Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Definitive Primary Source On the History Of Imperial Roman, December 15, 2007
This review is from: Tacitus: The Annals, Books IV-VI, XI-XII (Loeb Classical Library No. 312) (Hardcover)
I read this book for a graduate course in Roman history. It is an indispensable primary source for students of Roman history.
On the first page of his Annals of Imperial Rome, Tacitus wrote that Octavian "seduced the army with bonuses, and his cheap food policy was successful bait for civilians." Tacitus' description of Augustus' transformation of Rome from a republic into an empire is most illuminating as well. "Upper-class survivors found that slavish obedience was the way to succeed, both politically and financially. They had profited from the revolution, and so now they liked the security of the existing arrangement better than the dangerous uncertainties of the old regime."
Sir Ronald Syme relied heavily on the work of Tacitus for his cogent narrative of Octavian's rise to power as Augustus. Syme's in-depth study of Tacitus' life and work was published in 1958. Tacitus' historical accuracy was doubted for centuries and Syme made a project of re-evaluating the accuracy of his historical writings. Syme believed that Tacitus was in a unique position to write about the birth and early political history of the Imperial period in Rome due to his very active political life. Tacitus had served as a senator, consul, and proconsul of Asia. In addition, he was known to be an excellent orator in his day. In his writings, Syme believed that Tacitus provided excellent accounts of Augustus' rise to power and his career as Rome's first Emperor.
Tacitus delved into the machinery of the new government, including Augustus' use of patronage as well as his many thwarted attempts at planning for his own succession. What Syme found was a man that grew very adept politically and whose political maturity rapidly developed at an early age. At eighteen, he was named as heir to Julius Caesar. He grew into the greatest Roman princeps spanning fifty-six years until his death. Augustus knew that to retain power he had to maintain the general consent of the governed. He astutely maintained order not by following the constitution or past precedent, but by using the tremendous resources at his disposal. Augustus kept the plebeians in check making sure they were fed, kept them amused with games, and constantly reminded them that he was protecting them from the oppression of the nobiles.
Augustus became the "leader of a large and well organized political party as the source and fount of patronage and advancement."
Recommended reading for those interested in Roman history, military history.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3.0 out of 5 stars
It has its moments, but it's a tough slog, January 4, 2012
This review is from: Tacitus: The Annals, Books IV-VI, XI-XII (Loeb Classical Library No. 312) (Hardcover)
Classicists invariably single out Tacitus as the greatest historian of the early Roman Empire, but I'm not really sure why. Among the reasons usually cited for elevating him above Suetonius, his contemporary, and Plutarch are his skill as a political analyst, his ability to delineate character and to infuse drama into his writing, and his psychological insight. In these volumes of "The Annals," Tacitus' astuteness as a political commentator is apparent, but otherwise I see very little evidence of the qualities for which he is so often praised.
Volumes IV-VI of "The Annals" cover the later years of Tiberius' reign while Books XI-XII focus upon the last seven years of Claudius' rule. I will not deny that Tacitus can turn a nice phrase, and individual sentences or sentence fragments reveal his dry humor and flair as a writer. Nero is described as "certainly not given to self-depreciation"; the latter-day Tiberius, "once absorbed in the cares of state" is "now unbending with equal zest in hidden vice and flagitious leisure"; the consul Fufius "had a turn for wit and a habit of ridiculing Tiberius with those bitter pleasantries which linger long in the memory of potentates"; and the orator Domitius Afer "enjoyed a fame which stood higher for eloquence than for virtue. Yet even of that eloquence age took heavy toll, sapping as it did his mental power and leaving his incapacity for silence." However delightful these individual sentences may be - and I just love "those bitter pleasantries which linger long in the memory of potentates"! - they fail to translate into an entertaining whole. Not to put too fine a point upon it, but "The Annals" is boring. The first 100 pages of Book IV were a total yawn; I could barely make it through. One may argue that it is not the job of a historian to entertain, merely to inform. I disagree. I feel as though a historian has a certain obligation to present his or her information in a way that holds the reader's interest. Suetonius and Plutarch recognized this and were more than willing to oblige. Tacitus, on the other hand, too often indulges in tedious descriptions of battles occurring in far-flung regions of the empire and endless discussions of Parthian-Armenian political affairs (the latter of doubtful relevance even at the time in which he was writing). Tacitus' approach as a historian differs greatly from the biographical, emperor-focused chronicles of Suetonius and Plutarch. Tacitus' scope is much broader. He provides a detailed, year-by-year, blow-by-blow account of the events occurring not only within the city of Rome but throughout the empire. This may be why modern day classical historians love him so much. He is both prolific and comprehensive, providing plenty of fodder for their own analyses. However, for the reader interested in learning about the history of Rome, this approach is not ideal. It's as if I were to write a history of the United States in the year 2011 and I decided to include descriptions of all events occurring in countries in which the U.S. had any economic or political stake. It becomes overwhelming, and while reading "The Annals" the reader's eyes glaze over as Tacitus drones on about internecine squabbling amongst Numidians, Frisian uprisings, and the struggle between the countries of Hypaepa, Tralles, Laodicea, Magnesia, Sardis and Smyrna over who should have the honor of erecting a shrine to the emperor.
Tacitus is at his best when he is describing palace intrigues and the political and economic situation within the city of Rome. For example, on the economic front he criticizes Rome for putting herself in a perilous situation with respect to the grain supply, arguing that Italy should grow her own crops instead of relying upon imports from Egypt and Africa. This observation was prescient: centuries later, the dependence upon foreign grain imports was a factor contributing to the fall of the Roman Empire. On the political front, Tacitus manages to recreate the atmosphere of paranoia that developed under Tiberius when Sejanus, prefect of the praetorian cohorts, began to exert undue influence and spearheaded a reign of terror. During these years, men were executed for minor transgressions, everyone was informing upon everyone else, and "alike in the Forum or at a dinner-party, to speak of any subject was to be accused: for every man was hastening to be first in the field and to mark down his victim, occasionally in self-defense, generally through infection with what seemed to be a contagious disease." Tacitus writes: "The ties of our common humanity had been dissolved by the force of terror; and before each advance of cruelty compassion receded." His portraits of Tiberius and Claudius are interesting but limited. Because Tacitus does not use the emperors' lives as the centerpiece of his history, he does not spend a lot of time fleshing out their characters or analyzing their motives. For example, Tacitus acknowledges that Tiberius' character had "its separate epochs" - the once just ruler "plung(ing) impartially into crime and into ignominy" - but he offers no real explanation for this degeneration beyond saying that Tiberius' family members and advisors had curbed his worst excesses and, with their deaths, "the restraints of shame and fear were gone." I did learn a fair amount from reading these volumes. There was a good discussion of the differences between Stoicism and Epicureanism. There was a wonderful paragraph or two about phoenixes, with Tacitus reporting on an alleged phoenix sighting in Egypt and speculating that it was a "spurious phoenix" because true phoenixes only visit at intervals of 1461 years. Tacitus' remarks concerning "the progress of alien superstitions" such as Judaism and the cults of Isis and Serapis were amusing. I learned that Claudius introduced three new characters into the Latin alphabet. And at long last, I discovered the reason why Roman nobles were always committing suicide the minute they were accused of a crime. According to Tacitus, a man who was legally condemned forfeited his estate and was debarred from burial, but if he committed suicide before being convicted "his body was interred and his will respected." "The Annals" has its moments, but it's a tough slog. For more enjoyable Roman history, I recommend Suetonius' "Twelve Caesars" and Plutarch's Lives.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rome's Most Famous Historian, October 29, 2011
This review is from: Tacitus: The Annals, Books IV-VI, XI-XII (Loeb Classical Library No. 312) (Hardcover)
Since there are so many of these darn things the review shall be divided into three sections. First, a brief description of the Loeb series of books and their advantages/disadvantages. Second shall be my thoughts on the author himself, his accuracy, as well as his style and the style of his translator. This is of course only my opinion and should be treated as such. The final part shall review what this particular book actually covers. The Loeb series date back to the turn of the last century. They are designed for people with at least some knowledge of Greek or Latin. They are a sort of compromise between a straight English translation and an annotated copy of the original text. On the left page is printed the text in Greek or Latin depending on the language of the writer and on the right side is the text in English. For somebody who knows even a little Greek or Latin these texts are invaluable. You can try to read the text in the original language knowing that you can correct yourself by looking on the next page or you can read the text in translation and check the translation with the original for more detail. While some of the translations are excellent mostly they are merely serviceable since they are designed more as an aid to translation rather than a translation in themselves. Most of them follow the Greek or Latin very closely. These books are also very small, maybe just over a quarter the size of your average hardcover book. This means that you'll need to buy more than just one book to read a complete work. They are also somewhat pricey considering their size. The Loeb Collection is very large but most of the more famous works can be found in better (and cheaper) translations elsewhere. If you want to read a rarer book or read one in the original language then you can't do better than the Loeb Editions. There are five volumes of Tacitus in the Loeb Classical Library. This includes all his surviving works. Tacitus is one of the most famous writers of the Roman Empire. He wrote most of his works in the early second century but they all deal with the events of the previous century. He is generally considered to be the Empire's best and most accurate historian. His earlier works include the Germania which is an account of the Germanians, the Agricola which is an account of his father-in-law and his governorship of Britain, and his Dialogues which is basically just a rhetorical exercise. His most famous works are his Histories and his Annals. Strangely, the order of these two is reversed, a fact which is carried through in the Loeb editions. He began with the Histories which cover from the death of Nero through Domitian intending to continue on through Nerva and Trajan. Instead he went backwards and started his Annals with Tiberius continuing on until he filled in all of the Julio-Claudians after Augustus. His writing style is impossible to reproduce in English. In what surely must have been an intentional feature he refuses to include the parallelisms much beloved by all other Latin authors. This is where a writer compares two things using the same structure. Instead he will make the comparisons but change the way the second thing is presented grammatically. It's difficult to express in English how strange that seems. The other feature of his style is the frequent use of epigrams at the end of his sentences. These are pithy and often sarcastic comments that wittily sum up the essence of what he means. The most famous of these is probably "They make a desert and call it peace," from the Agricola. There are many good translations of Tacitus. This one isn't too bad but the Oxford World Classics translations of the Agricola and Germania, The Annals and The Histories are probably the best. Be warned though, the translation achieves its quality by being rather loose at times. The most accurate translation is the Loeb one, but it really depends what you're looking for in the book. Other useful sources for this period include Suetonius ( Volume I, Volume II) and Cassius Dio. These books cover Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius and detail (amongst other things) Rome's first imperial assassination and the conquest of Britain.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
|
