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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A personal look at Britain's most famous Roman governor, January 13, 2008
Tacitus' Agricola is a biographical eulogy for Britain's most famous Roman governor, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who is Britain's most famous Roman governor because of Tacitus' Agricola. Tacitus himself (ch 46) noted that this might be the case. As Agricola was his father-in-law and a man he obviously admired no little bit, Agricola gives us not just the professional historian's recounting of his career, but a personal look as well.
As Agricola died at 44 years of age after several years of retirement in Rome, the reader is surprised to see how much the man stuffed into such a short career: a short stay in Britain as a junior officer, a term as a quaestor in Asia, a small but important role in Vespasian's ascent to the purple, a consulship, and then seven years as governor of the Britain. He was finally recalled to Rome by Domitian, where he quietly lay out of the way until his untimely death. Tacitus walks us through each of these events - or rather runs us through them in 46 short chapters - ending with a lamentation not so much for the death of Agricola as for the fact that the senate, of which Tacitus was a member, failed to show the kind of leadership shown by Agricola over the course of his short life in the face of Domitian's reign of terror.
Like in his Germania, Tacitus in Agricola includes valuable material concerning the peoples on the edges of Empire, this time the various tribes of Britons, as he compares the physical characteristics (red hair and large limbs in the case of the Caledonians, swarthy faces and curly hair of the Silures) of the natives with those of the nations that dwelt nearest by sea. Tacitus also informs us that a part of Agricola's early program was to establish Latin among the sons of the nobility, and while Tacitus looks down his nose at the British for accepting what he calls "novelties," it is clear that Agricola's efforts in this respect were the only way to tie a frontier province like Britain to the Empire.
There is, however, much to dislike in the Agricola as well, at least for the modern reader. Agricola is presented to us as a man without fault, which while perhaps proper for a eulogy, makes for poor history. We learn that he acted always with energy and responsibility (ch 5), he possessed a passion for military glory (ch 8) though he never used that success to glorify himself (ch 18), he was efficient and modest (ch 8). He was also minutely involved in every task, from personally choosing camps and reconnoitering forests (ch 20) to taking up a fighting position, sans horse, in the front of his troops during dangerous battles (ch 36). Tacitus says that Agricola "was everywhere at once," a true Roman leader, and yet while Tacitus describes Agricola's noble qualities, with the exception of one speech we never see them displayed. We never see Agricola acting in specific instances, always generally - we are not even given the place-names where many of Agricola's battles were fought - and not only do we never meet any of his contemporaries, it seems we never truly meet Agricola either. We are looking always at a portrait, but rather than a realistic one, Agricola seems a cartoonish one in too many ways.
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