Tacitus

Publius or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 56–ca. 117), Roman orator, lawyer, and senator, is considered one of antiquity's greatest historians. His major works—the Annals and the Histories—took for their subject the history of the Roman Empire's first century, from the ascension of the emperor Tiberius to the death of Domitian.

The sources of Tacitus

Tacitus was able to consult the official sources of the Roman state: the acta senatus (the minutes of the session of the Senate) and the acta diurna populi Romani (a collection of the acts of the government and news of the court and capital). He could read the collections of speeches by some emperors, such as Tiberius and Claudius. Generally, Tacitus was a scrupulous historian who paid careful attention to his historical works. The minor inacurracies occurring in the Annals might be due to the fact that Tacitus died before completely finishing (and supposedly final proofreading) of this work. He used a great variety of historical and literary sources as well; he used them with freedom and he chose from varied sources of varied tendency.

Related Topics:
Tiberius - Claudius

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Tacitus cites some of his sources directly, among them Pliny the Elder, who had written Bella Germaniae and an historical work which was the continuation of that of Aufidius Bassus. Tacitus could use some collections of letters (epistolarium) and various notes. He also took some information from the works of the historical genre named exitus illustrium virorum. These were a collection of books on and by those who opposed the emperors. They tell of the sacrifice of the martyr to freedom, especially the men who committed suicide, following the theory of the Stoics. Tacitus used these materials to give a dramatic tone to his stories, while he placed no value on the theory of the suicides. These suicides seem, to him, ostentatious and politically useless, while, on the other hand he is sometimes over the hill about the "swansong" speeches of some of those about to commit suicide, for example Cremutius Cordus' speech in Ann. IV, 34-35.

Related Topics:
Pliny the Elder - Aufidius Bassus - Stoics - Cremutius Cordus

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