The Political Mind of Tacitus

Born Around c56 A.D. Tacitus seemed to always have some ambition for greatness. He began his well known reputation early on as a writer of various monologs including "The Dialogue." Married to the daughter of Julius Agricola, the governor of Britain and his inspiration for his work "The Agricola." Some believe that his two most popular works, "The Agricola" and "The Germania", were directly written in hopes to gain higher ranking in the early Roman Empire. After landing a seat in the Roman senate under Vespasian, he continued with the rest of his political career under Titus and Domitian. After his reign as a senator he continued his political opportunities a year later in c97 A.D. by beginning his consulship. He later became Governor of Western Anatolia and eventually dying sometime during the emperorship of Trajan. Tacitus' thoughts on Governmental technicalities seemed to be quite similar to the ideas of most Romans at the time: Rome is the most esteemed in political advancement and other tribes and cultures should be studied but not mimicked. (Tacitus beginning - Pg. 12)

Tacitus' father in law, Agricola was to me a very different man. He seemed to believe in that timely saying, "If it isn't done right it's not worth doing at all." I got this impression from the way he gracefully governed Britannia and led each tribe that he engaged in battle with to eventually be faithful to there new governor, making each of them realize that there is peace in the Roman way. Julius Agricola was born in c40 A.D. living to eventually be appointed governor of presently Great Britain and Scotland. This book leads no impression of Agricola what so ever, each reader themselves must form their own opinion of him through Tacitus' accounts.

"The Agricola and The Germania" were originally translated from latin in 1948 during the second world war by Harold Mattingly. The problem with this was that the two books were about the early beginnings of Great Britain and Germany which at the time was a very hot subject. I am not certain however I would think to believe that he must have gotten some ridicule due to this. They were then revised by S.A. Hanford through Penguin classics sometime between the 60's and the 70's.

In "The Agricola" we see a great enthusiasm in Tacitus' writing, leading us to believe that he admired his father-in-law very well. He speaks of the way he governed his territory as if it were the new Rome waiting to be established and rose up to greatness. During this time the Celtic peoples of Britain were rather civilized in there own manner, however not civilized in Roman eyes. Anyone in the world who was not Roman was not civilized. This was the impression I got from the authors words. Tacitus did however seem to have a sense of hope for the future of these Celtic tribes. In his description of Agricola he seems to think that his father-in-law is reforming the people of Britain into a more roman mold. I felt this book as more of a historical opinion rather than crude, harsh, facts. I think that these people with time would have become as advanced as the Romans but were, by all means, not uncivilized. They just had their own manner of living.

In the second story "The Germania", Tacitus has a much more open idea of how these tribes' culture relate to the Roman culture. His ideas of a structured society show through in his explanation of each tribe in the Germanic regions of early Europe. However he does make inquiry of some of their "SUB-ROMAN" ways of living such as: some of the tribes allow their children to run about naked and dirty, some of the tribes are ran by women, some of them live off of the land "Nomads" so to say, some of them settle differences over drunken conversation. It did not seem that his opinion of the Germanic tribes was entirely negative, in example: he spoke of structured tribal governments, consisting of appointed kings or elders or chiefs, he also spoke of civil forms of slavery (much more so than early America) consisting of no actual housework, fieldwork or labor for a "Master"; but of payment in livestock, farmed goods and other tangible items that each man needed daily. I believe the way he describes it as kind of a tenant. He also speaks of a somewhat universal germanic form of beliefs where as Mercury is the top God and all others are below him. However unlike Rome and their early polytheistic beliefs, these people did not put human form to their gods or any form for that matter. They seemed to just believe.

Tacitus seemed to be a very distinguished man of his time. His political views, if not somewhat one tracked, were of a more open state rather than a closed one. The impression I got of him in this reading was that he, like the other Roman politicians at the time, was a bit arrogant. But definitely not too arrogant, unlike Commodus who's arrogance lost him his life and his fathers empire. Tacitus was a politically smart man whose intelligence led him a long and prosperous life in which he wrote many famous monographs and influenced many people.