Ancient Historians · Part 23 · Later historians · C1
Tacitus
Part 23 of Ancient Historians: Tacitus, a Roman senator who lived under good emperors and terrible ones, wrote the darkest and most brilliant histories in Latin. He promised to write “without anger or partiality”, and filled his pages with irony. He gave a Caledonian chief the most famous words ever spoken against Rome, “they make a desert and call it peace”, described the great fire of Rome under Nero, and mentioned a man called Christus executed under Pontius Pilate. But when he wrote about the Jews, he repeated the old slanders of Apion. Nominalisation for concise academic style, irony and understatement, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight’s historian is the greatest Roman historian of all, and the most bitter. Tacitus will be a senator, a consul, a governor, a man at the very heart of Roman power. And he will write about that power with a cold, sharp irony that still cuts after two thousand years.
Sometimes, Marcos, and sometimes saying much less than you mean, so the reader feels the rest. He will promise to write without anger. He will not quite keep that promise. And Philo, I must warn you: when he writes about your people, he will repeat Apion’s lies. Tonight’s grammar is the grammar of concise, academic style, and of irony.
Then even the greatest historians can carry old slanders. That is worth knowing.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus (about 56–120 CE) was a senator who rose through the offices of Rome under the Flavian emperors, survived the terrifying last years of Domitian, and became consul in 97 CE. His works include the Agricola, a life of his father-in-law, the governor of Britain; the Germania, about the peoples of Germany; and two great histories, the Histories and the Annals, covering Rome from the death of Augustus to the death of Domitian. He promised to write sine…
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