According to St. Jerome it originally consisted of thirty books; and the minuteness with which each event is recorded in the portion extant renders it highly probable that the original work was as extensive as this assertion would imply. The object which he proposed to himself was worthy of his penetrating mind, from the searching gaze of which even the hypocrisy and dissimulation of a Tiberius were powerless to veil the foul darkness of his crafty nature. He intended “to investigate the political state of the commonwealth, the feelings of its armies, the sentiments of the provinces, the elements of its strength and weakness, the causes and reasons for each phænomenon.”[[1215]] The principal fault which diminishes the value of his history as a record of events, is his too great readiness to accept evidence unhesitatingly, and to record popular rumours without taking sufficient pains to examine into their truth. Still these blots are but few, scattered over a vast field of faithful history. Perhaps the most lamentable instance is presented in his incorrect account of the history, constitution, and manners of the Jewish people. Wanting either the opportunity or the inclination to consult the sacred books of the nation, he mixes up vague traditions of their early history with the fables of Pagan mythology; and, like the Greeks and Romans, gives names to imaginary patriarchs, taken from localities connected with their history.
According to his account the Jews originally inhabited Crete,[[1216]] and from Mount Ida, in that Island, received the name of Idæi, which afterwards became corrupted into Judæi. From Crete, when Saturn was expelled by Jove, they took refuge in Egypt; and thence under two leaders, Juda and Hierosolymus, again migrated to the neighbouring country of Palestine. A second tradition attributes to them an Assyrian origin; a third an Æthiopian; a fourth asserts that they were descended from the Solymi which Homer celebrated in his poems.[[1217]]
The next tradition which he mentions approaches nearer to the true one. Egypt being afflicted with a plague, the king Bocchoris, by the advice of the oracle of Ammon, purged his kingdom of them, and under the guidance of Moses they began their wanderings. When they were dying on their way for want of water, their leader followed a herd of wild asses, by which he was led to a copious well of water. Thus was their drought relieved; and, after journeying six days, they obtained possession of the land in which they built their capital and temple. Moses introduced new religious rites contrary to those of other nations. He set up the image of an ass in the Holy of Holies—a statement which afterwards Tacitus virtually contradicts by saying that they allow no images in their temples,[[1218]] that they preferred taking up arms to admitting the statue of Caligula into the temple;[[1219]] and that when Pompey took Jerusalem,[[1220]] he found no image of any deity, and the sanctuary empty. He adds, that they sacrifice rams in order to show contempt to Jupiter Ammon, and oxen, because, under that form, Apis was worshipped by the Egyptians; that they abstain from pork in remembrance of their having been afflicted with leprosy, to which that animal is subject, and eat unleavened bread as a memorial of their once having stolen food. On the seventh day, which terminated their wanderings, they do no work, and in like manner the seventh year they devote to idleness. This Sabbath, some assert that they keep holy in honour of Saturn. They believe in the immortality of the soul, and in future rewards and punishments, and embalm their dead like the Egyptians. Such are the various traditions respecting the Jews which Tacitus incorporates in his Histories.
The Annals, which were written subsequently to the Histories, were so called, because each historical event is recorded in historical order under the year to which it belongs.[[1221]] They consist of sixteen books; commence with the death of Augustus,[[1222]] and conclude with that of Nero.[[1223]] The only portions extant are—the first four books, part of the fifth, the sixth, part of the eleventh, the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and the commencement of the sixteenth book. The Annals are rather histories of each successive emperor than of the Roman people; but this is the necessary condition of narrating the fortunes of a nation which now possessed only the bare name, and not the reality of constitutional government. The state was now the emperor; the end and object of the social system his security; and every political event must therefore be treated in relation to him.
But a history of this kind in the hands of one who had such skill in diving into the recesses of man’s heart, who could read so shrewdly and delineate so vigorously human character, who possessed as a writer such picturesque and dramatic power, becomes the more interesting from its biographical nature, and its philosophical importance as a moral rather than a political study. It is not, owing to circumstances over which the author had no control, the history of a great nation, for the Romans, as a whole, were no longer great. Neither does it paint the rise, progress and development of constitutional freedom, for it had reached its zenith, had declined, become paralyzed, and finally extinct. But still there existed bright examples of heroism, and courage, and self-devotion, truly Roman, and instances not less prominent of corruption and degradation. Individuals stand out in bold relief, eminent for the noblest virtues or blackened by the basest crimes. These appear either singly or in groups upon the stage: the emperor forms the principal figure; and the moral sense of the reader is awakened to admire instances of patient suffering and determined bravery, or abject slavery and remorseless despotism.
The object of Tacitus, therefore, was not, like that of the great philosophical historian of Greece, to describe the growth of political institutions, or the implacable animosities which raged between opposite political principles—the struggles for supremacy between a class and a whole people—but the influence which the establishment of tyranny on the ruins of liberty exercised for good or for evil in bringing out the character of the individual. Rome, the imperial city, was the all-engrossing subject of his predecessors; Romans were but subordinate and accessary. Tacitus delineated the lives and deaths of individuals, and showed the relation which they bore to the fortunes of their country.
It would have been impossible to have satisfied a people whose taste had become more than ever rhetorical, without the introduction of orations. Those of Tacitus are perfect specimens of art; and probably, with the exception of Galgacus,[[1224]] far more true than those of other Roman historians. Still he made use of them, not only to imbody traditional accounts of what had really been said on each occasion, but to illustrate his own views of the character of the speaker, and to convey his own political opinions.
Full of sagacious observation and descriptive power, Tacitus engages the most serious attention of the reader by the gravity of his condensed and comprehensive style, as he does by the wisdom and dignity of his reflections. The purity and gravity of his sentiments remind the reader even of Christian authors.
Living amidst the influences of a corrupt age he was uncontaminated; and by his virtue and integrity, his chastened political liberality, commands our admiration as a man, whilst his love of truth is reflected in his character as an historian. Although he imitated, as well as approved, the cautious policy of his father-in-law, he was not destitute of moral firmness.
It derogates nothing from his courage that he was silent during the perilous times in which great part of his life was passed, and spoke with boldness only when the happy reign of Nerva had commenced, and the broken spirit of the nation had revived. Like the rest of his fellow-countrymen he exhibited a remarkable example of patient endurance, when the imperial jealousy made even the praise of those who were obnoxious to the tyrant treason; when it was considered a capital crime for Arulenus Rusticus to praise Pætus Thrasea, and Herennius Senecio to eulogize Priscus Helvidius.