Biographers

"The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over the harbor and city on silent haunches, and then moves on."

"Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders."

"I am the people — the mob — the crowd — the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?"

"Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions."

"I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way."

"Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen. Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life. To be a good loser is to learn how to win. I was sure there are ten men in me and I do not know or understand one of them. I could safely declare, I am an idealist. A Parisian cynic says "I believe in nothing. I am looking for clues." My statement would be : I believe in everything — I am only looking for proofs."

"Yesterday is done. Tomorrow never comes. Today is here. If you don't know what to do, sit still and listen. You may hear something. Nobody knows. We may pull apart the petals of a rose or make chemical analysis of its perfume, but the mystic beauty of its form and odor is still a secret, locked in to where we have no keys."

"There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted."

"Punitis ingeniis, gliscit auctoritas."

"Suum cuique decus posteritas rependit."

"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."

"Tacitus is the only writer I know that comes up to my idea of such a philosophical historian. Even the interesting Livy himself cannot, in this sense, be compared to him. Both indeed have soared far above those ignorant compilers, who see nothing in facts but the circumstances of which they are composed: but the one has written history as a rhetorician, and the other as a philosopher. Not that either Tacitus was ignorant of the language of the passions, or Livy in that of reason; the latter, more earnest to please than instruct, conducts us step by step in the retinue of his heroes, and makes us alternately experience the effects of horrour, pity, and admiration. Tacitus employs the force of rhetoric only to display the connection between the links that form the chain of historical events, and to instruct the reader by sensible and profound reflections."

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

"The greatest man who has as yet given himself to the recording of human affairs is, beyond question, Cornelius Tacitus. Alone in Tacitus a serene calmness of insight was compatible with intensity of feeling. He took no side; he may have been Imperialist, he may have been Republican, but he has left no sign whether he was either: he appears to have sifted facts with scrupulous integrity; to administer his love, his scorn, his hatred, according only to individual merit: and his sentiments are rather felt by the reader in the life-like clearness of his portraits, than expressed in words by himself. Yet such a power of seeing into things was only possible to him, because there was no party left with which he could determinedly side, and no wide spirit alive in Rome through which he could feel."

"He was most diligent in explaining motives (in consiliis explicandis) and most penetrating in enquiring into causes; no one has seen more acutely or described more faithfully the arts of princes and of those around them."

"His bias against the dynastic system is plain; yet his accuracy, though severely probed by modern criticism, can rarely be impugned. Though sometimes an unfavourable interpreter of his facts, he will not blacken even Tiberius or Nero by crediting stupid rumours about them (Ann. 4. 1 1; 16. 6). His picture of capital and court is terrible, but its general truth is incontestable. His gaze is focused upon Rome; when he looks farther be approves the sturdy simplicity of North Italy and the provinces (Ann. 16. 5), and can pen a moving appeal for the preservation of the Empire (Hist. 4. 74). Though mistrustful of "civilization" and of its debilitating effects, he never despairs of human nature: even the Civil War produced examples of heroism, loyalty, and friendship (Hist. I. 3), and virtue is not confined to past ages (Ann. 3. 55). Napoleon called Tacitus a "traducer of humanity": from one who spent his powers in annihilating humanity this verdict is interesting, but simply untrue. In independent research and judgement, in essential truth, in the dramatic power and nobility of an enthralling style, Tacitus claims his place among the greatest historians."

"He represented to the life...not only outward actions...but also the most secret of thoughts."

"The appeal of Tacitus' Germania to Englishmen as an account of their ancestors was to be a lasting one; its influence is still obvious in the high-Victorian scholarship of Stubbs, Freeman and Green... As a piece of ethnography, Tacitus' work has much charm, sowing in the mind images from heroic life: the lightly dressed warriors, bound by a touching loyalty to their chief, urged on in battle by their chaste wives; the assemblies, held in the open at new or full moon, clashing weapons as a sign of assent; the investiture of the young warrior with shield and spear; the villages of scattered houses, each surrounded by a clearing; everywhere the surrounding forest. Tacitean society is not one of absolute equality; there are important hereditary distinctions of rank. But the general impression is one of a hard, in some respects savage, but simple, spacious and independent life, and a society essentially transparent and free, bound together by intelligible, strong, yet largely voluntary loyalties."

"[Tacitus] has a higher reputation than other more learned historians, because he not only narrates events, but, so to speak, writes a commentary on his own narrative."

"Of all histories I think Tacitus simply the best."

"Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people."

"cupido dominandi cunctis adfectibus flagrantior est"

"nisi impunitatis cupido retinuisset, magnis semper conatibus adversa."

"The name [Christians] was derived from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, suffered under Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judæa. By that event the sect, of which he was the founder, received a blow, which, for a time, checked the growth of a dangerous superstition; but it revived soon after, and spread with recruited vigour, not only in Judæa, the soil that gave it birth, but even in the city of Rome, the common sink into which every thing infamous and abominable flows like a torrent from all quarters of the world."

"Nihil deorum honoribus relictum, cum se templis et effigie numinum per flamines et sacerdotes coli vellet."

"Ne Tiberium quidem caritate aut rei publicae cura successorem adscitum, sed quoniam adrogantiam saevitiamque eius introspexerit, comparatione deterrima sibi gloriam quaesivisse."

"So true is it that all transactions of preeminent importance are wrapt in doubt and obscurity; while some hold for certain facts the most precarious hearsays, others turn facts into falsehood; and both are exaggerated by posterity."

"For I deem it to be the chief function of history to rescue merit from oblivion, and to hold up before evil words and evil deeds the terror of the reprobation of posterity."

"Pacem sine dubio post haec, verum cruentam."

"Juniores post Actiacam victoriam, etiam senes plerique inter bella civium nati: quotus quisque reliquus qui rem publicam vidisset? Igitur verso civitatis statu nihil usquam prisci et integri moris: omnes exuta aequalitate iussa principis aspectare, ..."

"Tiberii Gaique et Claudii ac Neronis res florentibus ipsis ob metum falsae, postquam occiderant, recentibus odiis compositae sunt. inde consilium mihi pauca de Augusto et extrema tradere, mox Tiberii principatum et cetera, sine ira et studio, quorum causas procul habeo."

"The Jews’ other customs, which are at once perverse and disgusting, owe their strength to their very badness. The most degraded out of other races, scorning their national beliefs, brought to them their contributions and presents. This augmented the wealth of the Jews, as also did the fact, that among themselves they are inflexibly honest and ever ready to shew compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies. They sit apart at meals, they sleep apart, and though, as a nation, they are singularly prone to lust, they abstain from intercourse with foreign women; among themselves nothing is unlawful. Circumcision was adopted by them as a mark of difference from other men. Those who come over to their religion adopt the practice, and have this lesson first instilled into them, to despise all gods, to disown their country, and set at nought parents, children, and brethren. Still they provide for the increase of their numbers. It is a crime among them to kill any newly-born infant."

"Vitia erunt donec homines"

"Viginti clarissimarum familiarum imagines antelatae sunt, Manlii, Quinctii aliaque eiusdem nobilitatis nomina. sed praefulgebant Cassius atque Brutus eo ipso quod effigies eorum non visebantur."

"Deos fortioribus adesse."

"Some might consider him as too fond of fame; for the desire for glory clings even to the best men longer than any other passion."

"Divisa inter exercitum ducesque munia: militibus cupidinem pugnandi convenire, duces providendo, consultando, cunctatione saepius quam temeritate prodesse. ut pro virili portione armis ac manu victoriam iuverit, ratione et consilio, propriis ducis artibus, profuturum."