Orators

"Dwelling on one side of the Chauci and Chatti, the Cherusci long cherished, unassailed, an excessive and enervating love of peace. This was more pleasant than safe, for to be peaceful is self-deception among lawless and powerful neighbours. Where the strong hand decides, moderation and justice are terms applied only to the more powerful; and so the Cherusci, ever reputed good and just, are now called cowards and fools, while in the case of the victorious Chatti success has been identified with prudence. The downfall of the Cherusci brought with it also that of the Fosi, a neighbouring tribe, which shared equally in their disasters, though they had been inferior to them in prosperous days."

"Indeed, the crowning proof of their valour and their strength is that they keep up their superiority without harm to others."

"No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted."

"...ibi boni mores valent quam alibi bonae leges."

"Quanquam severa illic matrimonia"

"Mercury is the deity whom they chiefly worship, and on certain days they deem it right to sacrifice to him even with human victims."

"Scutum reliquisse praecipuum flagitium, nec aut sacris adesse aut concilium inire ignominioso fas; multique superstites bellorum infamiam laqueo finierunt."

"On the whole, one would say that their strength is in their infantry, which fights along with the cavalry; admirably adapted to the action of the latter is the swiftness of certain foot soldiers, who are picked from the entire youth of their country, and stationed in front of the line."

"They even say that an altar dedicated to Ulysses, with the addition of the name of his father, Laertes, was formerly discovered on the same spot, and that certain monuments and tombs with Greek inscriptions, still exist on the borders of Germany and Rhaetia."

"The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse. For in former times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean beyond us, is seldom entered by a sail from our world."

"Tu vero felix, Agricola, non vitae tantum claritate, sed etiam opportunitate mortis."

"Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris."

"Et maiores vestros et posteros cogitate."

"Idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset."

"Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium, atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant."

"These personal statements of Tacitus' aims and beliefs seem to be, if not wholly consistent, at least candid; but even the most superficial reading of his history will bring them into question. The claim to write "sine ira et studio" has been condemned by certain critics as sheer hypocrisy, and while most scholars have thought it honest in intention, few have considered the attempt successful. The aim of moral instruction, "ne virtutes sileantur", has been dismissed as political partisanship; his wish to trace events to their causes has been thought casual or pretentious. His views on philosophy and religion have been variously called agnostic, sceptical, stoic, fatalist, superstitious, and (as a last resort) "deeply original"."

"If Juvenal is supreme over the poets of his time, Tacitus is as clearly monarch of the prose-writers. He was continuing the work of Livy and writing from the same republican standpoint. But for history-writing he had certainly discovered a finer style of rhetoric. Both are rhetoricians first and historians a long way after, but the packed epigrams of Tacitus say more in a line than Livy is capable of thinking in a chapter. In describing a battle, a riot, or a panic, or in painting some tragic scene, such as the death of Vitellius, Tacitus is unequalled. The freedom that was permitted to him and Suetonius in depicting the crimes and follies of the earlier Cæsars affords remarkable evidence of the freedom of letters under Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian. Here, again, it is necessary, as in the case of Juvenal, to beware of accepting too literally the severity of his criticisms upon the preceding generation. To praise the past at the expense of the present was one of the traditions of Roman literature. But Tacitus was the last of Rome's great historians and his loss was irreparable."

"Tacitus farther describing the nature of the Germans, shews that the Romans had run greater hazards from them than from the Samnites, Carthaginians and Parthians, and attributes their bravery to the Liberty they enjoyed; for they are, says he, neither exhausted by Tributes, nor vexed by Publicans: and lest this Liberty should be violated, the chief men consult about things of lesser moment; but the most important matters are determined by all. Whoever would know the opinion of that wise Author concerning the German Liberty, may read his excellent Treatise concerning their Manners and Customs; but I presume this may be enough to prove that they lived free under such Magistrates as they chose, regulated by such Laws as they made, and retained the principal powers of the Government in their general or particular Councils."

"Tacitus has written an entire work on the manners of the Germans. This work is short, but it comes from the pen of Tacitus, who was always concise, because he saw everything at a glance."

"No international enterprise as yet has taken the initiative in collecting the hundred most dangerous books ever written. No doubt some time this collection will be made. When it is done, I suggest that Homer's Iliad and Tacitus' Germania should be given high priority among these hundred dangerous books. This is no reflection on Homer and Tacitus. Tacitus was a gentleman and, for all that I know, Homer was a gentleman too. But who will deny that the Iliad and the Germania raise most unholy passions in the human mind? It is fortunately not my task to speak here about the influence of Tacitus' Germania. One horror is enough for one day."

"Tacitus goes beyond this common source to provide a level of detail and an acuteness of political perception that is unique to his version. Likewise, though Tacitus knew the common sources which Suetonius, Dio, and Plutarch used in their accounts of the Civil War of 69, his result is so different that we must attribute the final product to his own craft and intelligence rather than to his raw material."

"[Tacitus] is a great writer who is especially appropriate for great persons, that is, those who hold the tiller of the state or those who give advice and counsel to the helmsman. What part of civil and military prudence, and what emotions of men (even concealed), what fortunes or events does he not openly reveal or show under a veil? ... There is none among the Greeks or Romans, and I will confidently assert, there will never be any, who can be compared with Tacitus in the glory earned by his prudence of every sort."

"Tacitus I consider the first writer in the world without a single exception. His book is a compound of history and morality of which we have no other example."

"Cornelius Tacitus is very good at teaching subjects how to live and act prudently, just as he teaches tyrants how to establish tyranny."

"The outstanding quality of Tacitus is his brilliance as a literary artist. Racine called him "the greatest painter of antiquity". Others have compared his work not so much to a series of pictures as to a continuous frieze. But of his supreme artistic genius there can be no doubt. A large part of the artistry resides in his style – the aspect of his talent which a translator has least hope of reproducing. Now ancient readers usually recognized stylistic talent, and by no means found that it interfered with their enjoyment when history contained a strong infusion of rhetoric. But the style of Tacitus, as it had developed to its culminating point in these Annals, was indeed extraordinary. It displays a sharp, astringent contrast to the rotund periods of Cicero and to the flowing, "milky" diction of Livy."

"Human fate often looks black to Tacitus. So does human nature. Yet he is far from sceptical about the potentialities of the human spirit. Even in times of civil war and tyrannical government, he is able to point to human actions of extraordinary virtue, bravery, and pertinacity. Indeed he is a humanist, and one whose contribution to our western tradition of humanism has been immense and singularly inspiring."

"[I]t seems that he is not really able to believe that an autocrat can be good. For he constantly stresses the evils of rule by one man. Perhaps this conviction is the central point of his philosophy. No amount of experience, he infers, can stand up against the corrupting effects of autocratic authority. "In spite of all his experience of public affairs, Tiberius was transformed and deranged by absolute power." So it was under Tiberius that freedom suffered its most fatal losses. As these are remorselessly described we do not feel two thousand years distant."

"Moral purpose...is never absent from Tacitus' mind. The sequence of events on which he chooses to focus his attention provoked the sternest moral reflections. To him, as to many others, decline and disaster seemed due to vice. Virtue and vice are continually emphasized and contrasted. As Tacitus himself says, "I regard it as the foremost task of the historian to ensure that virtues are not left unrecorded, and that evil words and deeds are made subject to the fears inspired by posterity's denunciation.""

"The most civilized nations of modern Europe issued from the woods of Germany, and in the rude institutions of those barbarians, we may still distinguish the original principles of our present laws and manners. In their primitive state of simplicity and independence, the Germans were surveyed by the discerning eye, and delineated by the masterly pencil of Tacitus, the first of historians who applied the science of philosophy to the study of facts. In his incomparable treatise, which contains, perhaps, more ideas than words, he has comprehended a description of the German manners, that has formerly exercised the diligence of innumerable antiquarians, and employed the genius and penetration of the philosophic historians of our own times."

"Reddite igitur, patres conscripti, ei vitam, cui ademistis. Vita enim mortuorum in memoria est posita vivorum."

"Cicero discusses justice as the second of the four cardinal virtues (wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance) whose presence constitutes moral goodness. Justice is the virtue that holds society together and allows us to pursue the common good for whose sake society exists. ... One interesting feature is his concern with in justice... The Stoic view that morality promotes the common good implies that we must try to restore the social relationship that has been violated."

"... It was Seneca or it was Cicero, I don't know which, that said, "If it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.""

"Quare non inmerito ab hominibus aetatis suae regnare in iudiciis dictus est, apud posteros vero id consecutus ut Cicero iam non hominis nomen sed eloquentiae habeatur. hunc igitur spectemus, hoc propositum nobis sit exemplum, ille se profecisse sciat cui Cicero valde placebit."

"But to confess the truth boldly (for once you have crossed over the barriers of impudence there is no more curb), his way of writing, and every other similar way, seems to me boring. For his prefaces, definitions, partitions, etymologies, consume the greater part of his work; what life and marrow there is, is smothered by his long-winded preparations. If I have spent an hour in reading him, which is a lot for me, and I remember what juice and substance I have derived, most of the time I find nothing but wind; for he has not yet come to the arguments that serve his purpose and the reasons that properly touch on the crux, which I am looking for."

"I have also read again Cicero's philosophical works, and think, as I thought at twenty two, when I read him under the chestnuts at Trinity, that the De Finibus is the best, that then comes the De Natura Deorum, and that the Tusculan Disputations are the least valuable,—mere anointing for broken bones."

"Interestingly, Cicero saw the root of benevolence and charity in conscience, and in fact was the first scholar in history to use the word “conscience” (conscientia) in the moral sense we are familiar with. We can summarize his thought by stating that friendship is possible when two or more persons who have some common purposes in life systematically act towards each other with benevolence and charity (caritas, which is a non-erotic form of love), guided by conscience."

"As for Cicero, when he had heard some of the verses [of Virgil's Eclogues], his piercing judgement immediately perceived that these were productions of uncommon vigor, and ordered the whole eclogue to be recited from the beginning. Having familiarized himself with its every nuance, he declared it "the second great hope of Rome" [Magnae spes altera Romae], as if he himself were the first hope of the Latin language and Maro the second. These words Virgil later inserted in the Aeneid [12.168]."

"If I could have known Cicero, and been his friend, and talked with him in his retirement at Tusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum l), I could have died contented."

"If unwilling to seek for proof or receive information from mediaeval, hermetic philosophy, we may go still further back into antiquity, and select, out of the great body of philosophers of the pre-Christian ages, one who can least be accused of superstition and credulity—Cicero. Speaking of those whom he calls gods, and who are either human or atmospheric spirits, " We know," says the old orator, " that of all living beings man is the best formed, and, as the gods belong to this number, they must have a human form... Epicurus, for whom hidden things were as tangible as if he had touched them with his finger, teaches us that gods are not generally visible, but that they are intelligible; that they are not bodies having a certain solidity . . . but that we can recognize them by their passing images; that as there are atoms enough in the infinite space to produce such images, these are produced before us . . . and make us realize what are these happy, immortal beings." p. 280"

"Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Epicharmus, Empedocles, Kebes, Euripides, Plato, Euclid, Philo, Boethius, Virgil, Marcus Cicero, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Psellus, Synesius, Origen, and, finally, Aristotle himself, far 'from denying our immortality, support it most emphatically. p. 251"

"Aristotle maintains that this gas, or astral emanation, escaping from inside the earth, is the sole sufficient cause, acting from within outwardly for the verification of every living being and plant upon the external crust. In answer to the skeptical negators of his century, Cicero, moved by a just wrath, exclaims : "And what can be more divine than the exhalations of the earth, which affect the human soul so as to enable her to predict the future ? And could the hand of time evaporate such a virtue?"... *(Book I, Section 18 De Divinatione – On Divination) Do modem experimentalists claim to be wiser than Cicero, and say that this eternal force has evaporated, and that the springs of prophecy are dry? p. 200"

"For, when Cicero tells us that he had seen the entire Iliad written on skin of such a miniature size, that it could easily be rolled up inside a nut-shell, and Pliny asserts that Nero had a ring with a small glass in it, through which he watched the performance of the gladiators at a distance—could audacity go farther? Truly, when we are told that Mauritius could see from the promontory of Sicily over the entire sea to the coast of Africa, with an instrument called nauscopite, we must either think that all these witnesses lied, or that the ancients were more than slightly acquainted with optics and magnifying glasses. p. 240"

"As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united in the same character, his authority should have great weight."

"Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges."

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book."

"The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease."

"Diem adimere aegritudinem hominibus."

"Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.'"

"So live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts"

"Study carefully, the character of the one you recommend, lest their misconduct bring you shame."