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Updated: June 9, 2025
Tacitus says, "Sed faeminarum illustrium, senatorumque filiorum plures per arenam faedati sunt," "But many sons of Senators, and even Matrons of the first Rank, exposed themselves in this vile exercise."
Read in the Annals of Tacitus the speech of Seneca to Nero, and you will perhaps understand the position of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg in the Imperial Palace of Potsdam. The internal political crisis in Germany, which started at the beginning of last autumn, has come to a head because the Chancellor will not speak out.
If not convinced by this, he will be convinced by nothing; for here is just that little blunder which a forger is sure to make: so far from being insignificant it is all- important; it swells out into proportions of colossal magnitude, at once disclosing the whole imposture, it being absolutely impossible that Tacitus should have so systematically adhered to a particular kind of alliteration in that part of his history which deals with Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian, and have so suddenly and utterly neglected or ignored it in that part of the history which deals with Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.
And I find that in curiosity of knowing he is the same; he cuts himself out more work than he can do, and more than he needs to do: extending the utility of knowledge to the full of its matter: "Ut omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque, intemperantia laboramus." And Tacitus had reason to commend the mother of Agricola for having restrained her son in his too violent appetite for learning.
We learn from Tacitus that even in his time the Germans considered the moment a solemn one when the young warrior was first invested with the arms of a soldier. "This was the sign that the youth had reached manhood; this was his first honor." It is probably a survival of this feeling which we find in the idea of knighthood.
The gates and walls that enclosed this original city remained visible down to the period of the empire: the sites of two of the former, the Porta Romana near S. Giorgio in Velabro, and the Porta Mugionis at the Arch of Titus, are still known to us, and the Palatine ring-wall is described by Tacitus from his own observation at least on the sides looking towards the Aventine and Caelian.
I don't believe the laws of Moses are any more inspired than the laws of Solon, or the books of Samuel and Kings than the history of Tacitus, or the Psalms of David than the Paradise Lost of Milton, or you'll think me bold indeed to say so Mr. In that sentence he gave to me my clue. I seized it instantly, and never lost it from that moment.
There is a national god, then; and other gods of whom Tacitus tells us are national too, not local or tribal. The tribes to the south of the Baltic worship Herthus, which, Tacitus says, is their name for Terra Mater, Mother Earth. The other gods he mentions are called by Roman names. They worship Mercury, he says, as their principal god; on certain days they worship him with human sacrifices.
A Roman did not use the verb "pergere" in the sense of "continuing or proceeding" in a matter, only of "continuing or proceeding" where there is bodily motion. II. From the diction point of view, the Annals could not have been written by Tacitus, as the language at times is anybody's but his. Nipperdey, there should be "fuisse."
I. Nature of the history. II. Arrangement of the narrative. III. Completeness in form. IV. Incongruities, contradictions and disagreements from the History of Tacitus. V. Craftiness of the writer. VI. Subordination of history to biography. VII. The author of the Annals and Tacitus differently illustrate Roman history.
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