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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
{Hist. i.32.1 and 3.85), though he is interested in their behaviour and psychology,
as indeed he is in the behaviour of mobs generally (witness his
elaborate treatment of the mutinies in Ann. 1.16—49). He recognized the existence
of public opinion, but usually treats it as negligible and sometimes sets
against it the judgement of informed observers, prudentes. He assumes an air
of superiority which becomes quite absurd at Ann. 11.21.1, where he refuses
to discuss Curtius' low birth, and Ann. 4.3.4, where he implies that Livia's
crime would have been less heinous had her seducer been a nobleman. Whether
Tacitus was himself a novus homo is uncertain, but it is very possible. He
certainly shows interest in the influx of newcomers into the Senate, and considers
that older and better standards were preserved in provincial Italy and
beyond {Ann. 3.55.3 and 16.5.1). However this may be, he writes like a descendant
of a dozen consuls, with an added censoriousness which the elder
Cato would have relished.
When Tacitus touches on major moral or religious questions, he is either
quite at a loss or sceptical of solutions offered. He gives no convincing appearance
of belief in the gods. Indeed his occasional references to them, like his
reports of prodigies, may merely be part of the tradition he inherited, a part
he was loath to discard, since these references could be useful stylistically, by
adding weight and colour to his narrative. Thus at Hist. 1.3.2 he very effectively
concludes an outline of his theme by asserting that events demonstrated
non esse curae deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem ' that the gods are concerned
to chastise, not protect us'. Here he may seem to admit divine intervention,
and yet, at Hist. 1.10.3, as at Ann. 14.12.2, he is utterly cynical about
any kind of providence. Again, at Ann. 6.22, discussing astrology, he confesses
complete uncertainty whether the life of man is guided by destiny or just the
plaything of chance, and neither here nor elsewhere does he adopt the tenets
of any philosophical school. If he tends to any view, it is that fortuna 1 directs
the black comedy of life {Ann. 3.18.4): mini, quantoplura recentium seu ueterum
reuoluo, tanto magis ludibria rerum mortalium cunctis in negotiis obuersantur
' the more I think upon recent or earlier history, the more the universal farcicality
of human affairs is apparent to me'. Tacitus was a pessimist through and
through: not for him easy consolation and popular anodynes.
Tacitus' outlook on politics and political history is generally realistic and
detached, sometimes distorted by his own unhappy experiences or tinged with
nostalgia. The struggles and achievements of Rome's past excite his enthusiasm
(Ann. 4.32.1), and he believes that liberty once flourished, though destined to
a lingering death under the Principate (Ann. 1.74.5). But the old regime was
not wholly admirable, least of all in its last years (Ann. 3.28.1). Internal dis-
1
What Tacitus means by fortuna in such places as Ann. 318.4 and 4.1.1 (an important passage) is
hard to determine. It is probably something more than chance, though far short of providence.
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