The Histories were followed in 116 A.D. by the Annals (libri ab excessu divi Augusti); which, after a short introduction, open with the death of Augustus in 14 A.D., and closed in 68 A.D., not, however, at the dramatically appropriate date of Nero’s suicide (June 8), but, in accordance with the annalistic scheme, at the year’s end. The probable distribution of the books was hexadic, Tiberius claiming I-VI, Caligula and Claudius VII-XII, and Nero (with Galba) XIII-XVIII. Of these there remain I-IV complete, the first chapters of V, VI without the beginning, and XI-XVI.35. Thus our losses, though not so disastrous as in the case of the Histories, include none the less, about two years of Tiberius’ reign, the whole of that of Caligula, the earliest and best days of Claudius, and the latter end of Nero. Fate might perhaps have been blinder; yet posterity might well renounce something of its knowledge of Corbulo’s operations, could it view in return the colouring of two or three of those perished canvases — Sejanus forlorn in the Senate, hope rising and falling with every complex period of the interminable epistle from Capreae — Cassius Chaerea, with his sword and his hoc age in the vaulted corridor — Sporus, Epaphroditus, and the last heir of the Julian blood, in the villa at the fourth milestone. Still, what has been spared — how narrowly spared may be read in Voigt — constitutes, upon the whole, a clear title to immortality: an amazing chronicle of an amazing era, brilliant, unfair, and unforgettable. The Annals are not as Galba was — magis extra vitia quam cum virtutibus. But the virtues are virtues for all time; the vices, those of an age. Exactitude, according to Pindar, dwelt in the town of the Zephyrian Locrians, but few of the ancients worshipped steadfastly at her shrine: they wrote history as a form of literature, and with an undissembled ambition to be read. It would have been convenient, doubtless, had the Annals been equipped with a preliminary dissertation on the sources, a select bibliography, footnotes with references to the roll of Aufidius Bassus or the month and day of the Acta Publica: but the era of those blessings is not reckoned Ab Vrbe Condita; and, with rare exceptions, we must acquiesce in the vague warranty of a plerique tradidere or a sunt qui ferant, or, if here and there belief is difficult, then suspend our judgment. In the main, however, it is not the facts of Tacitus, but his interpretations, that awaken misgiving. “I know of no other historian,” said a latter-day consul and emperor, “who has so calumniated and belittled mankind as he. In the simplest transactions he seeks for criminal motives: out of every emperor he fashions a complete villain, and so depicts him that we admire the spirit of evil permeating him, and nothing more. It has been said with justice that his Annals are a history, not of the Empire, but of the Roman criminal tribunals — nothing save accusations and men accused, persecutions and the persecuted, and people opening veins in baths. He speaks continually of denunciations, and the greatest denouncer is himself.” That a streak of truth runs through the wild exaggeration can hardly be denied. Tacitus had not, and could not have, a charity that thinks no evil: Seneca, in words prophetic of his style, spoke of abruptae sententiae et suspiciosae,º in quibus plus intelligendum est quam audiendum; and never, perhaps, has that poisoned weapon be used more ruthlessly. Yet, of conscious disingenuity a dispassionate reader finds no trace: the man, simply, has overpowered the historian. To write sine ira et studio even of the earlier principate, was a rash vow to be made by one who had passed his childhood under Nero and the flower of his manhood under Domitian. Nor, in any case, is it given to many historians — to none, perhaps, of the greatest — to comply with the precept of Lucian (repeated almost to the letter by Ranke): — Τοῦ συγγραφέως ἔργον ἕν, ὡς ἐπράχθη εἰπεῖν. For not the most stubborn of facts can pass through the brain of a man of genius, and issue such as they entered. — One charge, it is noticeable, Napoleon does not make: it was reserved for Mommsen to style Tacitus “the most unmilitary of historians” — a verdict to which Furneaux could only object that it was unjust to Livy. Both, it is true enough, lack the martial touch, and betray all too clearly that βυβλιακὴ ἕξις which Polybius abhorred. Yet even here they have one merit, generally withheld from the authentic military historian, that, when they describe a battle, the reader is somehow conscious that a battle is being described. Mox infensius praetorianis “Vos” inquit, “nisi vincitis, pagani, quis alius imperator, quae castra alia excipient? Illic signa armaque vestra sunt, et mors victis: nam ignominiam consumpsistis.” Vndique clamor, et orientem solem (ita in Syria mos est) tertiani salutavere — the hues are not the wear, but it is possible to find them striking.
It is usual to enumerate a few of the peculiarities of Tacitus and his diction: on the one hand, for example, his trend to fatalism, his disdain of the multitude, his Platonic affection for the commonwealth, his Roman ethics, and his pessimism; on the other, his brachylogy, his poetical and rhetorical effects, his dislike of the common speech of men, his readiness to tax to the uttermost every resource of Latin in the cause of antithesis or innuendo. Here no such catalogue can be attempted; nor, if it could, would the utility be wholly beyond dispute. The personality of the author and his style must be felt as unities; and it is a testimony to the greatness of both that they can so be felt after the lapse of eighteen centuries. How long they will continue to be felt, one must at whiles wonder. There was a time when, as Victor Hugo sang of another Empire,
“On se mit à fouiller dans ces grandes années,
Et vous applaudissiez, nations inclinées,
Chaque fois qu’on tirait de ce sol souverain
Ou le consul de marbre ou l’empereur d’airain.”
That fervour of the pioneers is no more; the sovereign soil has rendered up its more glittering treasures, and the labourers, and their rewards, are already fewer. Yet, so long as Europe retains the consciousness of her origins, so long — by some at least — must the history of Rome be read in the Roman tongue, and not the least momentous part of it in the pages of Tacitus.
—
The text of the first six books of the Annals depends entirely on the Mediceus primus (saec. IX); for the remainder, the authority is the Mediceus secundus (saec. XI); both are now in the Laurentian Library. For the details of their discovery the reader may be referred to Voigt (Wiederbelebung u.s.w. I sqq.). The text of this edition is eclectic. In the first book the variations from the manuscript are recorded with some fulness; afterwards, in order to economize space, obvious and undisputed corrections, especially of the older scholars, are seldom noticed.
BOOK I
1 1 Rome at the outset was a city state under the government of kings: liberty and the consulate were institutions of Lucius Brutus. Dictatorships were always a temporary expedient: the decemviral office was dead within two years, nor was the consular authority of the military tribunes long-lived. Neither Cinna nor Sulla created a lasting despotism: Pompey and Crassus quickly forfeited their power to Caesar, and Lepidus and Antony their swords to Augustus, who, under the style of “Prince,” gathered beneath his empire a world outworn by civil broils. But, while the glories and disasters of the old Roman commonwealth have been chronicled by famous pens, and intellects of distinction were not lacking to tell the tale of the Augustan age, until the rising tide of sycophancy deterred them, the histories of Tiberius and Caligula, of Claudius and Nero, were falsified through cowardice while they flourished, and composed, when they fell, under the influence of still rankling hatreds. Hence my design, to treat a small part (the concluding one) of Augustus’ reign, then the principate of Tiberius and its sequel, without anger and without partiality, from the motives of which I stand sufficiently removed.
2 1 When the killing of Brutus and Cassius had disarmed the Republic; when Pompey had been crushed in Sicily, and, with Lepidus thrown aside and Antony slain, even the Julian party was leaderless but for the Caesar; after laying down his triumviral title and proclaiming himself a simple consul content with tribunician authority to safeguard the commons, he first conciliated the army by gratuities, the populace by cheapened corn,º the world by the ameni
ties of peace, then step by step began to make his ascent and to unite in his own person the functions of the senate, the magistracy, and the legislature. Opposition there was none: the boldest spirits had succumbed on stricken fields or by proscription-lists; while the rest of the nobility found a cheerful acceptance of slavery the smoothest road to wealth and office, and, as they had thriven on revolution, stood now for the new order and safety in preference to the old order and adventure. Nor was the state of affairs unpopular in the provinces, where administration by the Senate and People had been discredited by the feuds of the magnates and the greed of the officials, against which there was but frail protection in a legal system for ever deranged by force, by favouritism, or (in the last resort) by gold.
3 1 Meanwhile, to consolidate his power, Augustus raised Claudius Marcellus, his sister’s son and a mere stripling, to the pontificate and curule aedileship: Marcus Agrippa, no aristocrat, but a good soldier and his partner in victory, he honoured with two successive consulates, and a little later, on the death of Marcellus, selected him as a son-in-law. Each of his step-children, Tiberius Nero and Claudius Drusus, was given the title of Imperator, though his family proper was still intact: for he had admitted Agrippa’s children, Gaius and Lucius, to the Caesarian hearth, and even during their minority had shown, under a veil of reluctance, a consuming desire to see them consuls designate with the title Princes of the Youth. When Agrippa gave up the ghost, untimely fate, or the treachery of their stepmother Livia, cut off both Lucius and Caiusº Caesar, Lucius on his road to the Spanish armies, Caiusº — wounded and sick — on his return from Armenia. Drusus had long been dead, and of the stepsons Nero survived alone. On him all centred. Adopted as son, as colleague in the empire, as consort of the tribunician power, he was paraded through all the armies, not as before by the secret diplomacy of his mother, but openly at her injunction. For so firmly had she riveted her chains upon the aged Augustus that he banished to the isle of Planasia his one remaining grandson, Agrippa Postumus, who though guiltless of a virtue, and confident brute-like in his physical strength, had been convicted of no open scandal. Yet, curiously enough, he placed Drusus’ son Germanicus at the head of eight legions on the Rhine, and ordered Tiberius to adopt him: it was one safeguard the more, even though Tiberius had already an adult son under his roof.
War at the time was none, except an outstanding campaign against the Germans, waged more to redeem the prestige lost with Quintilius Varus and his army than from any wish to extend the empire or with any prospect of an adequate recompense. At home all was calm. The officials carried the old names; the younger men had been born after the victory of Actium; most even of the elder generation, during the civil wars; few indeed were left who had seen the Republic.
4 1 It was thus an altered world, and of the old, unspoilt Roman character not a trace lingered. Equality was an outworn creed, and all eyes looked to the mandate of the sovereign — with no immediate misgivings, so long as Augustus in the full vigour of his prime upheld himself, his house, and peace. But when the wearing effects of bodily sickness added themselves to advancing years, and the end was coming and new hopes dawning, a few voices began idly to discuss the blessings of freedom; more were apprehensive of war; others desired it; the great majority merely exchanged gossip derogatory to their future masters:—”Agrippa, fierce-tempered, and hot from his humiliation, was unfitted by age and experience for so heavy a burden. Tiberius Nero was mature in years and tried in war, but had the old, inbred arrogance of the Claudian family, and hints of cruelty, strive as he would to repress them, kept breaking out. He had been reared from the cradle in a regnant house; consulates and triumphs had been heaped on his youthful head: even during the years when he lived at Rhodes in ostensible retirement and actual exile, he had studied nothing save anger, hypocrisy, and secret lasciviousness. Add to the tale his mother with her feminine caprice: they must be slaves, it appeared, to the distaff, and to a pair of striplings as well, who in the interval would oppress the state and in the upshot rend it asunder!”
5 1 While these topics and the like were under discussion, the malady of Augustus began to take a graver turn; and some suspected foul play on the part of his wife. For a rumour had gone the round that, a few months earlier, the emperor, confiding in a chosen few, and attended only by Fabius Maximus, had sailed for Planasia on a visit to Agrippa. “There tears and signs of affection on both sides had been plentiful enough to raise a hope that the youth might yet be restored to the house of his grandfather. Maximus had disclosed the incident to his wife Marcia; Marcia, to Livia. It had come to the Caesar’s knowledge; and after the death of Maximus, which followed shortly, possibly by his own hand, Marcia had been heard at the funeral, sobbing and reproaching herself as the cause of her husband’s destruction.” Whatever the truth of the affair, Tiberius had hardly set foot in Illyricum, when he was recalled by an urgent letter from his mother; and it is not certainly known whether on reaching the town of Nola, he found Augustus still breathing or lifeless. For house and street were jealously guarded by Livia’s ring of pickets, while sanguine notices were issued at intervals, until the measures dictated by the crisis had been taken: then one report announced simultaneously that Augustus had passed away and that Nero was master of the empire.
6 1 The opening crime of the new principate was the murder of Agrippa Postumus; who, though off his guard and without weapons, was with difficulty dispatched by a resolute centurion. In the senate Tiberius made no reference to the subject: his pretence was an order from his father, instructing the tribune in charge to lose no time in making away with his prisoner, once he himself should have looked his last on the world. It was beyond question that by his frequent and bitter strictures on the youth’s character Augustus had procured the senatorial decree for his exile: on the other hand, at no time did he harden his heart to the killing of a relative, and it remained incredible that he should have sacrificed the life of a grandchild in order to diminish the anxieties of a stepson. More probably, Tiberius and Livia, actuated in the one case by fear, and in the other by stepmotherly dislike, hurriedly procured the murder of a youth whom they suspected and detested. To the centurion who brought the usual military report, the emperor rejoined that he had given no instructions and the deed would have to be accounted for in the senate. The remark came to the ears of Sallustius Crispus. A partner in the imperial secrets — it was he who had forwarded the note to the tribune — he feared the charge might be fastened on himself, with the risks equally great whether he spoke the truth or lied. He therefore advised Livia not to publish the mysteries of the palace, the counsels of her friends, the services of the soldiery; and also to watch that Tiberius did not weaken the powers of the throne by referring everything and all things to the senate:—”It was a condition of sovereignty that the account balanced only if rendered to a single auditor.”
7 1 At Rome, however, consuls, senators, and knights were rushing into slavery. The more exalted the personage, the grosser his hypocrisy and his haste, — his lineaments adjusted so as to betray neither cheerfulness at the exit nor undue depression at the entry of a prince; his tears blent with joy, his regrets with adulation. The consuls, Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Appuleius, first took the oath of allegiance to Tiberius Caesar. It was taken in their presence by Seius Strabo and Caius Turranius, chiefs respectively of the praetorian cohorts and the corn department. The senators, the soldiers, and the populace followed. For in every action of Tiberius the first step had to be taken by the consuls, as though the old republic were in being, and himself undecided whether to reign or no. Even his edict, convening the Fathers to the senate-house was issued simply beneath the tribunician title which he had received under Augustus. It was a laconic document of very modest purport:—”He intended to provide for the last honours to his father, whose body he could not leave — it with was the one function of the state which he made bold to exercise.” Yet, on the passing of Augustus he had given the watchword to the praetorian cohorts as Impe
rator; he had the sentries, the men-at-arms, and the other appurtenances of a court; soldiers conducted him to the forum, soldiers to the curia; he dispatched letters to the armies as if the principate was already in his grasp; and nowhere manifested the least hesitation, except when speaking in the senate. The chief reason was his fear that Germanicus — backed by so many legions, the vast reserves of the provinces, and a wonderful popularity with the nation — might prefer the ownership to the reversion of a throne. He paid public opinion, too, the compliment of wishing to be regarded as the called and chosen of the state, rather than as the interloper who had wormed his way into power with the help of connubial intrigues and a senile act of adoption. It was realized later that his coyness had been assumed with the further object of gaining an insight into the feelings of the aristocracy: for all the while he was distorting words and looks into crimes and storing them in his memory.
Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24) Page 45