Germania and Agricola Part 1

Germania and Agricola.

by Caius Cornelius Tacitus.

PREFACE.

This edition of the Germania and Agricola of Tacitus is designed to meet the following wants, which, it is believed, have been generally felt by teachers and pupils in American Colleges.

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 ill.u.s.tration 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 cla.s.sic authors as furnish collateral information, and in the ill.u.s.tration 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 ac.u.men 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 compa.s.s the most valuable results of the labors of such recent German editors as Grimm, Gunther, 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 ill.u.s.trative 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 subst.i.tuted something less perfect of my own. Had they been more copious, and extended more to verbal and grammatical ill.u.s.trations, 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 cla.s.sic 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 a.s.sistance 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 cla.s.sical learning, are doubly grateful as the tokens of a personal friendship, which began when we were members of the same cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.sics. 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 Na.s.sau 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sic 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 Doderlein, 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Ma.s.silia (the modern Ma.r.s.eilles), 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 Inst.i.tutes 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 t.i.tus, 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 G.o.ds and die, and accusers rich with their blood, and more mighty as more widely hated, amid the mult.i.tudes 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 impa.s.sioned 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 surpa.s.sed 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 Mucia.n.u.s 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 n.o.ble simplicity of the earlier cla.s.sical 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 pa.s.sing 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 t.i.tle, 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 a.s.sociate with Tacitus, though most of them lived a little earlier than he. There was Seneca, the Philosopher, whose style, with its perpetual ant.i.theses, 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 surpa.s.sing 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 princ.i.p.al 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 simplicity of Greek and Latin composition had pa.s.sed away. An affected point and an artificial brilliancy were subst.i.tuted in their place. The rhetoric and philosophy of the schools had infected all the departments of literature. Simple narrative no longer suited the pampered taste of the readers or the writers of history. It must be highly seasoned with sentimentalism and moralizing, with romance and poetry. Tacitus, certainly, did not escape the infection. In the language of Macaulay, "He carries his love of effect far beyond the limits of moderation. He tells a fine story finely, but he cannot tell a plain story plainly. He stimulates, till stimulants lose their power." [See a fine article on history, Ed. Her., 1828. Also in Macaulay's Miscellanies.] We have taken occasion in the notes to point out not a few examples of rhetorical pomp, and poetical coloring, and even needless multiplication of words, where plainness and precision would have been much better, and which may well surprise us in a writer of so much conciseness. Lord Monboddo, in a very able, though somewhat extravagant critique on Tacitus, has selected numerous instances of what he calls the ornamented dry style, many of which are so concise, so rough, and so broken, that he says, they do not deserve the name of composition, but seem rather like the raw materials of history, than like history itself (Orig. and Prog.

of Lang., vol iii. chap. 12).

Still, few readers can fail to p.r.o.nounce Tacitus, as Macaulay affirms, and even Lord Monboddo admits him to be, the greatest of Latin historians, superior to Thucydides himself in the moral painting of his best narrative scenes, and in the delineation of character without a rival among historians, with scarcely a superior among dramatists and novelists. The common style of his narrative is, indeed, wanting in simplicity, and sometimes in perspicuity. He does not deal enough in the specific and the picturesque, the where, the when and the how. But when his subject comes up to the grandeur of his conceptions, and the strength of his language, his descriptions are graphic and powerful. No battle scenes are more grand and terrific than those of Tacitus. Military men and scholars have also remarked their singular correctness and definiteness. The military evolutions, the fierce encounter, the doubtful struggle, the alternations of victory and defeat, the disastrous rout and hot pursuit, the carnage and blood, are set forth with the warrior's accuracy and the poet's fire; while, at the same time, the conflicting pa.s.sions and emotions of the combatants are discerned, as it were, by the eye of a seer--their hidden springs of action, and the lowest depths of their hearts laid bare, as if by the wand of a magician. In the painting of large groups, in the moral portraiture of vast bodies of men under high excitement and in strenuous exertion, we think that Tacitus far surpa.s.ses all other historians. Whether it be a field of battle or a captured city, a frightened senate or a flattering court, a mutiny or a mob, that he describes, we not only see in a clear and strong light the outward actions, but we look into the hearts of all the mixed mult.i.tude, and gaze with wonder on the changing emotions and conflicting pa.s.sions by which they are agitated.

His delineations of individual character are also marked by the same profound insight into the human soul. Like the old Latin Poet, he might have said,

"h.o.m.o sum; nihil _humani_ a me alienum puto."

There is scarcely a landscape picture in his whole gallery. It is full of portraits of _men_, in groups and as individuals, every grade of condition, every variety of character, performing all kinds of actions, exhibiting every human pa.s.sion, the colors laid on with a bold hand, the princ.i.p.al features presented in a strong light, the minuter strokes omitted, the soft and delicate finish despised. We feel, that we have gained not a little insight into the character of those men, who are barely introduced in the extant books of Tacitus, but whose history is given in the books that are lost. Men of inferior rank even, who appear on the stage only for a short time, develope strongly marked characters, which are drawn with dramatic distinctness and power, while yet the thread of history is never broken, the dignity of history never sacrificed. And those Emperors, whose history is preserved entire,--with them we feel acquainted, we know the controlling principles, as well as the leading events of their lives, and we feel sure that we could predict how they would act, under almost any imaginable circ.u.mstances.