Tacitus - The Histories

Tacitus is considered the most brilliant literary stylist of the three greatest Roman historians who wrote in Latin, with Sallust and Livy completing that august trio. Beyond being recognized as the most accomplished master of writing, his histories are indispensable for our study of the early Roman Empire. He was educated in the excellent Roman system of his time and studied under the strongest orators in Rome. Beyond his acknowledged excellence as a speaker, Tacitus authored a book on the subject called Dialog of the Orators. Since the arts of rhetoric and oration are so closely related to writing, we readers enjoy the benefits of his mastery in his literary classics.

Following the career that training in oratory prepared him for, work in the legal profession arguing cases, Tacitus was granted the privilege to stand for senatorial office. After serving as a military tribune, he pursued the Roman cursus honorum under the Flavian dynasty of Vespasian and his sons Titus and Domitian. This is the sequence of magistracies that defined the path of ever higher office in both the Republic and the Empire. He achieved the rank of quaestor about 81. He continued to advance after the assassination of Domitian when he achieved the rank of suffect consul to complete a consulship and not long before he died, he achieved the prestigious office of proconsul of Asia. His experience in these offices, especially surviving the terror that Domitian wreaked on the higher classes, provides the reader insight into the passion and conviction he expresses so powerfully in his writing.

??????????????? Tacitus launched his literary career with two monographs in 98 AD, Agricola was an encomium on his father-in-law praising his services in the military in Britain and Germany; the second was Germania, a study of the lands and peoples of the Germanic tribes and the challenges of the Roman occupation. The Histories, the first of his two formal histories was published in 109, detailed the terrible civil wars of the Year of Four Emperors forty years earlier, covering the reigns of Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian. His fourth and final work, his most magnificently realized literary masterpiece was The Annals, published shortly before his death in 117, telling the story of the Julio-Claudian dynasty from just before the death of Augustus in 14 through his successors Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Though he wrote and published The Histories and The Annals of Imperial Rome in the reverse of the historical order of their subject matter, Tacitus’ two books illuminate the reigns of Rome’s first ten emperors, between the years of 14 to 96 AD.

??????????????? The two complete works included in The Histories and The Annals originally included 30 books, of which 14 survive. Of The Annals, we have lost all of Caligula, two years each of Tiberius and Nero, and half of Claudius’ reign, but we still have Tacitus’ history of 40 of those 54 years. As we have seen with other authors such as Polybius and Suetonius whose complete works came down to the present through the survival of a single manuscript for each author, all we have of Tacitus came to us in two halves, each preserved on a separate, single manuscript.

??????????????? This chapter relies on two books from Penguin Classics. The Histories originally translated by Kenneth Wellesley, Reader in Humanities (Latin) at the University of Edinburgh and published in 1964. This edition is revised with a new introduction by Rhiannon Ash, Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Merton College, Oxford in 2009. The Annals of Imperial Rome is translated and includes a stellar introduction by Michael Grant, first published in 1956 and republished with multiple revisions and a new bibliography through this version in 1996.

??????????????? Readers are always best served by reading the classics in professional editions such as these Penguin Books because we are graced with the hard-earned erudition and insightful learning provided by the writers who create these works. One of the very finest examples of this priceless value added by an author is the wonderfully educational introduction that Michael Grant provides for The Annals. In twenty short pages he delivers a comprehensive overview of the entire breadth of Roman historiography for readers new to this field, but the introduction is so rich that it is even more rewarding after having read all of the authors he writes about, experienced readers will view anew all they have enjoyed in these classics with the aid of Grant’s brilliant insights.

??????????????? Grant touches on the basis of the storytelling, the need to entertain an audience, by noting how Homer provided the guide for the earliest historians Herodotus and Thucydides, and how Virgil inspired Roman historians with similar instruction in the art. He also touches on the moral and uplifting educational aspects that the great historians bring to us by describing how Socrates, Plato and Aristotle formed the philosophical framework to understand human nature. He credits the oratorical genius Cicero with setting grand expectations that historians must strive to meet. While the ancient Greek tradition in this field began in the fifth century, it was over 300 years later that Roman writers assumed the noble burden of writing great history. Pliny’s Origins is recognized as the first worthy attempt, but that is lost to us. Finally, in section 2 of the Introduction, subtitled “What Tacitus Inherited”, Grant delivers this burst of clarity on Roman historians.

The stylistic shortcomings of Roman history were amply remedied by Julius Caesar (102/100-44 BC), Sallust (86-34 BC), Livy (59 BC – 17 AD) and finally, in the most remarkable fashion of all, by Tacitus.

??????????????? Earlier in the introduction, Grant compares Tacitus to Suetonius and Cassius Dio, commenting upon the quality of the facts of history each author provides. While Suetonius was an imperial secretary, and Dio lived close to the imperial court, Tacitus outclasses these advantages. “As an artistic and spiritual achievement his work eclipses theirs.” And in comparison to their shortcomings as both writers and thinkers, “Tacitus is more dependable than either.”

??????????????? Tacitus opens Book 1 of The Histories in 69 AD, the year of Four Emperors, with the traditional method of naming the consuls for that year, and quickly makes a distinction between how historians wrote under the Republic and how their accounts changed under Emperors. He marks the moment of that transition as did his contemporary Livy who wrote: “when after the battle of Actium Augustus Caesar brought peace to the world by land and sea.” Nonetheless, Tacitus assures his readers of his objectivity. The Histories was published in 109, after Trajan succeeded the short reign of Nerva, both of whom he tells us he plans to write about in his old age, but he never did.

So long as Republican history was their theme, they wrote with equal eloquence and independence. Yet after the battle of Actium had been fought and the interests of peace demanded that power should be concentrated in one man’s hands, this great line of historians came to an end. … As for myself, Galba, Otho and Vitellius were known to me neither as benefactors nor as enemies. My official career owed its beginning to Vespasian, its progress to Titus and … Domitian. … Modern times are indeed happy as few others have been, for we can think as we please, and speak as we think.

??????????????? Tacitus then prefaces the story he is about to tell by saying it is “rich with disaster, grimly marked with battles, rent by treason and savage even in peacetime. Four emperors perished violently. There were three civil wars….” He then illuminates the environment in Rome, full of devastation, immoral conduct, and a “universal pandemonium of hatred and terror.” Most chilling and predictive, “A well-hidden secret of the principate had been revealed: it was possible, it seemed, for an emperor to be chosen outside Rome.”

??????????????? The first of the four emperors mentioned above who perished violently was Nero, who was betrayed by the Praetorship, the Imperial Guard in Rome, on the promise of a bribe by Galba’s faction. Galba himself was the long-time governor in Spain, who combined his own legions with other legions recruited from various regions for his march on Rome, making Nero’s position hopeless. But Galba was elderly and weak, and he raised the hatred of the military by relentless executions of high-ranking citizens and his murderous ways, including the massacre of thousands of unarmed troops as his forces descended on Rome. After never paying the rich bribes he had promised to the legions, his reign came to a dramatic end after seven months.

??????????????? But first, Galba tries to pass on the throne by adopting Piso, and on this occasion Tacitus provides a long speech justifying this handover of imperial power with a rapid review of the history of empire as an “heirloom of a single family”, the Julio-Claudians after Augustus, under Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius, but this family’s reign ended with Galba’s overthrow of Nero. In the first pages, Tacitus promised his unprejudiced views, here he puts these words in Galba’s mouth.

Picture Nero, puffed up with pride on being the heir to a long line of Caesars. It was not Vindex … nor I with my one legion, who dislodged this incubus from the shoulders of Rome. It was his own monstrous excesses, his own life of pleasure that did so, although there was no precedent at that time for the condemnation of an emperor.

??????????????? Tacitus has already warned us what a year we are about to read of, we certainly see the precedent for condemnation is about to run wild. The soldiers themselves elect Otho, the governor of Lusitania who had marched on Rome with Galba, as the new emperor. We read of the chaotic tumult among the citizens and the troops over the few days when the issue remains unresolved, but the usurper gains more military power over time. Over 1.38-41, Tacitus displays his brilliant depiction of dramatic action in rapid phrases to show the culmination of Galba and Piso’s demise.

Otho then ordered the arsenal to be opened. Weapons were hastily grabbed. Tradition and discipline went by the board. … All was confusion. … Each man followed his own lead and prompting, and the chief stimulants for the worst elements was the sorrow of the good. … Neither the sight of the Capitol, nor the sanctity of the temples that looked down upon them, nor the thought of past and future emperors deterred such men from committing a crime which the next ruler-but-one inevitably avenges. … the standard bearer of Galba’s escort … tore off the effigy of Galba and dashed it to the ground. People give different versions of his last words … It hardly mattered to the murderers what he said.

??????????????? Galba’s other associates including his newly adopted Piso, recently made a Caesar, suffered the same fate, and had “The heads impaled on poles and carried about among the cohort standards and eagles.” As Tacitus predicted in the inevitable vengeance to come for these deeds, the 120 men who demanded rewards for the bloody deeds of this day would pay the price. Vitellius is soon to follow as Otho’s successor “who instructed that all the petitioners be rounded up and put to death.”

??????????????? After this frenzy of bloodlust, Tacitus tells us that “Rome was in a state of fear.” The multiple rebellions among the troops and civil wars were now in full flow, and the people learn that not only have the men under Otho committed this terrible crime against Rome, but the feared general Vitellius was being declared emperor by his legions in Germany. Tacitus depicts the dread situation at 1.50, while recalling the decisive battles between Julius Caesar and Pompey at Pharsalus, the combined Octavian and Antony against Brutus and Cassius at Philippi among other awful Roman-on-Roman conflicts.

Here then were the two most despicable men in the whole world by reason of their unclean, idle, and pleasure-loving lives, apparently appointed by fate for the task of destroying the empire. … Conversation no longer centered on recent precedents for the brutality of peace. Minds went back to the civil wars, and they spoke of the many times Rome had been captured by its own armies, of the devastation of Italy … of Pharsalus, Philippi, Perusia and Mutina, famous names associated with national disasters … but the empire had survived the victories of Julius Caesar and Augustus. The empire would have done the same under Pompey and Brutus. Yet were they now to visit the temples and pray for Otho? Or for Vitellius? … to pray for the victory of either equally blasphemous.

??????????????? Writing forty years after these events, experiencing the comparatively enlightened reigns of the deified Nerva and the noble Trajan, Tacitus is unsparing in conveying the moral corruption that Rome suffered during this terrible year. As the rising storm of Vitellius army is gathering in Germany, the troops under Otho in Rome are not only drunk and disorderly but engaging in open rioting verging on mutiny. After a particularly bad night that included soldiers breaking into the armory and taking weapons, and killing their superiors, Otho addresses the now sorrowful men at 1.83.

Otho faced a dilemma … the best sort were demanding a remedy for the present wave of indiscipline, while the average man, that is, the majority of them … could be driven to civil war by means of rioting and looting. Nevertheless, Otho also reflected that a principate won by criminal means could not be retained by sudden doses of discipline and old-fashioned strictness.

??????????????? Otho settles the troops through a combination of bribery and by only punishing two men for the outrage. He reminds them that they are at war, and Vitellius and his German army would prefer to face an army weakened by internal turmoil. Beyond the military, the members of the Senate feel the same fear of impending invasion and find it hard to wholeheartedly support Otho knowing how quickly Galba was replaced and how easily his murderer and successor could face the same fate. At 1.86, Tacitus recounts prodigies, the common supernatural events that we find throughout treacherous events in Roman history. In this case, “the reins in which Victory rides had slipped from her grasp; an apparition of superhuman size had suddenly emerged from the chapel of Juno” and other events have been reported. In this context, natural events added to the state of fear.

There was a sudden flooding of the Tiber … a number of people were swept away in the streets … Famine gripped the poor … flood water weakened the foundation of large tenement blocks, which collapsed … As Otho was preparing his expeditionary force … the Campus Martius and Flaminian Way were blocked. This was the route to the front … it was interpreted as a sign from heaven and an omen of imminent disaster.

??????????????? Since Vitellius’ German forces had already crossed the Alps, ready to fight for the man they had declared their emperor, Otho gathered his leadership and forces. He also ordered magistrates and former consuls to accompany him as part of his entourage. Before setting out with this troops, Otho summons the people to a public meeting. In his description of this meeting, Tacitus makes clear at 1.90 that moral corruption infects the people, not just the leadership.

The cheers and cries of the crowd were excessive and insincere, according to the usual pattern of flattery. As if people were seeing off Julius Caesar or Augustus, they vied with one another in their excessive good wishes. … They were just like household slaves, for each man was prompted by selfishness and the dignity of the state now meant nothing.

??????????????? Book 2 opens with a section called Flavian Caution, where Tacitus shares the promises of a brighter future for Rome even as a civil war between Otho and Vitellius is about to erupt in a battle of legions.

In a very different part of the world fortune was already planning the origins and causes for a new dynasty, which was, with varying lot, happy for the state or terrible, and for the emperors themselves prosperous or deadly. Titus Vespasian had been sent off from Judea by his father while Galba was still alive. … Vespasian’s affairs were going well, the prophecies were favorable, and there were also the coincidences which a credulous society took as omens.

??????????????? On the trip, Vespasian learns that Galba is dead and Vitellius is preparing for war with Otho, and after carefully weighing matters he decides to join neither side and turns back. The war against the Jewish rebels was largely decided, though the siege of the powerfully fortified capital of Jerusalem still loomed and Vespasian’s son and successor as emperor, Titus, would lead the destruction of the Temple and massacre of the people in 70 AD. In Book 2.14, the Othonian navy is threatening Narbonese Gaul, the southern province just north and east of Italy’s border. Vitellius’ infantry is weak, but his cavalry is superior, as Tacitus explains the order of battle. This engagement included “appalling slaughter” of the beaten Vitellians, but counterattacks led to a truce.

??????????????? While recounting large battles in the civil war between the armies of Otho and Vitellius, at 2.38 Tacitus reflects upon the timeless issues of human nature and puts them in context of earlier Roman internecine conflict.

From time immemorial, humans have had an innate passion for power, but with the growth of the empire it has ripened and run wild. For, as long as resources were limited, equal standing was easily maintained, but after the world was subjugated … the first struggles between the Senate and people blazed up. … Then Gaius Marius, who rose from the lowest ranks of the people, and Lucius Sulla, the most savage of nobles, destroyed the republican constitution by force of arms and replaced it with despotism.

??????????????? Tacitus goes on to discuss Gnaeus Pompey, who was no better and set on autocracy. He states that the citizens in legions did not hesitate to go to war against each other at Pharsalus and Philippi, all in support of his argument that there was no chance that Otho and Vitellius would come to a peaceful resolution, because “The same divine anger, the same human madness, the same criminal incentives drove them into conflict.”

??????????????? After the second battle of Bedriacum, significant forces survive and the soldiers are willing to continue fighting, but Otho decides to prevent more countrymen dying at the hands of countrymen, declaring that he wishes to preserve Rome’s troops. Tacitus provides a noble speech where Otho declares these valorous intentions, though it comes at the cost of his suicide. At 2.47, we read as he declares his own epitaph.

Let this be the act by which posterity judges Otho. … Although other men have held the principate for longer, nobody ever can have relinquished it so bravely.

??????????????? Following the trend of this terrible year, the legions in the east have declared themselves for Vespasian, even though Vitellius now sits as emperor in Rome. At 2.73 Tacitus tells us how this news is received.

It is scarcely believable to relate how much Vitellius’ arrogance and indolence increased when couriers from Syria and Judea brought word that the East had sworn allegiance to him. … At that point, however, he and his army, as though without a rival, erupted into patterns of behavior more usually associated with foreigners and marked savagery, debauchery and plundering.

??????????????? Vespasian is very hesitant to seize the principate, though one of his generals, Mucianus, makes a long speech declaring his obligation to do so. In terms of Vitellius, he reminds him “We are not rising in revolt against the very sharp intellect of Augustus, nor against the supremely wary old age of Tiberius,” nor even against the three lesser Julio-Claudians. He goes on to make the case that the troops under Vitellius are weakened by their own disreputable living, following their emperor’s example, while Vespasian has fresh troops to join battle. As the crisis approaches open war, Vitellius’ generals are defecting to the other side, but he still “made no preparation for war and failed to toughen his troops.”

??????????????? Once Vespasian has consolidated his power and the fighting is finished, Vitellius fate is pre-determined, because a rival emperor cannot be left alive. Vitellius himself does not want to battle to the finish, concerned that will doom his wife and son, and so dressed in mourning clothes, he leaves the palace with his “sorrowful household.” As always, Tacitus portrays this tragic scene with pathos, even though he has already convinced us over and over of Vitellius’ unworthiness. At 3.68, we read this.

Nobody was so mindless of human affairs as to be unmoved by that spectacle. A Roman emperor, shortly beforehand master of the human race … was now passing through the city and the people, abandoning his power.

??????????????? Tacitus provides more vivid imagery of the horror of civil war at the start of Book 4. The victorious troops of Vespasian are out of control, caught up in a blind rage of vengeance and “relentless hate” to destroy the survivors of Vitellius’ men in Rome. At 4.1, we read of the bitter harvest.

Everywhere there was wailing and lamentation as Rome suffered the plight of a captured city, so much so that people longed for the unruly soldiers of Otho and Vitellius, although they had been hated at the time. The Flavian generals had been keen to set the civil war ablaze, but in victory they were incapable of exercising control.

??????????????? The horror, like a terrible fever, settles after a time of suffering. At Book 4.84, we encounter the concluding section of this book sub-titled Signs and Wonders and we learn that Vespasian performs miracles.

During the months which Vespasian spent at Alexandria … many miracles occurred. These seem to show that Vespasian enjoyed divine blessing and that the gods were leaning favorably towards him.

??????????????? He is approached by a blind man and another man with a withered hand who prostrate themselves before him and beg to be healed. At first, he laughed, but they insisted. Resisting the flattery of his entourage, he asked doctors if such cures were possible. They offered varying views on the severity of the maladies but offered that perhaps the will of the gods was that the emperors could perform miracles.

Anyhow, if a cure were effected, the glory would go to Caesar; if it failed, the poor wretches would have to bear the ridicule. So, Vespasian reckoned that his destiny knew no limitations and that nothing now defied belief. … At once the cripple gained use of his hand and the light gleamed again in the blind man’s eyes.

??????????????? Book 5 begins with a description of the Jews and the early negotiations at the beginning of the Batavian Revolt against Rome, and there we are left. Whatever Tacitus wrote about the rest of the reign of Vespasian and his sons and successors Trajan and Domitian is lost.

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