302
M. CLAUUIUS TACITUS.
It is, however, not impossible that this is merely one of the
many tales which were manufactured at the time, and by
which the real perpetrators of the crime tried to turn away
suspicion from themselves. There had been a conspiracy even
before.
The army lamented his loss and was deeply moved at his
death; and the soldiers were resolved that at least none of the
nobles who had had a hand in his murder should derive any
advantage from their crime. This resolution, if true, accounts
for the strange fact that the army called upon the senate at
Rome to appoint a successor. The senators at first declined,
as they imagined that the demand of the army was merely a
trap, or at least feared lest the soldiers might soon regret their
step, and then abandon the emperor elected by the senate as a
prey to another proclaimed by themselves. But the soldiers
were so persevering in their request that—so at least the story
runs, though it is certainly a scarcely credible one—eight
months passed away without an emperor, until after repeated
refusals on the part of the senate, and various exhibitions of
modesty on both sides, M. Claudius Tacitus, who was then
princeps senatus, was proclaimed emperor. Tacitus was great
in everything that could distinguish a senator: he possessed
immense property, of which he made a brilliant use ; he was
a man of unblemished character; possessed the knowledge
of a statesman, and had in his youth shown great military
skill. At his election, he promised the senate that he would
always look upon himself as its servant, and the senators
already abandoned themselves to dreams of a restoration of
the republic and its freedom, and of the emperor being only
the chief agent of the senate, which was to be all powerful.
What was to become of the people was a question which never
entered their heads : they looked upon themselves as the senate
of Venice used to do. But that dream was of short duration.
Tacitus after his elevation went to the army in Asia Minor.
The statement that he was then seventy-five years old is
founded upon the accounts of the later Greek writers, and is
of no weight: to me at least it appears very doubtful, and the
earlier writers say nothing about it. To elect a man of such
an advanced age emperor would have been senseless, and
something like the system of the Roman cardinals, who elect
an aged pope in order to have themselves a greater chance of
Florianus—probus.
303
becoming his successors. Such things may be done in an
ecclesiastical state, but would have been the height of folly in
a state like the Roman empire at that time, which required
a military chief. Tacitus carried on the war against the Alani
with success, although there still remained reasons for care
and anxiety about those countries. Hedied at Tarsus, in a.d.
276, either Ofadiseaseorofweakness; it Seemshardlyprobable
that he was murdered.
His brother, M. Annius Florianus, now usurped the throne,
but the legions refused to obey him, and M. Aurelius Probus
was proclaimed emperor in his stead? Probus is the most
excellent among the Roman emperors of that period. Aurelian
had been cruel, and known nothing except war; but Probus,
who was equally great as a general, devoted his attention at
the same time to rescuing the empire from the wretched con-
dition in which he found it. He had to contend with various
insurrections, but his arms were engaged principally against
the Alani, Franks, Alemannians, and Sarmatians. He drove
the Franks back into the marshes of Holland; the Alemannians
were not only defeated, but Probus crossed the Rhine and re-
covered the whole country of Suabia, and is even said to have
restored the ancient limes. It is believed that it was his inten-
tion to make Germany a Roman province, and that plan would
have been far more practicable then than before, for the sou-
thern Germans had made such changes in their mode of living
that they were no longer so foreign to the Romans as they
had been two centuries earlier. Had Diocletian taken the
same trouble, and established a Roman force in southern Ger-
many, it would not by any means have been impossible to form
that part of the country into a Roman province, for we find
that the Germans, who had formerly hated living together in
towns, began to inhabit regular villages or towns, on the river
Neckar, as early as the reign of Valentinian. In northern
Germany, on the other hand, things were different, for there
the people still lived in separate farms, as at the present day in
Westphalia. Probus exerted his wonderful activity in all di-
rections. His reign lasted nearly six years, and his occupations
were so great and numerous, that he had no time for enjoying
his sovereignty. He only once celebrated a triumph at Rome,
5 Zosimus, i. 64, foil, Vopiscus, Pi obus ; Eutrop. ix. 17; Aurel. Victor, Epi-
tome, 36 and 37, De Caes. 36 and 37.