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TACITUS
compelled the attention of many of the best scholars and thinkers of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He interested them not only because of his
style and theme, but also because his views (real or supposed) seemed applicable
to contemporary politics and statecraft. This latter interest faded long
ago, but a basic dilemma remains in studying Tacitus, a consummate stylist
and rhetorician who is also a major historian. To what extent is his content
separable from his style?
In the Agricola, his earliest work, Tacitus amalgamates biography and
historical monograph. But the success of the combination is questionable. He
gives roughly two thirds of the work to Agricola's governorship of Britain,
and treats the climax of Agricola's campaigns at length, providing direct
speeches for the two leaders, almost as if he were experimenting with full-scale
history. Such extensive development of a part, albeit an important part, unbalances
the whole. Again, most of what he tells us about Agricola's personality
is conventional and unrevealing. Characterization in more depth was
reasonably to be expected, though not, in an avowedly laudatory composition
(3.3), any critical assessment. Some contend that Tacitus exaggerated Agricola's
achievements and wilfully misconstrued his relations with Domitian.
We cannot be sure, but certainly many matters in the Agricola are unclear or,
like the insinuation of poisoning against Domitian (43.2), ill substantiated.
There is, however, a case for the defence. Tacitus probably found little else
worth relating about Agricola except the governorship, and hence made
the most of it. In thus concentrating on military and administrative achievements,
he followed a hallowed Republican tradition, attested in surviving
epitaphs and eulogies (cf. Nep. Epam. 1.4). A Roman aristocrat should
possess and display uirtus, above all in warfare: to this pattern Agricola conformed.
Thus one old-fashioned attitude underlies a work somewhat novel in
conception.
Concern with uirtus 1 was to reappear in the Germania and recur often in the
major works. Agricola, a colourless individual, is instructive as a type: indeed
he probably influenced Tacitus' judgement of more important historical
figures. Even under a ruler hostile to the Senate uirtus may still, Tacitus thinks,
be exercised to good purpose, though very liable to be frustrated by envy and
spite. Thus Agricola prefigures Germanicus and Corbulo in the Annals. He
also represents dignified moderation, a theme to which Tacitus reverts at
Ann. 4.20.2—3, where he debates whether a viable middle course exists between
contumacy and subservience. The problem affected prominent senators
acutely. Hence this thread of thought runs through Tacitus' writings, just
as the bitter sense of guilt and humiliation, disclosed at Agricola 45.1—2, infects
1
Virtus has no precise English equivalent. Neither'manhood' nor 'excellence' nor 'virtue' hits
it exactly.
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