Monographs and commentaries devoted to individual works of Tacitus, with a tilt towards the Annales, appear steadily, but we have had to wait until T.B.’s excellent Writing Imperial History for a study that demonstrates unities across all five of Tacitus’ works. Taking up a topic broached by O. Devillers in 2014 (Les opera minora et le développement de l’historiographie tacitéenne), T.B. argues persuasively for the thematic coherence of Tacitus’ corpus and the significance of the opera minora, Agricola, Germania, Dialogus de Oratoribus, within the whole. For T.B. the opera minora – he prefers monographs – are not ‘juvenilia’ but the foundations of Tacitus’ historical project. Yes, he grants that the longer annalistic histories of the Historiae and Annales facilitate greater complexity of characterisation, but according to T.B. Tacitus already worked out in the monographs his fundamental ideas about leadership, conquest, provincial management, the relationship between freedom and earning glory, and the systemic oppressions of the Principate. T.B. offers an integrated reading of Tacitus that considers both Tacitus’ heavily studied focus on the corrosive influence of the emperors on others’ freedom to perform deeds worthy of commemoration and the challenge of managing a sprawling empire that exists in the shadow of but also independently of those emperors.
In a wide-raging introduction T.B. promises a comprehensive interpretation of the Tacitean corpus and argues for a consistent vision of the Principate from Agricola to the Annales. T.B. asserts that the monographs are not tentative first steps (pace Syme [1958]) but rather the products of a middle-aged consular of great experience. He acknowledges generic distinctions between each monograph and the histories, yet suggests that those differences offered Tacitus opportunities to approach his thematic concerns from various angles.
In a brief interstitial section, ‘Preliminary Remarks’, T.B. reminds readers that Agricola and Germania, though published under Trajan, were conceived under Domitian and display the lasting stamp of living under that tyrant. Tacitus can finally praise Agricola as he had Verginius Rufus, whose grand funeral was only held because he had the good fortune of dying under Nerva.
The first chapter argues that Agricola outlines the ideas that Tacitus would spend the rest of his career developing. T.B. contends that Tacitus’ prefatory praise of the new post-Domitianic era is not ‘unequivocally sincere’ (p. 28) but allows him to carve out a space of Republican libertas for his biography. He then argues that Agricola’s vision of the Principate is sceptical because the Principate is by its nature hostile to libertas, the crucial ingredient for creating virtuous action. Agricola also offers insight into Tacitus’ concept of the empire; Tacitus supports Roman imperial rule with qualifications. Maladministration of provinces is harmful and reliance on subjects to provide auxiliary manpower is dangerous as their loyalty is slippery. Lastly, Tacitus’ Agricola, mixing authority and affability, is not only an ideal general and provincial governor but also the benchmark leader against whom all others, including emperors, are to be measured.
T.B. next reads Germania alongside Agricola because the two works share an interest in ethnography and ‘textual colonization’, a northwestern focus, and both counter Domitian’s distortion of the historical record: one text reveals the true extent of Agricola’s achievements while the other exposes the dishonesty of Domitian’s triumph over the Germani. While T.B. wisely deems identifying any overarching aim of Germania as reductive, he concludes from the text’s emphasis on the variegated picture of the Germani themselves, their love of libertas, the difficult to traverse landscape and climate they inhabit, and their country’s lack of natural resources – all in contrast with Britain and Gaul – that Tacitus saw conquest and direct rule of Germany as impractical. While Tacitus ‘formulates the imageability’ (p. 70) of Germany, and he does not explicitly state conquest and rule are impossible, T.B. concludes that Tacitus ultimately supports the post-Augustan policy of indirect control of the area.
The third chapter covering Dialogus de Oratoribus seeks above all to integrate the work into a triad with the other two monographs. Conceived in short succession, the three works are in dialogue with one another, and Dialogus, long considered an outlier with its Ciceronian form and smooth style, can be best understood when read in conjunction with Agricola and Germania. Messalla’s criticism of contemporary Roman childrearing, for example, engages with the portrait of Agricola’s mother in Agricola and Germanic practice in Germania. While T.B. acknowledges that Dialogus features a variety of insightful viewpoints from its speakers, the single most salient theme he identifies is the Principate’s systemic oppression, its throttling of opportunities to display talent and win reputation.
The fourth chapter first details how the Histories explicitly identify Actium as the breaking point for freedom of expression, which assimilates Trajan’s reign to business-as-usual for the Principate. T.B. claims that Tacitus used flattery of Trajan in the opening chapters to give himself room to write critically about imperial history. The subsequent sections of the chapter focus on the deepening characterisation in the Histories: Galba, while not a complete failure, does not meet the benchmark for leadership set by Agricola whereas on balance Otho has more bad features than good ones. The Vitellian forces have not read their Germania whereas the Batavian revolt follows a script predictable from that monograph. Vespasian is a complicated case. While he cites Tacitus’ famous pronouncement that Vespasian alone got better as emperor, T.B. argues that by not carefully controlling his staff Vespasian allowed systemic problems of the Principate to fester during his reign.
In the last chapter, on the Annales, T.B. draws out ways in which Tacitus’ final work engages with the monographs, which include the themes of changes in historiography after the advent of the Principate, emperors’ failure to meet Agricola’s standard of leadership and auxiliary forces’ perfidy. The chapter’s concluding sections on imperial policy are among the most interesting in the book. T.B. reads Tacitus’ accusatory presentation of Tiberius’ German policy alongside Germania and finds that, while the emperor was motivated by jealousy of Germanicus, his ultimate decision to refrain from attempting the reconquest of Germany was supported by factors that Tacitus detailed in Germania. A further section on the unsuitability of Armenia and Parthia for Roman conquest draws on similar ideas stretching back to Germania and leads T.B. to conclude that Tacitus may be offering veiled criticism of Trajan’s attempt to annex Armenia.
T.B. is to be praised for offering a comprehensive interpretation of the Tacitean corpus that illuminates connections between all five works. Within so wide-ranging a study there are inevitably some points that are not entirely convincing. Some of the intratexts he identifies feature vocabulary such as memoria, iuvenis, or quies and otium, which does not always seem marked. Likewise, although T.B. admirably explicates how Tacitus thought deeply about managing the empire, a task that would challenge any form of government, he takes too limited a view of the Republic and the Principate. Tacitus knew that the late Republican government had all the libertas its senators could wish for, yet still failed to govern that empire. Lastly, T.B. rightly doubts that readers should take Tacitus’ professions of enthusiasm for the new era in his prefaces at face value, yet sincerity/insincerity are not readers’ only options. First, the publication of Tacitus’ works, safe-criticism notwithstanding, should certainly give readers reason to consider that an author might have guarded optimism that the scope for free expression had widened after Domitian. Second, as T.B. points out, Tacitus, Pliny and others actively played a role in shaping the new ideology of Trajan’s Principate, and their texts work not within fixed parameters but from a dynamic baseline that was trending towards significantly wider latitude for self-expression. Nevertheless, T.B. has produced a learned and insightful book that should shift the conversation on Tacitus from specific themes that appeal particularly to the present moment to a fuller and more complicated understanding of the concerns of the entire corpus.
