The Works of Tacitus (C. Cornelii Taciti Opera)

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...a spectacle of the principal events performed by his father-in-law, with this warning prefixed in chapter 10: "I shall not record the location and peoples of Britain, which have been mentioned by many writers, for the sake of comparison of care or genius, but because it was then first fully conquered: therefore, those things which earlier writers covered with eloquence but not yet with discovery will be handed down with the accuracy of facts." To the private life of Agricola, however, chapters 4, 6, 7, 9, 2[8], 41—46 are to be referred, and to the genius and character of this man, chapters 4, [5], 19, 20, 22, 42, 44, 46.

Since these things are so, the son-in-law seems to have depicted the life of his father-in-law, both private and public, with the intention of delineating an image of such a man that could be a perpetual record and solace to his relatives and friends, and to his contemporaries and posterity, an object of admiration, a document, and a stimulus for imitation. In these, he especially inculcated in chapter 42 that precept to which everything can be referred as to the head of the argument: "Let those who are in the habit of admiring illicit things know that there can be great men even under bad Emperors, and that obedience and modesty, if industry and vigor are present, can reach a level of praise that many others, through abrupt actions but to no use for the state, achieved by an ambitious death." How greatly, however, they must be considered to have been affected by those sweetest and most serious words which are read in the final chapter! Cf. note 17.

BOOKLET ON GERMANY.

THE TIME AND PURPOSE FOR WHICH IT WAS WRITTEN.

§. IV. Regarding the time and the purpose for which Tacitus wrote this booklet, many have argued, who nonetheless greatly disagree among themselves. Almost everyone thinks that this time is indicated clearly enough by those words in chapter 37: "Our city was in its six-hundred-and-fortieth year, when the arms of the Cimbri were first heard of, in the consulship of Caecilius Metellus and Papirius Carbo." From which, if we calculate to the second consulship of the Emperor Trajan, nearly two hundred and ten years are gathered. Yet by these words, it seems that the time is only designated to which the booklet was not composed, and indeed that memorable year, 850 A.U.C. original: "U. c. 850" (97 AD), in which from Nerva not mu[ch]...