SOURCE: Stuart, Duane Reed. Introduction to The Agricola, by Tacitus, pp. ix-xxvi. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1923.

[In the following essay, Stuart provides a biographical sketch of Tacitus and discusses the purpose, form, and style of the Agricola.]

LIFE

The books of Tacitus show vividly what manner of man he was. The works of no other ancient historian are so impregnated with the author's personality. By reading the writings of Tacitus between the lines it is easy to find out what he thought of the world in which he lived, what his convictions and what his prejudices were.

On the other hand, the information that he gives us directly about his life is very meager. No biography of Tacitus has come down to us from ancient times. It is possible, therefore, to reconstruct his career only in a bare outline in which much rests upon conjecture and surmise.

According to the more reliable tradition our author's full name was Publius Cornelius Tacitus. The year of his birth was probably 55 a.d. His boyhood thus coincided closely with the reign of Nero, 54-68 a.d. We do not know whether Tacitus was a native of Rome or whether he was born outside of the city, as were the other great figures of Roman literature. As to his station in the world there is good reason to believe that his father was a Cornelius Tacitus of the preceding generation, a Roman knight who served as procurator in Belgic Gaul. If this identification be correct, Tacitus came from equestrian stock—an inference which fits what we know about his education, his marriage, and his social connections. As he himself tells us, he was a disciple of M. Aper and Julius Secundus, the leaders of the bar in the time of Vespasian, 69-79 a.d. He thus had a place as a youth in that distinguished coterie of literary men of whose intercourse he gives a typical sketch in the Dialogus de Oratoribus. In the year 78 he married the daughter of Julius Agricola, one of the consuls of the previous year and a man who had already made his mark as a soldier and an administrator. Evidently this match bespeaks for Tacitus the approval of social position and official prestige. Throughout his life Tacitus was on terms of intimacy with the foremost men of the time, notably with the younger Pliny. Of this engaging type of Roman gentility Tacitus was the model and the constant admiration. Eleven of the published letters of Pliny have come down to us with the superscription C. Plinius Tacito suo salutem.

At a comparatively early age Tacitus established for himself a reputation as a pleader and an orator. During the reign of Vespasian he entered his official career by serving as military tribune and as a member of the board of vigintiviri so-called. Under the rules governing preferment at the time he thus became eligible for the higher state offices which marked the successive steps in a senatorial career. The first of these posts, the quaestorship, Tacitus held either in 80 or in 81 a.d. under the emperor Titus. During the reign of Domitian, 81-96 a.d., Tacitus for some years must have enjoyed the favor of the emperor whom, as we shall see, he was afterwards to portray in such dark colors. At least he reached the praetorship in the year 88 a.d. and therefore as a necessary preliminary must have served as tribune of the people or as aedile. In accordance with the system of Roman provincial administration he was sent, at the expiration of his praetorship, to fill some one of the posts that fell to the lot of the ex-praetors. He may have commanded a legion or may have governed a province. We do not know where this post was located. He spent some four years in this service, for, as we learn from chapter 44 of the Agricola, he was still absent from Rome when his father-in-law died in August 93.

Agricola undoubtedly carried with him the members of his household in his fall from favor. During the closing years of Domitian's principate Tacitus was persona ingrata at the palace. After his return to Rome he found it necessary to order his conduct with care if he were not to court what seemed to him a useless martyrdom. Therefore in the deliberations of the Senate he frankly assumed with the crowd an attitude of non-resistance. We may well believe that on many occasions only the tactful application of the doctrine of conformity which he preaches in the Agricola saved him from the fate which overtook those colleagues of his who dared openly to brave imperial displeasure. For the time being the path of official advancement was blocked.

With the murder of Domitian came better times for the senatorial party. In 97 the emperor Nerva raised Tacitus to the consulship. One incident in the historian's tenure of the office has been handed down to us, namely, his delivery of a eulogy of Verginius Rufus, the guardian of Pliny. Verginius had rendered distinguished service to the Empire in the Gallic revolt of 68, and if he had cared to accept the proffered support of his army, might possibly have been emperor. The speech of Tacitus, says Pliny, added the crowning touch to Verginius's good fortune.

Two more events in the life of Tacitus as a public man are known to us. In the year 100, together with his friend Pliny, he acted for the inhabitants of Africa in proceedings instituted against Marius Priscus, a governor of the province, who was accused of malfeasance in office. Tacitus reached the culmination of his political career before he was sixty years old. In 112-113 the proconsulship of Asia fell to his lot. This post and the corresponding position in Africa were the highest honors that could be conferred on a senator. Therefore, Tacitus, more fortunate than Agricola, whom Domitian had forced to relinquish claim on the proconsulship of Africa, obtained his due of recognition from the state.

At the expiration of his year of office Tacitus presumably returned to Rome and began the composition of the Annals. Apparently he outlived Trajan and died sometime after 117 a.d., the year in which Hadrian began to rule. He died without completing the work which he had reserved for his old age, a history of the principates of Nerva and Trajan.

Tacitus was a man of tremendous earnestness. He took his work seriously and tried in good faith to meet the self-imposed obligation of narrating the history of the empire sine ira et studio. When he failed, as we know he sometimes did, to live up to his promise to preach the “gospel of things as they were,” it was from no desire to falsify. His judgments were at the beck and call of a masterful individuality which confronts us everywhere and insists on leaving its subjective impress on the narrative. His view of things was pessimistic. He was unable to repress his prejudices in dealing with such emperors as Tiberius and Domitian. As a result their characters appear before us with proportions distorted.

A critical historian in the modern sense he was not. Nevertheless he towers above the historians of Rome as Thucydides towers above those of Greece. Owing to the loss of the sources on which he tells us he drew, it is a well-nigh impossible task to discover his literary methods in detail. Compilation was in his day the accepted process of historical composition. The obeisance paid to the authority of a predecessor amounted often to the reproduction—without acknowledgment—of the written word. Tacitus did not hesitate to appropriate phraseology as well as facts; hence he sometimes shines with a luster not his own. Tested, however, by the standards of his age, he handled his sources scientifically. He did not slavishly follow one work for a given period, but he utilized several at a time, comparing them among themselves and occasionally checking their testimony by recourse to public documents.

It has been well said that whatever Tacitus was it is through his eyes that we must see the first century of the Empire. This, however, does not constitute his sole claim to a hearing nowadays. Although there was a strong dash of the misanthropist in his make-up, none the less his chief interest in the drama of history was centered on the human actors. Events are to be studied in terms of the human motives underlying them. These motives Tacitus divines with magic insight and sets forth with matchless power. In his hands history is not a mere chronicle of changes of dynasty, wars, and rumors of wars. It is a record of the ability of human virtues to make and human passions to mar. This story Tacitus elected to tell to his world that posterity might draw the moral. It would seem, therefore, that, as long as “the proper study of mankind is man,” the writings of Tacitus should hold a message.

WRITINGS

Besides the Agricola four works bearing the name of Tacitus have come down to us:—

1. The Dialogus de Oratoribus, an essay in literary criticism, cast in the form of a conversation. The speakers inquire into the reasons for the decadence of oratory and discuss the relative merits of poetry and eloquence. Scholars are at variance as to the date of composition. The work appeared either in the reign of Titus, 79-81 a.d., or not until after the death of Domitian in 96 a.d.
2. The Germania so-called, being an account of ancient Germany and the Germans. The treatise was published in 98 a.d., not long after the appearance of the Agricola.
3. The Histories, the first of the purely historical works of Tacitus, presented in annalistic form the events of imperial history from January 1, 69, down to the death of Domitian. The work contained probably fourteen, certainly no less than twelve, books. Of these the first four and a part of the fifth are extant. The Histories were published during the years following 104 a.d., probably in installments, and were completed before Tacitus went out as proconsul of Asia in 112.
4. The Annals, formally entitled Ab Excessu Divi Augusti Libri. Herein were set forth the reigns of the four emperors of the Julian line who succeeded Augustus; namely, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. The narrative presumably was carried down to the date at which the Histories begin. Of the sixteen or eighteen original books—the number is uncertain—we have books 1-4 and 12-15 complete and portions of four other books. The work was begun after the return of Tacitus from Asia and could not have been finished until some time after the accession of Hadrian.

It is thus evident that the major portion of Tacitus's literary activity coincided with the reign of Trajan. Of course Tacitus wrote speeches and presumably he answered the letters of his friend Pliny. None of these has come down to us.

PURPOSE AND LITERARY FORM OF THE AGRICOLA

Agricola died in the year 93 a.d. Five years passed before Tacitus gave to the world the account of his father-in-law's life and character which we know under the title De Vita Iulii Agricolae Liber. The publication of the book was doubtless retarded by that attitude of self-effacement which, as we have seen, Tacitus felt bound to adopt during the last years of Domitian's reign. At all events, when the heart for literary work returned to him, he soon applied himself to the composition of his tribute to the memory of Agricola. One might naturally infer that this labor of love would be the first task undertaken by Tacitus after the lethargic effects of the enforced mental inactivity which had resulted from Domitian's measures of repression had begun to abate. However, because of the prevailing uncertainty as to the date of the Dialogus we cannot insist absolutely upon this conclusion, plausible and flattering to Tacitus though it may be. We simply know that if the Agricola was not the first of the works published after the death of Domitian, it was certainly the second.

The first three chapters of the book are introductory. In them Tacitus tells his readers plainly what kind of a book he purposes to write and what point of view he will assume in writing it. The work is to be a biography—a literary form which had been well represented in Roman literature prior to Tacitus. Herewith was not implied a critical biography as we now understand it, to which we look to learn the exact facts of the subject's career,—the shadows as well as the lights of his personality. Realistic portraiture was not attempted in the style of biographical writing to which the Agricola belongs. The object sought was the glorification of some man who had passed away. The author treated his material in a laudatory vein, and the familiar admonition de mortuis nil nisi bonum was in the main strictly observed. In such a spirit Tacitus wrote the Agricola. The book is frankly conceived as a eulogy; its composition is viewed as an act of pious devotion. It is essential to the appreciation of the treatise that the reader keep these facts in mind.

However, the student will inevitably be impressed with the fact that some chapters read more like history than like biography. Agricola was a man of action. His greatest achievements lay in the field of arms and of military administration. It was unavoidable that in describing the career of Agricola in Britain Tacitus should tell us about events and incidents that would fall properly in a history of the Roman conquest of the island. Yet in nearly every chapter he contrives to keep uppermost in the mind of the reader the consciousness that Agricola is the central figure of the narrative. By many an adroit allusion Agricola is made to appear as the hero and the directing genius of the Roman advance. His energy and promptitude, his resourcefulness in the field, the sagacity which he displayed in securing his conquests, his tactful treatment of subjugated peoples, are brought out in bold relief. Contemporary history is introduced, not for its own sake, but to furnish a setting for the exploits of Agricola.

Withal it must be confessed that while Tacitus does not allow us to forget Agricola for long, he did not feel bound to mention his hero's name in every chapter or to exclude rigorously all matter which did not make directly for characterization or for praise. The reason is not far to seek. At the time at which Tacitus was busy with the Agricola, he had already conceived the project of writing a history of the reign of Domitian and thereby of bringing home to the minds of men by way of contrast the blessings they were enjoying under Trajan. In a word, the interests that were to put the stamp upon his subsequent literary productivity were then claiming his attention. It is not strange, therefore, that he occasionally overstepped the bounds prescribed by rhetorical usage for the biography and introduced certain material for the sake of its intrinsic interest or its dramatic effectiveness rather than because it could lay claim logically to a niche for itself. The mutiny and the desertion of the Usipi, chapter 28, is the clearest case. The anecdote is a lively bit of narrative, inserted because it seemed a memorable incident of the season's campaign. A more vital connection may be discerned for chapters 13-17, in which the history of Anglo-Roman relations is sketched from the first invasion by Julius Caesar down to the beginning of the administration of Agricola. We learn of the progress that had been made in the subjugation of Britain before the coming of Agricola. We are apprised of the difficulties of the undertaking with which previous governors had coped more or less successfully. This preliminary information prepares the reader to be impressed at the manner in which Agricola succeeded where others had failed. This is precisely the aim that Tacitus had in view. Nevertheless the content of these chapters is historical and the historical manner of Tacitus is visible in method of presentation. This is notably the case in chapter 15, where the grievances of the Britons and the motives that incited them to revolt are cast in the form of a speech. What a common device of the ancient historian it was to put into the mouths of characters harangues appropriate to an occasion but wholly or partly fictitious, the student who has read a book of Livy will remember.

A description of the country and peoples of Britain might have been utilized mainly to familiarize the reader with the scenes of Agricola's campaigns and to render intelligible the movements of army and fleet. However, chapters 10-12 are related in no such manner to the context. They are ethnographical, purely and simply. Tacitus himself tells us that his aim was to correct the erroneous notions disseminated by previous writers, since the complete subjugation of the island had made exact knowledge possible concerning geography and ethnology. The scientific spirit has here the upper hand, even though in chapter 10 he does weave in a reference to Agricola's demonstration of the insular character of Britain. Chapters 11 and 12, with their description of peoples, climate, and productions, owe their presence to the same interest in foreign climes and races that inspired the Germania.

It may be that if Tacitus had published his eulogy in the first stress of sorrow soon after the death of Agricola, a singleness of purpose would have been discernible in every chapter. As to this possibility we can only speculate. At all events the admixture of historical elements is not so pervasive as to force us to deny to the Agricola claim of rhetorical unity. In the actual labor of composition Tacitus could not or did not stifle his literary predilections. The historical studies which were demanding his attention affected his choice of content and colored his method of presentation. Nevertheless in by far the larger portion of the book Tacitus is true to the aim expressed at the outset and repeated in the concluding sentence of the last chapter. He has given to posterity a eulogy of his father-in-law, couched in the form of a biography.

THE STYLE OF TACITUS

As the Agricola, notwithstanding its biographical form, contains the first premonitions of the works that have assigned to Tacitus for all time historian as his characteristic title, so stylistically the work marks a beginning. The earlier Dialogus was modeled consciously on the manner of Cicero, whose style was regarded by a school of Tacitus's contemporaries as the embodiment of correct rhetorical theory. In the four later works Tacitus discarded the Ciceronian idea and developed the unique medium of expression with which his name is associated par excellence.

The principles on which this style was based were not evolved by Tacitus. During the first century of the Empire, in the rhetorical schools and among literary craftsmen, there had been forming a movement away from the style of the Golden Age with its parallelism and symmetry in construction and in diction, its formalism in syntax, its utilization of the periodic sentence, its restraint in expression. The adherents of the New Style favored variety in expression above regularity, brevity and condensation above the developed sentence and the long period. By way of diversifying the monotony of classical syntax innovations suggested by the Greek and by the usage of the poets were received into prose. Similarly poetic words and turns of expression established themselves in the prose vocabulary. The effect on the reader was ever uppermost in the mind of the writer. There was constant striving to stir admiration and to retain interest. To these ends a plentiful use of epigrams, sententious sayings, and graphic descriptions contributed.

In the course of the thorough rhetorical training which Tacitus enjoyed he had of course become familiar with all the prevalent doctrines. He was therefore fitted to pick and choose a style in which to write his narrative works. It was quite in keeping with the canons of ancient taste that an author should adopt an established style which he might deem appropriate to his work in preference to writing as his personality might inspire him. However, a master mind does not pay absolute fealty to a system—and a master mind Tacitus was. In practice he leaned toward the innovative tendencies of his day as we have described them. Nevertheless he was not dominated by them. He took the elements which lay ready to his hand, worked them over in the crucible of his individuality, and so produced ultimately a creation of his own genius.

Of the extant works the Agricola, as has been said, was the first essay in the style which we regard as typically Tacitean. Critical study, to be sure, reveals certain differences in diction and in usage between the Agricola and the longer works. During the fifteen years of literary work that followed the composition of the biography, the style of Tacitus underwent various modifications. This is a law of stylistic evolution. In the Agricola Tacitus was feeling his way; he had not yet acquired the sure touch exhibited in the Annals. Furthermore some of the rhetorical features peculiar to the Agricola are due to the fact that the book was written, as was the Dialogus, under the influence of a literary model. However, there had been a change of masters. Sallust had been substituted for Cicero. Lastly, traces of Tacitus's scholastic training in rhetoric are still visible in the Agricola. Witness the frequent recurrence of pairs of synonyms such as incensum ac flagrantem 4, 17; indecorus atque humilis 16, 22; fictum ac compositum 40, 11; celebritate et frequentia 40, 14. Examples are numerous. This device suggests the efforts of the pleader to drive home his argument by means of emphatic redundancy. The last chapter of the Agricola has an oratorical coloring which the eulogistic character of the piece naturally justifies.

Nevertheless, after due allowance has been made for its local stylistic features, the Agricola still displays clearly the characteristic qualities which differentiate so unmistakably the style of Tacitus from that of the other prose writers hitherto encountered by the student. Before all else there is evident that penchant for succinctness of statement that became with Tacitus a fine art. The desire for brevity often led him to compress his thought to the point of obscurity. In such contexts as 5, 1-2 rudimenta … adprobavit; 21, 7-8 ingenia Britannorum studiis Gallorum anteferre, he places on the reader the brunt of discovering the real meaning of the sentence. Ellipsis of the forms of sum is more affected by him than by the writers of the classical period; e.g. 6, 16 idem praeturae tenor et silentium; 16, 20 discordia laboratum; 26, 12 donec pulsi hostes. Other verbs, easily supplied from the context, are occasionally omitted, as in 15, 2-3 accendere: [nam dicebat]; 19, 6 nihil per libertos … [egit]; 33, 2-3 agmina et armorum fulgores … [apparebant]. The generic noun is commonly omitted with the genitive and the ablative of description, as in 4, 4 Iulius Graecinus [vir] senatorii ordinis; 4, 7 Procilla fuit [mulier] rarae castitatis.

The complicated period so characteristic of Livy is not so highly favored by Tacitus. There is a noticeable inclination for short, independent sentences, which is especially apparent in some of the descriptive chapters of the Agricola and in the inserted speeches. This device imparts to the narrative tenseness and onward sweep, effects which are often heightened by a sparing use of connectives. Compare the following passages: 12, 16 ff.; 13, 7 ff.; 15, 4 ff.; 24, 8 ff. Asyndeton is strikingly common. Note by way of example, 12, 18 tarde mitescunt, cito proveniunt; 20, 4 multus in agmine, laudare modestiam, disiectos coercere: 30, 22 auferre, trucidare, rapere; 36, 21 vagi currus, exterriti … equi. Another favorite device of Tacitus for securing economy of expression is zeugma, which is in its usual form the “yoking” together of two different nouns by a verb logically appropriate to one only. In the later works the historian went to great lengths in this direction. We meet in the Agricola such instances as 3, 4-5 nec spem modo ac votum securitas publica [conceperit] sed … fiduciam ac robur adsumpserit; 31, 13 neque … metalla aut portus sunt, quibus exercendis reservemur (exercendis is strictly applicable to metalla only); boldest of all—if the text be correct—is 45, 7 nos Maurici Rusticique visus [foedavit], nos innocenti sanguine Senecio perfudit.

Tacitus cherished an especial antipathy toward conventional phraseology. He was constantly going out of his way to vary current modes of expression, to put things in different fashion from what the reader was anticipating. This tendency led him to shift from one construction to another, as in 9, 17 ostentanda virtute aut per artem; 41, 7 temeritate aut per ignaviam ducum; to indulge in such unexpected combinations of abstract and concrete as 25, 8 mixti copiis et laetitia and 37, 26 nox et satietas; to avoid using stock formulae by resorting to new coinages, such as 6, 17 ludos … duxit for ludos fecit and 37, 13 terga praestare instead of terga praebere. The technical term for this quality of style which is so much in evidence in the writings of Tacitus is inconcinnity.

Tacitus shared the taste of his day for epigram and pithy saying. He kept, however, within artistic bounds and did not overreach himself in an effort to sparkle in every sentence. Hence, he escaped the pitfalls which caught many of his contemporaries in whom the sententious too often degenerates into the banal, the original into the overwrought. The books of Tacitus are full of effective phrases and turns of expression which lend themselves to quotation. Some of these, such as 30, 23 ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant and 42, 14 proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris, have become part of the common heritage of literature. Tacitus has a notable way of closing a chapter with a sentence which rings in the ear of the reader and brings the context to a fitting climax. For illustration may be noted 15, 23 porro in eius modi consiliis periculosius esse deprehendi quam audere; 21, 12 idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur cum pars servitutis esset. Rhetorical effects are constantly heightened by the use of antithesis and alliteration; compare 5, 17 nec minus periculum ex magna fama quam ex mala; 16, 24 seditio sine sanguine stetit; 41, 19 simul suis virtutibus, simul vitiis aliorum; 46, 19 multos veterum velut inglorios et ignobilis oblivio obruit.

For much of the distinctive color of his style Tacitus is indebted to poetry. Vergil was his favorite poet, and the influence of the “Mantuan” is often in evidence in the narrative works. In the Agricola, quibus cruda ac viridis senectus 29, 15 is an indubitable reminiscence of Aeneid 6, 304 sed cruda deo viridisque senectus; femina duce 16, 2 and et aliquando etiam victis ira virtusque 37, 15 may be echoes of dux femina facti, Aeneid 1, 364 and 2, 367 quondam etiam victis redit in praecordia virtus. Many examples of poetic parlance in Tacitus are not due to deliberate requisition upon some one poet. From the time of Livy on the usages of the great poets were continually being incorporated into prose. Tacitus thus often utilized modes of expression that had been originally struck out by the poets, but had in time become part and parcel of the literary language of the Silver Age. Poetic usage manifests itself in the Agricola in such words as 14, 14 rebellibus; 27, 5 magniloqui; 31, 5 annus in the sense of annona; 38, 6 pignorum; in the frequent use of metaphorical phraseology, as illustrated by 18, 8 transvecta aestas; 36, 11 miscere ictus; 38, 13 spargi bellum; in such personifications as 22, 1 annus … aperuit; 38, 9 dies faciem victoriae … aperuit; in a few constructions such as 8, 3 the infinitive with peritus; 43, 14 securus followed by a genitive; 45, 22 the local ablative animo without a preposition.

MANUSCRIPTS

Until recent years knowledge of the Agricola rested on two manuscripts only. Both of these are preserved in the Library of the Vatican. During the last decade two new manuscripts which throw a flood of light on the text have been put at the service of students of Tacitus. One of these is in the possession of the Chapter Library of the Cathedral at Toledo in Spain and is, therefore, designated as the Codex Toletanus. Its existence was reported to the world of scholarship in 1897, but four years passed before its readings were published. The text of this manuscript shows important variations from the text of the Vatican manuscripts. In numerous passages where its fellows are wrong, the Toletanus has preserved the correct version. Nevertheless there was some difference of opinion as to the reliance to be placed upon it until its authority was vindicated by the discovery of another manuscript, which has turned out to be one of the most valuable palaeographical finds of our day.

This fourth manuscript of the Agricola was found in the year 1902 in the private library of Count Balleani of Jesi, an Italian town not far from Ancona. Technically the manuscript is termed the Codex Aesinus, abbreviated by E. Eight of the fourteen leaves which it contains once formed a part of a manuscript of the minor works of Tacitus which Enoch of Ascoli, an emissary of Pope Nicholas V, obtained at the German monastery of Hersfeld and carried to Rome in 1455. This was the first manuscript of the minor works brought into Italy after the Revival of Learning. The six remaining pages of E were copied by a trustworthy scholar of the Renaissance directly from Enoch's original.

For practical purposes, therefore, the discovery of E has brought our text five hundred years nearer to Tacitus, as Enoch's manuscript of the Agricola was copied in the tenth century. Furthermore E is the source of the other three manuscripts, all of which were produced in the latter half of the fifteenth century. The Toletanus was copied directly from E; the Vatican manuscripts go back through an intermediary, being copies of a copy of E now lost to us. We see, therefore, why the Toletanus escaped many errors which crept into the Vatican manuscripts in the process of transmission. In reconstructing the text of the Agricola E, as the parent manuscript, must henceforth be the point of departure.