The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus
1850
Two extraordinary portraits from the pen of Rome's greatest prose stylist. Germania stands as the only substantial ancient account of the peoples who would, centuries later, bring down the empire itself. Tacitus writes of forests sacred to mystery, councils decided by sacred white horses, women who fight beside their men, and a society organized around honor rather than luxury. It is both ethnographic observation and a veiled critique of Roman decadence, a mirror held up to Rome's own softening. Agricola is something more intimate: a biography of Tacitus' own father-in-law, the general who conquered Britain, told with complicated pride. Here we see the machinery of empire, the bravery of legionaries, and the political dangers that come with too much glory. Together these works ask: what makes a people strong, what makes a leader great, and what does empire cost those who build it? For anyone curious about the roots of European identity or the origins of the Germanic world that rose after Rome, this is a foundational text.
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“They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.””
— Cornelius Tacitus
“Rarely will two or three tribes confer to repulse a common danger. Accordingly they fight individually and are collectively conquered.””
— Cornelius Tacitus
“Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilisation, when it was but a part of their servitude.””
— Cornelius Tacitus
“Think of it. Fifteen whole years-no small part of a mans life.-taken from us-all the most energetic have fallen to the cruelty of the emperor. And the few that survive are no longer what we once were. Yet I find some small satisfaction in acknowledging the bondage we once suffered. Tacitus, The Agricola””
— Cornelius Tacitus
“At length they gradually deviated into a taste for those luxuries which stimulate to vice; porticos, and baths, and the elegancies of the table; and this, from their inexperience, they termed politeness, whilst, in reality, it constituted a part of their slavery.””
— Cornelius Tacitus
“To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of "government;" they create a desolation and call it peace.””
— Cornelius Tacitus
“We have indeed left an impressive example of subservience. Just as Rome of old explored the limits of freedom, so have we plumbed the depths of slavery, robbed by informers even of the interchange of speech. We would have lost our memories as well as our tongues had it been as easy to forget as to be silent.””
— Cornelius Tacitus
“They lived in rare accord, maintained by mutual affection and unselfishness; in such a partnership, however, a good wife deserves more than half the praise, just as a bad one deserves more than half the blame.””
— Cornelius Tacitus
“Pigrum quin immo et iners videtur sudore adquirere quod possis sanguine parare.(Nay, they actually think it tame and stupid to acquire by the sweat of toil what they might win by their blood.)””
— Cornelius Tacitus
