. D. He had a great reputation as a public speaker, as is evident from the fact that in 97 or 98 A. D. he delivered the funeral oration over Verginius Rufus, and it was probably due in great measure to his eloquence that in 100 A. D. he and Pliny accomplished the conviction of Marius Priscus, proconsul of Africa, for extortion. It was not without knowledge of public affairs that Tacitus turned to the writing of history, nor was it without practical knowledge of oratory that he wrote the dialogue De Oratoribus.

The works of Tacitus in the order of composition are the Dialogue on Orators (Dialogus de Oratoribus), the dramatic date of which is 75 A. D., while the date of composition is uncertain; the Germania, published in 98 A. D.; the Agricola, written early in the reign of Trajan, probably in 98 A. D.; the Histories, written under Trajan, and apparently not completed much before 110 A. D.; and the Annals, published between 115 and 117 A. D. The Dialogue on Orators is an inquiry into the causes of the decay of oratory. Works of Tacitus.
The Dialogus. In form it is an imitation of Cicero’s famous dialogue De Oratore, and the style also imitates that of Cicero. In this respect the dialogue is so unlike the later works of Tacitus that his authorship has been denied by many scholars. It must, however, be remembered that this is his earliest work, and that the Ciceronian style was taught in the school of Quintilian and no doubt in other schools at Rome, so that an imitation of Cicero was a natural beginning for a young author. Moreover, there are in the dialogue traces of the later style of Tacitus, which is distinguished for its epigrammatic utterances and its frequent use of innuendo. The work may therefore be unhesitatingly ascribed to Tacitus. It is an interesting and attractive dialogue, in which the quiet life of the poet is contrasted with the more active career of the orator before the real subject—the reasons for the decay of oratory—is discussed. The conclusion is reached that oratory has declined partly on account of the faulty rhetorical education in vogue, but still more because the orator no longer has under the imperial government the influence and power that belonged to his predecessors in the days of the republic.

The Agricola (De Vita et Moribus Iulii Agricolæ) is a biography and panegyric of Gnæus Julius Agricola, Tacitus’s father-in-law. The Agricola. In the introduction Tacitus gives his reasons for having written nothing during the reign of Domitian. The passage deserves to be quoted, not only as a specimen of Tacitus’s style, but because it places in a clear light his view of the imperial government in the first century. Throughout the Histories and the Annals his attitude is the same, and his genius has imposed his view upon all later times. Under Domitian two eminent Stoics, Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Priscus, had been put to death and their works publicly burned. Tacitus mentions this and then expresses himself as follows:

They thought forsooth that in that fire the voice of the Roman people and the freedom of the senate and the conscience of the human race were being consumed, especially since the teachers of philosophy had been banished and every good profession driven into exile, that nothing honorable might offend them. We have indeed given a great proof of our patience; and just as the ancient time saw the utmost limit of liberty, so we have seen the utmost limit of servitude, when even the intercourse of speech and hearing was taken away by the inquisitions. And with our speech we should have lost even our very memory, if we had been as able to forget as to keep silent. Now at last our courage has returned, but although ... Trajan is daily adding to the blessedness of the times, ... and the state has gained confidence and strength, nevertheless by the nature of human weakness remedies are slower than diseases; and just as our bodies grow slowly, but are quickly destroyed, so you can oppress genius and learning more quickly than you can revive them. For the charm of sloth also comes over us, and the inactivity we hated at first grows dear at last. Throughout fifteen years, a great part of the life of man, many have fallen through chance mishaps, and all the most energetic ones by the cruelty of the emperor, and a few of us are left, so to speak, as survivors not only of the others, but even of ourselves, since there have been taken out of our lives so many years, in which we who were youths have passed to old age and as old men have almost reached the limit of life itself without a word.[106]

Agricola was not a great man either in intellect or in force of character. Moreover, he had lived through the reign of Domitian in safety by not opposing the will of the tyrant. Naturally it was hard to write a panegyric on such a man which should interest and please the public. But Tacitus, by laying the chief stress upon Agricola’s successful administration in Britain, which is prefaced by an account of the country and of the previous Roman expeditions thither, made of his panegyric a genuine bit of history with Agricola, the most prominent person in it. Thus the reader’s interest is kept alive and the writer’s purpose accomplished. The work closes with an eloquent and beautiful apostrophe to Agricola.

When he wrote the Agricola, Tacitus was already planning a great history of his own times, for which he had at least begun to accumulate materials. The Germania. In the Germania (De Origine Situ Moribus ac Populis Germaniæ) the material collected to serve as introductory to the account of the wars in Germany is published as a separate work. The little treatise is interesting as the earliest extant connected account of the country and inhabitants of northern Europe. A few of the statements contained in it are manifestly incorrect, but for the most part, what Tacitus tells us agrees with and supplements what we know from other sources. The essay is a compilation from various earlier works, among which Pliny’s History of the German Wars was no doubt the most important, though Tacitus probably consulted the works of Cæsar, Velleius Paterculus, and others, besides obtaining information from some of the many Romans who had served in the army in Germany. There is no indication that Tacitus was ever in Germany himself. As a literary production the Germania is far inferior to the Agricola, though written at about the same time. In the Agricola Tacitus expresses his own feelings for his father-in-law, whom he evidently loved and respected, while in the Germania there is little room for feeling of any sort, and none for emotion. Yet, with all the difference in literary merit, the two works show the style of Tacitus at the same stage. There are still some remnants of Ciceronian smoothness, but these are evidently survivals. The tendency to use concise, even abbreviated phrases, to add point to expressions by verbal antithesis or by inversion of order, and to make his sentences imply more than the words actually express, is characteristic of Tacitus’s mature style and is evident, though not yet fully developed, in the Agricola and the Germania alike.

At least as early as 98 A. D. Tacitus planned to write a history of his own times. His original purpose was to begin with the accession of Galba and continue in chronological order. But after completing the history of the period from Galba to the death of Domitian (68-96 A. D.) he went back to the death of Augustus, and wrote the history of the time to the accession of Galba (14-68 A. D.). The great history. He intended to write the history of the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, but never did so. The part of the work first completed, treating of the events of the author’s own lifetime, is entitled Histories (Historiæ); the part written later, but treating of the earlier period, is usually called the Annals (Annales), though its proper title is Ab Excessu Divi Augusti, in imitation of the title of Livy’s history, Ab Urbe Condita. The two together consisted of thirty books, of which fourteen belong to the Histories and sixteen to the Annals. Of the Annals, the following parts are preserved: Books I-IV and the beginning of Book V, from the death of Augustus to the year 29 A. D., Book VI, with the exception of the beginning, carrying on the story to the death of Tiberius, and Books XI-XVI, from 47-66 A. D., though this long fragment is mutilated at the beginning and the end. The account of the reign of Caligula is lost, as is that of the first seven years of the reign of Claudius, and of somewhat more than two years at the end of the reign of Nero. Of the Histories only the first four books and part of the fifth remain, and this important fragment is preserved in only one manuscript. It contains the history of little more than one year, the memorable year 68-69 A. D., in which Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, in quick succession, gained the imperial power and lost their lives, to be followed by Vespasian.

In the Annals, dealing with a period before his own recollection, Tacitus treats the history of Rome and the empire as if it were directed by the wishes, the whims, and caprices of a few individuals. He depicts the character of Tiberius and the court of Nero in vivid and lurid colors. The Annals. The court intrigues, the judicial and private murders, the licentiousness and corruption of the capital are spread before us with all the power of his brilliant and incisive style. These things appear as the most important matters in the history of the time. Modern scholars have, with the aid of inscriptions, found that the Roman empire was, throughout this period, ably and peaceably administered by permanent officials, and was little affected by the terror that reigned in the capital. But for Tacitus, Rome was the empire. The provinces were in the dim distance and had in his eyes little historical importance. That his view of history is narrow and distorted is clear; yet his genius has made it for centuries the only accepted view of Roman history under the early emperors. In the Histories, dealing with his own times, he sees things more clearly. The uprising of the Batavians under Civilis and the war in Palestine are treated with as much detail as the sanguinary struggles in Rome, though here also the influence of the characters and acts of individuals upon the irresistible course of history is overrated. This view of history, which makes events depend too much upon individuals, joined with a pessimism which sees hidden motives behind even innocent or indifferent acts, is the great defect of Tacitus as an historian. His information is carefully collected, though, as a rule, he neglects all mention of his authorities. In preparing his account of the Jews in the fifth book of the Histories he relied apparently upon hearsay and upon other untrustworthy sources of information, without referring to the Septuagint or to Josephus, but similar carelessness can not be proved in other parts of his work.

His style is impregnated with the words and phrases of the classical writers, especially of Virgil, and with the rhetorical teaching of the Silver Age, and yet it is thoroughly individual. Style of Tacitus. It is concise, sharp, and cutting, but often grandly poetic in its eloquence; it is apparently straightforward, yet somehow often reveals a half-hidden meaning; it is carefully elaborated, yet it affects the reader with rugged earnestness. Such a style is almost inimitable, whether by writers of Latin or by translators. It has been compared to that of Carlyle, and the comparison is worth mentioning, though it should not be pushed too far. Few prose works contain more epigrammatic sentences than those of Tacitus. Examples are: “Traitors are hated, even by those whom they advance”;[107] “None grieve more ostentatiously than those who are most delighted in their hearts”;[108] “Princes are mortal, the state eternal”;[109] “When the state was most corrupt the laws were most numerous”;[110] “New men rather than new measures”;[111] “Vices will exist as long as men”;[112] “Fame does not always err; sometimes it chooses.”[113] Endowed, as he was, with striking stylistic ability, writing, in fact, in a style which could not fail to arouse the interest and hold the attention of his readers, it is no wonder that Tacitus succeeded in imposing upon the world his views of history, which can be only partially corrected by the careful study and interpretation of fragmentary records.