By A. J. Woodman
Tacitus is universally famous as historic Rome's maximum author of heritage, and his account of the Roman Empire within the first century advert has been primary in shaping the fashionable notion of Rome and its emperors. This better half presents a brand new, up to date and authoritative evaluation of his paintings and effect with a purpose to be beneficial for college students and non-specialists in addition to of curiosity to proven students within the box. First situating Tacitus in the culture of Roman historic writing and his personal modern society, it is going directly to learn each one of his person works after which speak about key themes resembling his special authorial voice and his perspectives of historical past and freedom. It ends through tracing Tacitus' reception, starting with the transition from manuscript to revealed versions, describing his impression on political proposal in early glossy Europe, and concluding together with his value within the 20th century.
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Additional resources for The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
Example text
5 Trajan is referred to as princeps. For the notion that the Agricola was not Tacitus’ fi rst work see Beck (1998). He may have been writing Book 4 in 115 (see Martin and Woodman (1989) 102–3). See Mayer (2001) 22–7. 31 A . J . Woo dma n II In the published correspondence of the younger Pliny, Tacitus receives more letters than anyone else. 6) is on the subject of hunting wild boar, and in the course of it Pliny – surely not without a certain humour – recommends silence (2 silentium) to Tacitus on the grounds that literary reflection will be aided thereby: Ridebis, et licet rideas.
That is: what – and what sort of – historians were available to him to read? What were the chief characteristics of the tradition in which Tacitus worked? And, of his predecessors, to whom did he look for inspiration and guidance? The annalists Naturally, it should not be inferred from Tacitus’ failure to name specific individuals that he was unfamiliar with the annalists and early Roman historiography. That tradition, however, was nearly three centuries old by the time he took up the challenge of writing history at the close of the first century AD.
If that is the case, it seems to follow that, when Tacitus was writing the Agricola, he already had access to Pliny’s letter; and, since the Agricola belongs to the years 97–8, it means that Book 1 of Pliny’s letters was published shortly after the composition of its letters in the late 90s and was not withheld until around 105. If this seems too implausible a conclusion, one would be obliged to envisage a more complicated scenario in which Pliny in 8 Syme (1958a) 663. 34 Tacitus and the contemporary scene one part of his letter (7) echoed Tacitus’ Agricola, while Tacitus many years later in the Annals, perhaps responding to Pliny’s echo, alluded to another part (5) of the same letter.