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GERMANIA AND AGRICOLA
GERMANIA AND AGRICOLA CAIUS CORNELIUS TACITUS 1. A Latin text approved and established by the essential concurrence of
all the more recent editors. The editions of Tacitus now in use in this
country abound in readings purely conjectural adopted without due regard
to the peculiarities of the author and in direct contravention of the
critical canon that other things being equal the more difficult
reading is the more likely to be genuine. The recent German editions
labor to exhibit and explain so far as possible the reading of the best
MSS.
2. A more copious illustration of the grammatical constructions also of
the rhetorical and poetical usages peculiar to Tacitus without
translating however to such an extent as to supersede the proper
exertions of the student. Few books require so much illustration of this
kind as the Germania and Agricola of Tacitus; few have received more in
Germany yet few so little here. In a writer so concise and abrupt as
Tacitus it has been deemed necessary to pay particular regard to the
connexion of thought and to the particles as the hinges of that
connexion.
3. A comparison of the writer and his cotemporaries with authors of the
Augustan age so as to mark concisely the changes which had been already
wrought in the language and taste of the Roman people. It is chiefly with
a view to aid such a comparison that it has been thought advisable to
prefix a Life of Tacitus which is barren indeed of personal incidents
but which it is hoped may serve to exhibit the author in his relation to
the history and especially to the literature of his age.
4. The department in which less remained to be done than any other for
the elucidation of Tacitus was that of Geography History and
Archaeology. The copious notes of Gordon and Murphy left little to be
desired in this line; and these notes are not only accessible to American
scholars in their original forms but have been incorporated more or
less into all the college editions. If any peculiar merit attaches to
this edition in this department it will be found in the frequent
references to such classic authors as furnish collateral information and
in the illustration of the private life of the Romans by the help of
such recent works as Becker's Gallus. The editor has also been able to
avail himself of Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo Saxons which sheds
not a little light on the manners of the Germans.
5. Many of the ablest commentaries on the Germania and Agricola have
appeared within a comparatively recent period some of them remarkable
examples of critical acumen and exegetical tact and others models of
school and college editions. It has been the endeavor of the editor to
bring down the literature pertaining to Tacitus to the present time and
to embody in small compass the most valuable results of the labors of
such recent German editors as Grimm Guenther Gruber Kiessling Dronke
Roth Ruperti and Walther.
The text is in the main that of Walther though the other editors just
named have been consulted; and in such minor differences as exist between
them I have not hesitated to adopt the reading which seemed best to
accord with the usage and genius of Tacitus especially when sanctioned
by a decided preponderance of critical suffrage. Other readings have been
referred to in the Notes so far as they are of any considerable
importance or supported by respectable authority. Partly for
convenience but chiefly as a matter of taste I have ventured to follow
the German editions in dispensing entirely with diacritical marks and in
some peculiarities of less importance which if not viewed with favor it
is hoped will not be judged with severity. The punctuation is the result
of a diligent comparison of the best editions together with a careful
study of the connexion of language and of thought.
The German editions above mentioned together with several French
English and American works have not only been constantly before me but
have been used with great freedom and credit awarded to them
accordingly. Some may think their names should have appeared less
frequently; others that they should have received credit to a still
greater extent. Suffice it to say I have never intended to quote the
language or borrow the thoughts of an author without giving his name;
and in matters of fact or opinion I have cited authorities not only when
I have been indebted to them for the suggestion but whenever in a case
of coincidence of views I thought the authorities would be of any
interest to the student.
I have not considered it needful with German scrupulosity to
distinguish between my own references and those of others. It may safely
be taken for granted that the major perhaps the better part of them
have been derived from foreign sources. But no references have been
admitted on trust. They have been carefully verified and it is hoped
that numerous as they are they will be found pertinent and useful
whether illustrative of things or of mere verbal usage. Some who use
the book will doubtless find occasion to follow them out either in whole
or in part; and those who do not will gain a general impression as to
the sources from which collateral information may be obtained that will
be of no small value.
The frequent references to the Notes of Professor Kingsley will show the
estimation in which I hold them. Perhaps I have used them too freely. My
only apology is that so far as they go they are just what is wanted;
and if I had avoided using them to a considerable extent I must have
substituted something less perfect of my own. Had they been more copious
and extended more to verbal and grammatical illustrations these Notes
never would have appeared.
The editor is convinced from his experience as a teacher that the
student of Tacitus will not master the difficulties or appreciate the
merits of so peculiar an author unless his peculiarities are distinctly
pointed out and explained. Indeed the student in reading any classic
author needs not to be carried along on the broad shoulders of an
indiscriminate translator but to be guided at every step in learning his
lessons by a judicious annotator who will remove his difficulties and
aid his progress; who will point out to him what is worthy of attention
and guard him against the errors to which he is constantly exposed; for
first impressions are lively and permanent and the errors of the study
even though corrected in the recitation not unfrequently leave an
impression on the mind which is never effaced.
Besides the aid derived from books to which the merit of this edition
if it have any merit will be chiefly owing the editor takes this
opportunity to acknowledge his many obligations to those professors and
other literary gentlemen who have extended to him assistance and
encouragement. To Prof. H. B. Hackett of Newton Theological Seminary
especially he is indebted for favors which numerous and invaluable in
themselves as the results of a singularly zealous and successful
devotion to classical learning are doubly grateful as the tokens of a
personal friendship which began when we were members of the same class
in college. The work was commenced at his suggestion and has been
carried forward with his constant advice and co-operation. His ample
private library and through his influence the library of the Seminary
have been placed at my disposal; and the notes passed under his eye and
were improved in not a few particulars at his suggestion though he is
in no way responsible for their remaining imperfections. I have also
received counsel and encouragement in all my labors from my esteemed
colleague Prof. N. W. Fiske whose instructions in the same department
which has since been committed to my charge first taught me to love the
Greek and Latin classics. I have only to regret that his ill health and
absence from the country have prevented me from deriving still greater
advantages from his learning and taste. An unforeseen event has in like
manner deprived me of the expected cooperation of Prof. Lyman Coleman
now of Nassau Hall College in N. J. in concert with whom this work was
planned and was to have been executed and on whose ripe scholarship
and familiarity with the German language and literature I chiefly relied
for its successful accomplishment.
I should not do justice to my feelings were I to omit the expression of
my obligations to the printer and publishers for the unwearied patience
with which they have labored to perfect the work under all the
disadvantages attending the superintendance of the press at such a
distance. If there should still be found in it inaccuracies and
blemishes it will not be because they have spared any pains to make it a
correct and beautiful book.
It is with unfeigned diffidence that I submit to the public this first
attempt at literary labor. I am fully sensible of its many imperfections
at the same time I am conscious of an ability to make it better at some
future day should it meet the favorable regard of the classical teachers
of our land to whom it is dedicated as an humble contribution to that
cause in which they are now laboring with such unprecedented zeal.
Should it contribute in any measure to a better understanding or a
higher appreciation by our youthful countrymen of a classic author from
whom beyond almost any other I have drawn instruction and delight I
shall not have labored in vain.
_Amherst College June 1 1847_.
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
The text of this edition has been carefully revised and compared with
those of Doederlein Halle 1847 Orelli Zurich 1848 and Ritter Bonn
and Cambridge 1848. The notes also have been re-examined and to a
considerable extent re-written; partly to correspond with the progress
of my own mind partly in accordance with suggestions derived from the
above named editions and from friendly criticisms either by letter or in
the public journals. Among the journals I am particularly indebted to
the Bibliotheca Sacra and the New-Englander; and for communications by
letter I am under especial obligations to Professors Crosby and Sanborn
of Dartmouth College Robbins of Middlebury and Lincoln of Brown
University.
In revising the geography of the Germania I have consulted without
however entering much into detail Ukert's invaluable treatise on the
Geography of the Greeks and Romans whose volume on Germany contains a
translation and running commentary on almost the entire work of Tacitus.
Particular attention has been paid to the ethnology of the tribes and
nations in reference to whose origin and early history Tacitus is among
the best authorities. In this department the works of Prichard and Latham
have been my chief reliance. Grimm and Zeuss though often referred to I
regret to say I have been able to consult only at second hand.
In sending out this revised edition of these most delightful treatises of
an author in the study of whose works I never tire I cannot but express
the hope that it has been not a little improved by these alterations and
additions while it will be found to have lost none of the essential
features by which the first edition was commended to so good a measure of
public favor.
W. S. Tyler.
_Amherst May_ 1852
LIFE OF TACITUS.
It is the office of genius and learning as of light to illustrate
other things and not itself. The writers who of all others perhaps
have told us most of the world just as it has been and is have told us
least of themselves. Their character we may infer with more or less
exactness from their works but their history is unwritten and must for
ever remain so. Homer though perhaps the only one who has been argued
out of existence is by no means the only one whose age and birthplace
have been disputed. The native place of Tacitus is mere matter of
conjecture. His parentage is not certainly known. The time of his birth
and the year of his death are ascertained only by approximation and very
few incidents are recorded in the history of his life; still we know the
period in which he lived the influences under which his character was
developed and matured and the circumstances under which he wrote his
immortal works. In short we know his times though we can scarcely
gather up enough to denominate his life; and the times in which an author
lived are often an important not to say essential means of elucidating
his writings.
CAIUS CORNELIUS TACITUS was born in the early part of the reign of Nero
and near the middle of the first century in the Christian Era. The
probability is that he was the son of Cornelius Tacitus a man of
equestrian rank and procurator of Belgic Gaul under Nero; that he was
born at Interamna in Umbria and that he received a part of his education
at Massilia (the modern Marseilles) which was then the Athens of the
West a Grecian colony and a seat of truly Grecian culture and
refinement. It is not improbable that he enjoyed also the instructions of
Quintilian who for twenty years taught at Rome that pure and manly
eloquence of which his Institutes furnish at once such perfect rules
and so fine an example. If we admit the Dialogue de Claris Oratoribus to
be the work of Tacitus his beau-ideal of the education proper for an
orator was no less comprehensive no less elevated no less liberal than
that of Cicero himself; and if his theory of education was like
Cicero's only a transcript of his own education he must have been
disciplined early in all the arts and sciences--in all the departments
of knowledge which were then cultivated at Rome; a conclusion in which we
are confirmed also by the accurate and minute acquaintance which he
shows in his other works with all the affairs whether civil or
military public or private literary or religious both of Greece and
Rome.
The boyhood and youth of Tacitus did indeed fall on evil times.
Monsters in vice and crime had filled the throne till their morals and
manners had infected those of all the people. The state was distracted
and apparently on the eve of dissolution. The public taste like the
general conscience was perverted. The fountains of education were
poisoned. Degenerate Grecian masters were inspiring their Roman pupils
with a relish for a false science a frivolous literature a vitiated
eloquence an Epicurean creed and a voluptuous life.
But with sufficient discernment to see the follies and vices of his age
and with sufficient virtue to detest them Tacitus must have found his
love of wisdom and goodness of liberty and law strengthened by the
very disorders and faults of the times. If the patriot ever loves a
well-regulated freedom it will be in and after the reign of a tyrant
preceded or followed by what is still worse anarchy. If the pure and the
good ever reverence purity and goodness it will be amid the general
prevalence of vice and crime. If the sage ever pants after wisdom it is
when the fountains of knowledge have become corrupted. The reigns of Nero
and his immediate successors were probably the very school of all
others to which we are most indebted for the comprehensive wisdom the
elevated sentiments and the glowing eloquence of the biographer of
Agricola and the historian of the Roman Empire. His youth saw and felt
and deplored the disastrous effects of Nero's inhuman despotism and of
the anarchy attending the civil wars of Galba Otho and Vitellius. His
manhood saw and felt and exulted in the contrast furnished by the
reigns of Vespasian and Titus though the sun of the latter too soon went
down in that long night of gloom and blood and terror the tyranny of
Domitian. And when in the reigns of Nerva and Trajan he enjoyed the
rare felicity of thinking what he pleased and speaking what he thought
he was just fitted in the maturity of his faculties and the extent of
his observation and reflections "to enroll slowly year after year that
dreadful reality of crimes and sufferings which even dramatic horror in
all its license of wild imagination can scarcely reach the long
unvarying catalogue of tyrants and executioners and victims that return
thanks to the gods and die and accusers rich with their blood and more
mighty as more widely hated amid the multitudes of prostrate slaves
still looking whether there may not yet have escaped some lingering
virtue which it may be a merit to destroy and having scarcely leisure to
feel even the agonies of remorse in the continued sense of the
precariousness of their own gloomy existence." [Brown's Philosophy of the
Mind.]
Tacitus was educated for the bar and continued to plead causes
occasionally at least and with not a little success even after he had
entered upon the great business of his life as a writer of history. We
find references to his first and perhaps his last appearance as an
advocate in the Letters of Pliny which are highly complimentary. The
first was when Pliny was nineteen and Tacitus a little older (how much
we are not informed) when Tacitus distinguished himself so as to awaken
the emulation and the envy though not in a bad sense of Pliny. The last
was some twenty years later when Tacitus and Pliny the tried friends of
a whole life the brightest ornaments of literature and of the forum
were associated by the choice of the Senate and pleaded together at
the bar of the Senate and in the presence of the Emperor Trajan for
the execution of justice upon Marius Priscus who was accused of
maladministration in the proconsulship of Africa. Pliny says that
Tacitus spoke with singular gravity and eloquence and the Senate passed
a unanimous vote of approbation and thanks to both the orators for the
ability and success with which they had managed the prosecution (Plin.
Epis. ii. 11)
We have also the comments of Pliny on a panegyrical oration which
Tacitus pronounced when consul upon his predecessor in the consular
office Verginius Rufus perhaps the most remarkable man of his age
distinguished alike as a hero a statesman and a scholar and yet so
modest or so wise that he repeatedly refused the offer of the imperial
purple. "Fortune" says Pliny "always faithful to Verginius reserved
for her last favor such an orator to pronounce a eulogium on such
virtues. It was enough to crown the glory of a well spent life" (Plin.
Epis. ii. 1).
The speeches in the historical works of Tacitus though rather concise
and abstract for popular orations are full of force and fire. Some of
them are truly Demosthenic in their impassioned and fiery logic. The
speech of Galgacus before the Briton army when driven into the extremity
of Caledonia by the Romans under Agricola can hardly be surpassed for
patriotic sentiments vigorous reasoning and burning invective. The
address of Germanicus to his mutinous soldiers (in the Annals) is not
less remarkable for tender pathos. The sage and yet soldierlike address
of the aged Galba to his adopted son Piso the calm and manly speech of
Piso to the body guard the artful harangue of the demagogue Otho to his
troops the no less crafty address of Mucianus to Vespasian the headlong
rapidity of Antonius' argument for immediate action the plausible plea
of Marcellus Eprius against the honest attack of Helvidius Priscus and
the burning rebukes of the intrepid Vocula to his cowardly and
treacherous followers--all these in the Histories show no ordinary
degree of rhetorical skill and versatility. Indeed the entire body of
his works is animated with the spirit of the orator as it is tinged also
with the coloring of the poet. For this reason they are doubtless
deficient in the noble simplicity of the earlier classical histories; but
for the same reason they may be a richer treasure for the professional
men at least of modern times.
Of his marriage with the daughter of Agricola and its influence on his
character and prospects as also of his passing in regular gradation
through the series of public honors at Rome beginning with the
quaestorship under Vespasian and ending with the consulship under Nerva
Tacitus informs us himself (A. 9 His. i. 1) barely alluding to them
however in the general and leaving all the details to mere conjecture.
We learn to our surprise that he not only escaped the jealousy of the
tyrant Domitian but was even promoted by him to the office of
Quindecimvir and Praetor (Ann. ii. 11). Beyond these vague notices we
know little or nothing of his course of life except that Pliny says
(Epist. iv. 13) he was much esteemed by the learned and the great at
Rome who went in crowds to his levees. Of the time of his death we can
only conjecture that he died before the Emperor Trajan but after his
friend Pliny--the former because had he outlived the Emperor he would
probably have executed his purpose of writing the history of his reign
(His. i. 1); the latter because if he had not survived his friend
Pliny who lamented the death of so many others would not have failed to
pay the last tribute to the memory of Tacitus.
It is generally admitted though without direct testimony that Tacitus
died not without issue. That excellent prince M. Claudius Tacitus
deduced his pedigree from the historian and ordered his image to be set
up and a complete collection of his works to be placed in the public
archives with a special direction that twelve copies should be made
every year at the public expense. It is greatly to be regretted that such
praiseworthy precautions should have failed to preserve for us that
treasure entire!
The age of Tacitus is usually styled the silver age of Roman Literature;
and it merits no higher title when compared with the golden age of
Augustus. It was the good fortune of Augustus to gain the supremacy at
Rome when society had reached its maximum of refinement and was just
ready to enter upon its stage of corruption and decline. Hence his name
is identified with that proud era in literature in producing which he
bore at best only an accidental and secondary part. In the literature of
the Augustan age we admire the substance of learning and philosophy
without the show the cultivation of taste without the parade of
criticism the fascination of poetry without its corruption and the use
of eloquence without its abuse. Grecian refinement was no longer
despised; Grecian effeminacy had not yet prevailed. The camp was not now
the home of the Romans; neither were the theatres and the schools. They
had ceased to be a nation of soldiers and had not yet become a nation of
slaves. At no other period could Rome have had her Cicero her Livy and
her Virgil.
The silver age produced no men who "attained unto these first three." But
there are not wanting other bright names to associate with Tacitus
though most of them lived a little earlier than he. There was Seneca the
Philosopher whose style with its perpetual antitheses is the very
worst of the age but his sentiments perhaps more or less under the
influence of Christianity approach nearer to the Christian code of
morals than those of any other Latin author. There were Martial and
Juvenal whose satires made vice tremble in its high places and helped
to confer on the Romans the honor of originating one species of literary
composition unknown to the Greeks. There were Suetonius and Plutarch;
the one natural simple and pure in his style far beyond his age but
without much depth or vigor of thought; the other involved and affected
in his manner but in his matter of surpassing richness and incalculable
worth. There was the elder Pliny a prodigy of learning and industry
whose researches in Natural History cost him his life in that fatal
eruption of Vesuvius which buried Herculaneum and Pompeii. There was also
the judicious Quintilian at once neat and nervous in his language
delicate and correct in his criticisms a man of genius and a scholar a
teacher and an exemplar of eloquence. Finally there were the younger
Pliny and Tacitus rival candidates for literary and professional
distinction yet cherishing for each other the most devoted and
inviolable attachment each viewing the other as the ornament of their
country each urging the other to write the history of their age and
each relying chiefly on the genius of the other for his own immortality
(Plin. Epis. vii. 33). Their names were together identified by their
contemporaries with the literature of the age of Trajan: "I never was
touched with a more sensible pleasure" says Pliny in one of his
beautiful Letters [Eleven of these are addressed to Tacitus and two
or three are written expressly for the purpose of furnishing materials
for his history.] (which rival Cicero's in epistolary ease and
elegance) "than by an account which I lately received from Cornelius
Tacitus. He informed me that at the last Circensian Games he sat next
a stranger who after much discourse on various topics of learning
asked him whether he was an Italian or a Provincial. Tacitus replied
'Your acquaintance with literature must have informed you who I am.'
'Aye' said the man 'is it then Tacitus or Pliny I am talking with?' I
cannot express how highly I am pleased to find that our names are not
so much the proper appellations of individuals as a designation of
learning itself" (Plin. Epis. ix. 23). Critics are not agreed to which
of these two literary friends belongs the delicate encomium of
Quintilian when after enumerating the principal writers of the day
he adds "There is another ornament of the age who will deserve the
admiration of posterity. I do not mention him at present; his name will
be known hereafter." Pliny Tacitus and Quintilian are also rival
candidates for the honor of having written the Dialogue de Claris
Oratoribus one of the most valuable productions in ancient criticism.
As a writer Tacitus was not free from the faults of his age. The native
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