Historians From Rome

"You know how to vanquish, Hannibal, but you do not know how to profit from victory."

"We do not learn this only from the event, which is the master of fools."

"All things will be clear and distinct to the man who does not hurry; haste is blind and improvident."

"Truth, they say, is but too often in difficulties, but is never finally suppressed."

"He will have true glory who despises it."

"He would not anticipate those counsels which are rather bestowed by circumstances on men, than by men on circumstances."

"Luck is of little moment to the great general, for it is under the control of his intellect and his judgment."

"They are more than men at the outset of their battles; at the end they are less than the women."

"Envy like fire always makes for the highest points."

"The result showed that fortune helps the brave."

"No one wants to be excelled by his relatives."

"Vae victis!"

"Fortune blinds men when she does not wish them to withstand the violence of her onslaughts."

"There are laws for peace as well as war."

"Toil and pleasure, dissimilar in nature, are nevertheless united by a certain natural bond."

"Favor and honor sometimes fall more fitly on those who do not desire them."

"There is nothing man will not attempt when great enterprises hold out the promise of great rewards."

"Vos telis hostium estis indefensi, inulti? quid igitur arma habetis, aut quid ultro bellum intulistis, in otio tumultuosi, in bello segnes? quid hic stantibus spei est? an deum aliquem protecturum uos rapturumque hinc putatis? ferro via facienda est. hac qua me praegressum uideritis, agite, qui uisuri domos parentes coniuges liberos estis, ite mecum. non murus nec uallum sed armati armatis obstant. virtute pares, necessitate, quae ultimum ac maximum telum est, superiores estis'."

"Potius sero quam nunquam."

"Nature has ordained that the man who is pleading his own cause before a large audience, will be more readily listened to than he who has no object in view other than the public benefit."

"Passions are generally roused from great conflict."

"The troubles which have come upon us always seem more serious than those which are only threatening."

"From abundance springs satiety."

"Fame opportunely despised often comes back redoubled."

"Shared danger is the strongest of bonds; it will keep men united in spite of mutual dislike and suspicion."

"Law is a thing which is insensible, and inexorable, more beneficial and more profitious to the weak than to the strong; it admits of no mitigation nor pardon, once you have overstepped its limits."

"Before anything else [Numa] decided that he must instill in his subjects the fear of the gods, this being the most effective measure with an ignorant, and at that time uncultured, people."

"The old Romans all wished to have a king over them because they had not yet tasted the sweetness of freedom."

"Vulgatior fama est ludibrio fratris Remum novos transiluisse muros; inde ab irato Romulo, cum verbis quoque increpitans adiecisset 'sic deinde, quicumque alius transiliet moenia mea', interfectum."

"This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions."

"Nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus"

"I shall find antiquity a rewarding study, if only because, while I am absorbed in it, I shall be able to turn my eyes from the troubles which for so long have tormented the modern world."

"Rome has grown since its humble beginnings that it is now overwhelmed by its own greatness."

"Aetolos Acarnanas Macedonas, eiusdem linguae homines, leues ad tempus ortae causae diiungunt coniunguntque: cum alienigenis, cum barbaris aeternum omnibus Graecis bellum est eritque; natura enim, quae perpetua est, non mutabilibus in diem causis hostes sunt..."

"He possessed a peculiar talent of producing effect in whatever he said or did."

"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."