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The Mind of Tacitus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

M. A. Fitzsimons
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Extract

No Roman historian except the scholar propagandist Livy would have described his own age as the best of times and the worst of times. Imperial pagan Romans were too morally pessimistic about history to be able to say more than what Tacitus in effect said of the age of Trajan: it was the best of the worst times. His patriotism in no way encouraged him to say yes to his age, as Vergil and Livy had done to theirs. Instead it strengthened the moral severity with which he passed judgment on men of an iron age.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , October 1976 , pp. 473 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1976

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References

1 Almost all ray quotations from Tacitus are from the Church and Brodribb translation edited by Moses Hadas for Modern Library College editions. Here and there paraphrases from all but the Annals may echo the volumes in the Loeb Library. Very infrequently I use my own translation or paraphrase from C. D. Fisher's edition of the Annals in Oxford Classical texts. SirSyme, Ronald, Tacitus (Oxford, 1958), 2 vols.Google Scholar, is an exhaustive work, sufficiently opinionated for its controverted subject. Boissier, Gaston, Tacite (Paris, 1903) remains usefulGoogle Scholar. The Cambridge Ancient Histories, vols. X–XI, and Mattingly's, HaroldRoman Imperial Civilisation (New York, 1957) are helpfulGoogle Scholar; and Chester G. Starr, Civilization and the Caesars, is stimulating. Surprisingly less helpful is Grant, Michael, The Ancient Historians (New York, 1970)Google Scholar.

2 I accept the arguments of SirSyme, Ronald (Tacitus [1958], 2: 670–673)Google Scholar for Tacitus' authorship of the Dialogue, which accords with the biography of Tacitus and presents thoughts that pervade his works.