Germania and Agricola | Page 6

Augustus. It was the good fortune of Augustus to gain the supremacy at
Rome, when society had reached its maximum of refinement, and was
just ready to enter upon its stage of corruption and decline. Hence his
name is identified with that proud era in literature, in producing which
he bore at best only an accidental and secondary part. In the literature
of the Augustan age, we admire the substance of learning and
philosophy without the show, the cultivation of taste without the parade
of criticism, the fascination of poetry without its corruption, and the use
of eloquence without its abuse. Grecian refinement was no longer
despised; Grecian effeminacy had not yet prevailed. The camp was not
now the home of the Romans; neither were the theatres and the schools.
They had ceased to be a nation of soldiers, and had not yet become a
nation of slaves. At no other period could Rome have had her Cicero,
her Livy, and her Virgil.
The silver age produced no men who "attained unto these first three."

But there are not wanting other bright names to associate with Tacitus,
though most of them lived a little earlier than he. There was Seneca, the
Philosopher, whose style, with its perpetual antitheses, is the very worst
of the age, but his sentiments, perhaps more or less under the influence
of Christianity, approach nearer to the Christian code of morals than
those of any other Latin author. There were Martial and Juvenal, whose
satires made vice tremble in its high places, and helped to confer on the
Romans the honor of originating one species of literary composition,
unknown to the Greeks. There were Suetonius and Plutarch; the one
natural, simple, and pure in his style, far beyond his age, but without
much depth or vigor of thought; the other involved and affected in his
manner, but in his matter of surpassing richness and incalculable worth.
There was the elder Pliny, a prodigy of learning and industry, whose
researches in Natural History cost him his life, in that fatal eruption of
Vesuvius which buried Herculaneum and Pompeii. There was also the
judicious Quintilian, at once neat and nervous in his language, delicate
and correct in his criticisms, a man of genius and a scholar, a teacher
and an exemplar of eloquence. Finally, there were the younger Pliny
and Tacitus, rival candidates for literary and professional distinction,
yet cherishing for each other the most devoted and inviolable
attachment, each viewing the other as the ornament of their country,
each urging the other to write the history of their age, and each relying
chiefly on the genius of the other for his own immortality (Plin. Epis.
vii. 33). Their names were together identified by their contemporaries
with the literature of the age of Trajan: "I never was touched with a
more sensible pleasure," says Pliny, in one of his beautiful Letters
[Eleven of these are addressed to Tacitus, and two or three are written
expressly for the purpose of furnishing materials for his history.]
(which rival Cicero's in epistolary ease and elegance), "than by an
account which I lately received from Cornelius Tacitus. He informed
me, that at the last Circensian Games, he sat next a stranger, who, after
much discourse on various topics of learning, asked him whether he
was an Italian or a Provincial. Tacitus replied, 'Your acquaintance with
literature must have informed you who I am.' 'Aye,' said the man, 'is it
then Tacitus or Pliny I am talking with?' I cannot express how highly I
am pleased to find, that our names are not so much the proper
appellations of individuals, as a designation of learning itself" (Plin.

Epis. ix. 23). Critics are not agreed to which of these two literary
friends belongs the delicate encomium of Quintilian, when, after
enumerating the principal writers of the day, he adds, "There is another
ornament of the age, who will deserve the admiration of posterity. I do
not mention him at present; his name will be known hereafter." Pliny,
Tacitus, and Quintilian, are also rival candidates for the honor of
having written the Dialogue de Claris Oratoribus, one of the most
valuable productions in ancient criticism.
As a writer, Tacitus was not free from the faults of his age. The native
simplicity of Greek and Latin composition had passed away. An
affected point and an artificial brilliancy were substituted in their place.
The rhetoric and philosophy of the schools had infected all the
departments of literature. Simple narrative no longer suited the
pampered taste of the readers or the writers of history. It must be highly
seasoned with sentimentalism and moralizing, with romance and poetry.
Tacitus, certainly, did not escape the infection. In the language of
Macaulay, "He carries his love of effect far beyond the limits of