historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

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Chapter 3. Biography
‘Although all History is magnificent’, in his inaugural oration Heinsius singles
out for special praise the ancient Romans and the history of Rome. 80 He
believes that the lives and deeds of the ancient Romans provide his contemporaries
with ‘examples of virtue’. 81 In Roman history men are to be found
whose conduct is worthy of imitation. In one of Heinsius’s oration we read:
‘… may we imitate Paetus, Seneca, Cremutius, and similar heroes, who lived
in the time of Tacitus [and] whose comparable deaths he describes.’ 82
Heinsius has a high opinion of Tacitus, ‘the unparalleled guide and teacher
of civic prudence’. 83 What Heinsius admires is that Tacitus had taken account
of the truth ‘in such a way that he also adds usefulness’. Furthermore, Tacitus
had not just recorded the past for past’s sake, but ‘in order to discover the
future by scrutiny’. In this, Tacitus showed himself to be not only a historian,
but also a philosopher. 84 It is therefore no surprise that Heinsius holds
that besides ‘civic admonitions and instructions … examples of true and solid
wisdom’ can be gathered from Tacitus. 85 We will see that Boxhorn also holds
Tacitus in high esteem. 86
Heinsius’s view on the instructive value of history and a historian like
Tacitus – as treasure chests of examples, admonitions, and instructions – can
be connected to the philological-historical tradition that was so dominant at
Leiden University in the first half of the seventeenth century. One of the fundamental
pillars of this tradition is the idea that because ‘human nature does
not change’ substantially, there is no real difference between the past and the
80 Heinsius, The Value of History, pp. 16-17, 19, with quote on p. 16.
81 Idem, De praestantia ac dignitate historiae oratio, ix. ‘Quis non excitatur & immensa voluptate
perfunditur, cum in illam gentem se abdidit, a qua vim virtutis & exempla, non ut in Graecorum chartis
disserendo, sed vita ipsa, ipsis actionibus descripta ac delineata accepimus?’
82 Daniel Heinsius, “Post absolutum primum librum Annalium Taciti olim habita. in qua de mutatione
Reipublicae, deque Principatus initio agitur”, in idem, Orationum editio nova, Prioribus auctior. Accedunt
Dissertationes aliquot, cum nonnullis Praefationibus … (Elzevier; Amsterdam, 1657), XVII [XVI], pp.
187-88. ‘… Paetos, Senecas, Cremutios, ac similes heroas imitemur, qui aetate Taciti vixerunt: quorum
parem vitae exitum describit.’
83 Ibidem, p. 179. ‘Quare, quemadmodum qui longum iter susceperunt, ducem viae sibi eligunt, ne
temere aberrent: ita nos superiore anno Caii Corn. Taciti, scriptoris maximi, Annales delegimus, quem
prudentiae civilis ducem ac magistrum unicum esse arbitrabamur.’ See also Daniel Heinsius, “Habita
in auditorio Theologico, cum Secundum Taciti Annalium absolvisset”, in idem, Orationum editio nova,
Prioribus auctior, XVII, p. 190. ‘Cum hunc Cajum Cornelium Tacitum, civilis principem prudentiae …’
84 Ibidem. ‘Nam cum reliqui Historiarum scriptores, quod a Plinio praeclare dictum est, nihil
praeter sanguinem & caedem Annalibus condiderint, res gestas, mores hominum ac vitas exponant,
veritatem denique narratione sola profiteantur, fidem autem tanquam auri massam lectoribus appendant,
& in eo toti sint: Cornelius hic noster, ita veritatis rationem habuit, ut usum quoque adjungat:
rerum successus examinet: ipsas causas ad amussim rationis exigat: praeterita, quod est Historici, commemoret,
ut futura, quod est vere sapientis, excutiat.’
85 Ibidem, p. 189. ‘Nos exemplo vestro excitati, caeteros ne quidem intuebimur. Nos a te, Corneli,
unicum prudentiae oraculum ac robur, praeter haec civilia quae singulis diebus monita ex te haurimus
& praecepta, verae ac robustae exempla sapientiae petemus.’
86 See below and especially chapter 7.