It is a question worth the asking, at what season in his life a man comes to the writing of history, with what equipment for the task, and under what impulsion. Cornelius Tacitus did not discover his vocation until he had passed the age of forty. Was that late or early? Late, in the opinion of some scholars, late and almost anomalous. Gaston Boissier avowed his surprise on the first page of his Tacite, a book published just over fifty years ago, and held in merited esteem for its combination of elegance and judgement. And, more recently (in 1947), Ernst Kornemann, the last survivor of that notable company, the pupils of Theodor Mommsen, affirmed it as an axiom that Tacitus came late to history.

Vniversa iam plebs vias implebat dissono clamore poscens Seiani caedem velut si in circo aut theatre ludicrum postularent. quem orto die ad curiam acclamationibus et studio inani secuti1, nunc pari laetitia in carcerem tractum spectavere. agebatur hue illuc Seianus vario turbae fluctuantis impulsu; derisus, contumeliae omnium subiectus, vidit suas statuas afflictas calcatasque a vulgo effrenato, mox talia passurus ipse. eodem die patres convenerunt et, popularis assensus haud inscii et quod aberant Praetoriani, nullis indicibus, nullo teste damnatum morti Seianum tradiderunt. apud senatum omnes gaudere, multi ex animo, qui conscii fuissent tanto effusius laetitiam significavere quanto indicium conspirationis timuerunt. credo et providentioribus curam subisse rei publicae quae, non omnino a Sciano eversa, rursus tradrebatur irae imperatoris nunc inveteratae.

The conspiracy which so tragically and so dramatically ended Caesar's life on the Ides of March, 44 b.c., is one of the best-known episodes of Roman history; for it has been given its tragic and dramatic setting by Shakespeare himself, who saw so clearly its tragic quality. Yet as we look back over two thousand years upon this incident, pregnant with fate, as it was, for Rome's and the western world's future, we tend naturally, I think, to regard with something of contempt the conspirators, many of them Caesar's friends, who could thus dare to dishonour friendship with their great friend's blood, and cloak envy and selfishness with hypocrisy's specious covering. Yet it must be remembered that sixty men, no less, were joined in this conspiracy; we cannot lightly condemn all of them for hypocrisy and spite; and even if our final verdict should be unfavourable, it is wrong to pass it without attempting to penetrate to some degree into the minds and motives of these men, to try to understand why they could, and thought they should, commit a crime so seemingly damnable.

A Few decades afterwards Livy doubted whether Caesar's birth had been a blessing or a curse. That was an extreme doctrine: ‘Pompeianism’ like Livy's could be licensed under Augustus, but it was not orthodoxy; and to say that Caesar had been justly killed was a crime. Yet the one clear judgement on Caesar in the Aeneid is a rebuke, and in Horace there is virtual silence except in extolling Augustus the avenger. It was Ovid's clear language which was best fitted to sum up the Government's position:

neque enim de Caesaris actis ullum maius opus, nisi quod pater exstitit huius.

One morning of early summer (Pedieus being Archon)—the weather was as lovely as Athens ever knew it—Pheidias was at work in his shop when there was a knock at the door, and presently a slow-moving, deliberate man was shown in.

Tacitus, in a famous passage of the Annals,2 comments: ‘Older men who had leisure to compare the present with the past noted that Nero was the first of our rulers who had need of borrowed eloquence. The dictator Caesar could hold his own with orators of the first rank; and Augustus had a ready and fluent mode of speaking which well befitted his imperial position. Tiberius had a rare skill in weighing out his words; he could express his meaning forcibly or conceal it as he chose. Even with Gaius, the disorders of his mind never interfered with his powers of speech; and when Claudius delivered a prepared discourse, his style left nothing to be desired.’

Thucydides wrote his history after his return from exile in 404 b.c. (i. 22). It is not easy therefore to be sure to what extent his account of the great Sickness depends on notes made at the time, some twenty-five years before, and how much on memory—especially of his personal sufferings, from which it seems he recovered without any of the ‘signs’ which he implies ‘marked’ all survivors. He tells us that he has described only the general features of the Sickness (ii. 51), since the symptoms varied much from case to case; perhaps he realized how difficult it is for anyone, even an experienced physician, who has suffered from some severe and unusual illness (ii. 50) not to consider his own symptoms characteristic.