United States or Canada ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There were Italians, Africans, Spaniards, Gauls, Britons, Illyrians, and Asiatics; and amongst the number were to be met with some cases of eminence in war and politics, and some even of rare virtue and patriotism, such as Pertinax, Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, Deeius, Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, Tacitus, and Probus.
For "the leading men of the Country," his phrase is not, as a Roman would have expressed himself in the Republican period, "principes viri urbis," but "primores civitatis." The author of the Annals is quite as remarkable as Tacitus for antithesis: sometimes two antitheses occur together in Tacitus in the same clause. He is as remarkable for an equal balancing of phrases.
It is because the Agricola of Tacitus extends to but thirty pages, that the biography of a Roman civil servant of no great genius will outlive those of far greater men. The art of omission is the art which English writers most need to learn; the literary lima is their least-handled tool. Both art and tool were perfectly understood and constantly used by the Greeks.
Freeman truly observes, we see exemplified the most democratic phase of the old Teutonic constitution as described in the "Germania" of Tacitus, "the earliest picture which history can give us of the political and social being of our own forefathers." The same remark, in precisely the same terms, would be true of the town-meetings of New England.
It is almost discouraging merely to write down the fact that at thirteen he had read a large part of Livy, Cicero, Ovid, Catullus, and Juvenal, and all of Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Sallust, and Suetonius, to say nothing of Cæsar, at seven. Greek was disposed of in like manner; and then came the modern languages, German, Spanish, in which he kept a diary, French, Italian, and Portuguese.
He confessed he had found me changed at first. His father, it appeared, was working him as hard at Latin as Mr. Hart worked me, and he sat down beside me under my tutor and stumbled at Tacitus after his fluent Cicero. I offered excuses for him to Mr. Hart, saying he would soon prove himself the better scholar.
Nero was a criminal, but he was not a fool to the point of provoking the wrath of the whole people for so light a motive, especially after Agrippina's death. Tacitus himself, in spite of his hatred of all Cæsar's family and his readiness to make them responsible for the most serious crimes, does not venture to express belief in this story sufficient proof that he considers it absurd and unlikely.
Like the soldiers in Tacitus, in victory he found all things health, vigour, abundance. No wonder Burton felt a marvellous exultation of spirits when he viewed this great expanse of waters. Here, he thought, are the sources of that ancient river the Nile. Now are fulfilled the longing of two thousand years. I am the heir of the ages!
Perhaps this would not be an unexampled praegnantia for Tacitus. For sentire in the sense of experiencing especially evil, see Hor. Od. 2, 7, 10, and other examples in Freund sub v. VII. Classis Othoniana. Ad rem. cf. His. 2, 12, seqq. Licenter vaga. Roaming in quest of plunder. Intemelios, Cf. note, 2, 13. In praediis suis. On her own estates. Praedia includes both lands and buildings.
Ovid draws largely from him in the Metamorphoses, and Manilius had evidently adopted him as a model. The writer of Etna echoes his language and sentiments, and Tacitus, in a later generation, speaks of critics who even preferred him to Virgil.
Word Of The Day