Book Review: The Annals

The version of Tacitus' masterpiece that I read was from The Complete Works of Tacitus, translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. While this edition is cheap and does include all of Tacitus' works, it fails to include footnotes or maps. Since I was primarily interested in a quick read through rather than a study, this lack of scholarly aids did not bother me too much, though the names (both of people and places) come fast and furious. I am not going to comment on the accuracy or skill of the translators since I have only read a few sections of Tacitus in the original, and even that was without any professorial guidance.

Given that my read was a quick one (or as quick as a 400 page read can be), I'll confine myself to basic impressions. The feeling consistent throughout the whole work was that of horror. Free speech died in Rome after Julius Caesar and then was completely extirpated by Tiberius. The political machinations of a totalitarian state (which Rome was for the senatorial classes) is horrifying to read: betrayals, murders, and suicides are near continuous whenever Tacitus dwells on events in Rome. He apologizes for his material, but maintains that such deeds cannot be forgotten. Tacitus' military accounts are generally poor, though whether from a lack of understanding or a because of his specific ideology I don't know.* Even the relatively benign reigns of Tiberius and Claudius proved deadly to the ruling class.

As a cynical, world-weary historian, Tacitus also uses his Annals to make comments on universal human nature. My favorite observation of his dealt with fear:

The Senate and the leading citizens were in doubt whether to regard him as more terrible at a distance or among them. After a while, as is the way with great terrors, they thought what happened the worst alternative.

The same sentiment might be found in college football fans or avid followers of politics.

Tacitus also mentions Christians in what is one of the earliest references to them in non-Christian test. The context is, of course, the great fire and the accusation that Nero himself set it so that he could redesign the city to his whim:

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most miscievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled witht he people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they had been destroyed.

Aside from its obvious religious interest, this passage makes clear just how violent the Roman world was. Note how Tacitus, who rails against the injustices and evils perpetrated by emperors, takes exception not that people were burned alive and torn apart by wild animals but that the whole affair was part of a show.

Is it good or bad that the Emperor Claudius and I independently had the same thoughts about the fall of the Athenian Empire?:

What was the ruin of Sparta and Athens, but this, that mighty as they were in war, they spurned from them as aliens those whom they had conquered? Our founder Romulus, on the other hand, was so wise that he fought as enemies and then hailed as fellow-citizens several nations on the very same day. Strangers have reigned over us. That freedman's sons should be intrusted with public offices is not, as many wrongly think, a sudden innovation, but was a common practice in the old commonwealth. (11.24)

I'd like to think good, if only for the joy of touching someone's mind (whether that of Claudius or Tacitus) across so many centuries. Classics can be quite rewarding for this reason.

Unless one is severely strapped for cash, I would recommend a different edition. The lack of any any scholarly apparatus is critical; however, I bought this edition because I had heard bad things about Michael Grant's translation. Oh well. Would the general reader be interested at all? I would think so, though not necessarily for the entire work. Some general knowledge of Roman history would of course be helpful.



*See Sallust by Sir Ronald Syme if you're simply dying to read about the ideology of ancient historians.