Tacitus
Tacitus is another great Roman historian who is theatrical, melodramatic, solemn, full of grand gestures. He also creates an atmosphere of suspicion, of falsehood. Tacitus has something of the inquisitor in him, of the fanatic in the cause of virtue. He is a man of austere moral attitude, which is a pose that a thoroughgoing scamp finds it easy to assume.
A temperament such as that of Tacitus is fatal to theatrical peoples like the Italians, Spaniards, and French of the South. From it springs that type of Sicilian, Calabrian, and Andalusian politician who is a great lawyer and an eloquent orator, who declaims publicly in the forum, and then reaches an understanding privately with bandits and thugs.
Suetonius
Suetonius, although deficient both in the pomp and sententiousness of Tacitus, makes no attempt to compose his story, nor to impart moral instruction, but tells us what he knows, simply. His Lives of the Twelve Caesars is the greatest collection of horrors in history. You leave it with the imagination perturbed, scrutinizing yourself to discover whether you may not be yourself a hog or a wild beast. Suetonius gives us an account of men rather than a history of the politics of emperors, and surely this method is more interesting and veracious. I place more faith in the anecdotes which grow up about an historical figure than I do in his laws.
Polybius is a mixture of scepticism and common sense. He is what Bayle,
Montesquieu and Voltaire will come to be centuries hence.
As far as Caesar's Commentaries are concerned, in spite of the fact that they have been manipulated very skilfully, they are one of the most satisfying and instructive books that can be read.
MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY HISTORIANS
I have very little knowledge of the historians of the Renaissance or of those prior to the French Revolution. Apart from the chroniclers of individual exploits, such as López de Ayala, Brantôme, and the others, they are wholly colourless, and either pseudo-Roman or pseudo-Greek. Even Machiavelli has a personal, Italian side, which is mocking and incisive—and this is all that is worth while in him—and he has a pretentious pseudo-Roman side, which is unspeakably tiresome.
Generally considered, the more carefully composed and smoothly varnished the history, the duller it will be found; while the more personal revelations it contains, the more engaging. Most readers today, for example, prefer Bernal Díaz del Castillo's True History of the Conquest of New Spain to Solis's History of the Conquest of Mexico. One is the book of a soldier, who had a share in the deeds described, and who reveals himself for what he is, with all his prejudices, vanities and arrogance; the other is a scholar's attempt to imitate a classic history and to maintain a monotonous music throughout his paragraphs.