232
WRITINGS OF TACITUS.
beginning, which is dreadfully corrupt.7 He afterwards sub-
jected the work to a revision, and added the preface. This
life of Agricola shews all the greatness of the man: but he is
struggling with a difficulty in expressing his sentiments; a
difficulty which is perfectly natural, and is felt by all those
who being full of thoughts and ideas have a dislike for diffuse-
ness, and disdain to use words which are not necessary. It is
only those who are unable to understand this feeling of writers
like Sallust and Tacitus, that can have any doubt about the
genuineness of their style. The origin of their peculiarities
is, I repeat, an aversion to all exuberances of style. There is
not a trace of affectation in these writers, for they have no
other object than not to waste any words. This peculiar study
of conciseness is most prominent in the earlier writings of
Tacitus, the “ Agricola” and il Germania ; ” for he did not wish
to write large works, but only small essays, and yet to embody
in them a complete description of his subjects, and to place the
whole fulness of his thoughts before his reader. The “ His-
toriae” is evidently the work of his life, and his most finished
production ; only the first five books are now extant, but they
are sufficient to shew how much we have to lament the loss of
the rest. In this work he passed through history in all its
phases; he did not condense his accounts, but gave very mi-
nute narratives. I believe that, as is stated by St-Jerome, the
“ Historiae” really consisted of thirty books, which cannot be
thought too much, if we consider the minuteness with which
he relates the insurrection of Claudius Civilis, the life of
Domitian, etc. After the completion of the “ Historiae” he
added the “ Annales,” to complete the history of the empire
from its establishment and consolidation, after the close of the
comedy of republican forms. He wrote the Annals in a very
concise style, giving prominence to some portions only, while
he passed over many points altogether. The nearer he came
to the point at which the “ Historiae” begins, the more minute
he seems to have become; and he must have described the
latter period of Nero’s reign with the same vividness and mi-
nuteness which we see in the “ Historiae.” If we compare
7 I have no doubt as to the correctness of my own emendation. — N. Instead
of Iaudatiessent1 capitaleJuisse1 Niebuhr reads: Iaudati Capitalesfuissent1 and
in chap. i. at mihi nuper instead of at mihi nunc. See Niebuhr’s Kleine hist. u.
philol. Schriften1 i. p.331.
PLINY THE TOUNGEK.
233
the works of Sallust and Tacitus with those of Livy, we
perceive at once, from the wonderful symmetry of the former,
how much superior these authors "were to Livy, in the
artistic construction of their works.8 People speak of the
heaviness and difficulties of Tacitus’ style; but these diffi-
culties are in reality not so great as those met with in
reading Livy, who, wherever he argues and attempts to be
brief and concise, is much more difficult than Tacitus. Livy’s
preface, for example, and the discussion about P. Cornelius
Cossus in the fourth book, are among the most difficult pas-
sages in Latin prose, in which even men like Gronovius were
unable to see their way clearly. Livy is confused in those and
similar passages merely because he wanted to be brief; had he
written pages on those points, he would have been clear enough ;
as in his parallel between Alexander the Great and the power
of Rome, which is minute and written in a most admirable
manner, though his opinion upon the question is worth
nothing. Tacitus stands forth like Aeschylus and Sophocles,
like many a lyric poet, and like Lessing in German prose. Such
men have no equal ; but his contemporaries were always ready
to set up a number of others who, in their opinion, were men
of no less extraordinary genius. This mode of looking at a
great man has this comfort to his contemporaries, that in pro-
portion as he is dragged down the otheιs are raised; and the
great genius does not, at least apparently, leave his contem-
poraries at too painful a distance.
It was owing to this feeling, that Pliny the younger was
placed by the side of Tacitus. His letters are of great
psychological interest. He was a most good-natured man,
but extremely vain and conceited : before the public, he always
shewed that he was perfectly conscious of being a classical
writer; but in his letters to Tacitus, he displayed the greatest
humility, and almost worshipped him in order to win his
favour and to be praised by him, although there can be no
doubt that in his private conversations with his friends, he
censured Tacitus and pitied him for his defects. Such a
humility is dishonest. He writes on one occasion9 that the
β So long as Livy keeps to his beautiful narrative, and follows, for example,
Ennius in his history of the Koman kings, he is unrivalled; but when he aban-
dons himself to descriptions, as in the ninth book, he falls into absurdities, for
he did not sift the materials out of which he had to construct his history.—N.
9 Epist. vii. 20.