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Tacitus and the Principate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

John Percival
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Extract

In the opening chapter of his Annals Tacitus gives us a potted history of Rome to the point at which his work begins. First, there were kings; then, with Lucius Junius Brutus, came liberty and the consulship (or, as we would say, the Republic); from time to time there were periods of one-man rule, most of them short-lived; and finally there was Augustus, who found the whole state exhausted by civil strife and therefore took it all into his own control and began what we call the Principate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , October 1980 , pp. 119 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1980

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References

NOTE

1. This paper started life as a talk for school audiences, and is here printed with only minor alterations. It was intended as an introduction to some aspects of Tacitus and his work rather than as an original contribution to Tacitean scholarship: indeed, it was designed in large measure for sixth-formers faced with certain books of the Annals and Histories in the A-Level examinations, and this is reflected in the passages quoted. Experts on the subject will recognize the overall influence of SirSyme's, RonaldTacitus (Oxford, 1958)Google Scholar and Wirszubski's, C.Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome (Cambridge, 1960)Google Scholar. Non-experts who wish to pursue the subject further will find much of interest in Sandbach, F. H., The Stoics (London, 1975)Google Scholar and Warmington, B. H., Nero: Reality and Legend (London, 1969)Google Scholar. They will certainly benefit from wider reading in Grant's, Michael translation of the Annals (Harmondsworth, revised edn. 1971)Google Scholar, from which most of the quotations in the paper are taken.