Tacitus Essay

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‘For the ancients, ‘historical truth’ was a realistic narrative based on a hard core of
facts.’ Discuss with regard to Tacitus.

It is now accepted that ancient historiography cannot and should not be directly
compared with its modern equivalent, or judged against the same standards of
objectivity and factuality that lie at the heart of the modern discipline. For the ancients,
the distinction between historical writing and literature was blurred at best: the idea of
history as a purely academic pursuit was unknown and entertainment as well as (if not
instead of) exposition was the professed goal of the historian. Even today, an author
such as Tacitus is admired as much for his linguistic flair as for his historical insight and
analysis. The straightforward question of whether or not we can treat the work of Greek
and Roman historians as unbiased historical records in the same way we might treat an
official financial account or an artefact unearthed by archaeology is not, therefore,
crucial: we cannot. The question is instead one of extent: if facts were not the historian’s
primary concern, then how important were they, and why? While Syme and those who
have followed him have pointed out that Tacitus would have had access to reliable
records, the ‘facts’ contained therein may have served as just one of many inspirations
for a largely invented narrative. What, then, was the balance between substance and
style; history and literature; fact and invention? Tacitus stands out from the crowd
because of the scale, scope and skill of his work, but also because of his attitude. His
writing is markedly more pessimistic, more critical than that of his predecessors. This
could be the result of a personal preference, but it might also imply something about the
time he wrote about, or indeed the time in which he wrote. The question takes on
particular significance when applied to Tacitus’ treatment of the emperor Tiberius. The
eloquence of the historian’s criticism, together with a lack of other satisfactory sources,
means that our image of Augustus’ successor as a cruel and cunning despot presiding
over a cowed empire relies heavily on his presentation in the Annals. To take Tacitus’
Tiberius as a literary creation would not only have implications for the way we think of
‘historical truth’ in the ancient world, but force us to re-evaluate the Principate as a
mode of government.

At first glance, there is a case to be made for the relative objectivity of Tacitus, and
there are suggestions that he took pains to base his narrative on fact. First of all, we
have the historian’s own assurances of his impartiality and his thirst for knowledge. In
the programmatic preface to the Histories, he assures readers of his distance from the
events he will describe: ‘I myself knew nothing of Galba, of Otho, or of Vitellius, either
from benefits or from injuries’. The implication is that his narrative will not be coloured
either by the ‘flattery’ or the ‘hatred’ of the imperial system that had undermined
previous authors. In the same passage, he claims that his material is novel (‘novis
cladibus’), which on the face of it suggests he has unearthed new information. In a
digression he makes in Book III of the Annals, he reasserts that his ‘conception of the
first duty of history’ is ‘to ensure that merit will not lack its record and to hold before
the vicious word and deed the terrors of posterity and infamy’, while in Book IV we
find him positively apologising for dwelling on small details: ‘I am not unaware that
very many of the events I have described, and shall describe, may perhaps seem little
things, trifles too slight for record’. Tacitus’ claims to authorial distance appear borne
out in the narrative on those frequent occasions he furnishes us with alternative
viewpoints. That he often takes the time to dwell on relatively minor details – such as
the name of the senator who proposed a particular motion – encourages us to believe

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