Tacitean studies
Tacitean studies, centred on the work of Tacitus (c. 56 – c. 120 AD), the ancient Roman historian, constitute an area of scholarship extending beyond the field of history.
The work has traditionally been read for its moral instruction, its narrative, and its inimitable prose style; Tacitus has been (and still is) most influential as a political theorist, outside the field of history.
The Histories, written from primary documents and personal knowledge of the Flavian period, is thought to be more accurate, though Tacitus's hatred of Domitian seemingly colored its tone and interpretations.
By the 5th century only a few authors seem aware of him: Sidonius Apollinaris, who admires him, and Orosius, who alternately derides him as a fool and borrows passages (including many that are otherwise lost) from his works.
[10] Some of Tacitus's works were known at Monte Cassino by 1100, where the other two certain references appear: Peter the Deacon's Vita Sancti Severi used the Agricola, and Paulinus Venetus, Bishop of Pozzuoli, plagiarized passages from the Annals in his mappa mundi.
[12] It was not until Giovanni Boccaccio brought the manuscript of the Annals 11–16 and the Histories out of Monte Cassino to Florence, in the 1360s or 1370s, that Tacitus began to regain some of his old literary importance.
Boccaccio's efforts brought the works of Tacitus back into public circulation—where they were largely passed over by the Humanists of the 14th and 15th centuries, who preferred the smooth style of Cicero and the patriotic history of Livy, who was by far their favorite historian.
Guarino da Verona, in 1435, used the literary flowering of Augustus's era—which included Livy, Horace, Virgil, and Seneca—to argue against Bruni's contention; Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini countered with the argument that all the authors had been born during the waning years of the Roman Republic.
Following that line of thought (Catholics in appearance reading Tacitus instead of Machiavelli's still forbidden Prince), the thinkers of the Counter-Reformation and the age of absolute monarchies used his works as a set of rules and principles for political action.
Tacitus's description of the artifices, stratagems, and utterly lawless reign of power politics at the Roman imperial court fascinated European scholars.
While authors like Casaubon and Pasquier deemed the precepts of Tacitus pernicious,[2] writers like Justus Lipsius, Scipione Ammirato and Baltasar Alamos de Barrientos set out their reason of state in the form of commentaries on his work.
[3] Even the Jesuit political philosoher Giovanni Botero, who put together Tacitus with Machiavelli as the leading authorities for those who advocated an amoral reason of state, was thoroughly acquainted with the work of the Roman historian.
Gerolamo Cardano in his 1562 book Encomium Neronis describes Tacitus as a scoundrel of the worst kind, belonging to the rich senatorial class and always taking their side against the common people.
Edward Gibbon was strongly influenced by Tacitus's historical style in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The French Revolutionaries, for whom Tacitus had been a central part of their early education, made much use of his criticisms of tyranny and love of the republic—he is one of the authors most often quoted (behind Cicero, Horace, and Plutarch) by the members of the National and Legislative Assemblies and by revolutionary authors such as Jacques Pierre Brissot.
This would-be founder of an Imperial dynasty, praised by amongst others Goethe for his insight in literature, knew the danger that Tacitus's histories might pose to one who wished to go around grabbing for power.
Of course part of it can be considered "mockumentary" in the Augustan History tradition (for example how Claudius really felt about republicanism, heavily elaborated by Graves sometimes based on "reconstructed" historical documents, will probably never be really established).
By the end of 20th century, however, a sort of inverted red tacitism (as the new variant of black tacitism could be called) appeared, for example in publications like Woodman's Tacitus reviewed: the new theories described the emperors of the principate no longer as monarchs ruling as autocrats, but as "magistrates" in essence defending a "republican" form of government (which might excuse some of their rash actions), very much in line with Graves's lenient posture regarding crimes committed under the rule of princeps Claudius (for instance the putting aside of the elder L. Silanus, showing the emperor's lack of conscience according to Tacitus, Ann.
