Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II | Page 3

before us lit to the soul by a fierce light of
psychological analysis: we learn to loath the characteristic vices of the
time, and to understand the moral causes of Roman decadence. But
somehow the dominance of the moral interest and the frequent
interruption of the narrative by scenes of senatorial inefficiency serve
to obscure the plain sequence of events. It is difficult after a first
reading of the Histories to state clearly what happened in these two
years. And this difficulty is vastly annoying to experts who wish to
trace the course of the three campaigns. Those whose interest is not in
Tacitus but in the military history of the period are recommended to
study Mr. B.W. Henderson's Civil War and Rebellion in the Roman
Empire, a delightful book which makes the dark places plain. But they
are not recommended to share his contempt for Tacitus because his
accounts of warfare are as bad as, for instance, Shakespeare's. Tacitus
does not describe in detail the tactics and geography of a campaign,
perhaps because he could not do so, certainly because he did not wish
to. He regarded such details as dry bones, which no amount of literary
skill could animate. His interest is in human character. Plans of

campaign throw little light on that: so they did not interest him, or, if
they did, he suppressed his interest because he knew that his public
would otherwise behave as Dr. Johnson did when Fox talked to him of
Catiline's conspiracy. 'He withdrew his attention and thought about
Tom Thumb.'
There is no worse fault in criticism than to blame a work of art for
lacking qualities to which it makes no pretension. Tacitus is not a 'bad
military historian'. He is not a 'military' historian at all. Botticelli is not
a botanist, nor is Shakespeare a geographer. It is this fault which leads
critics to call Tacitus 'a stilted pleader at a decadent bar', and to
complain that his narrative of the war with Civilis is 'made dull and
unreal by speeches'--because they have not found in Tacitus what they
had no right to look for. Tacitus inserts speeches for the same reason
that he excludes tactical details. They add to the human interest of his
work. They give scope to his great dramatic powers, to that passionate
sympathy with character which finds expression in a style as nervous as
itself. They enable him to display motives, to appraise actions, to reveal
moral forces. It is interest in human nature rather than pride of rhetoric
which makes him love a good debate.
The supreme distinction of Tacitus is, of course, his style. That is lost
in a translation. 'Hard' though his Latin is, it is not obscure. Careful
attention can always detect his exact thought. Like Meredith he is 'hard'
because he does so much with words. Neither writer leaves any doubt
about his meaning. It is therefore a translator's first duty to be lucid,
and not until that duty is done may he try by faint flushes of epigram to
reflect something of the brilliance of Tacitus' Latin. Very faint indeed
that reflection must always be: probably no audience could be found to
listen to a translation of Tacitus, yet one feels that his Latin would
challenge and hold the attention of any audience that was not
stone-deaf. But it is because Tacitus is never a mere stylist that some of
us continue in the failure to translate him. His historical deductions and
his revelations of character have their value for every age. 'This form of
history,' says Montaigne, 'is by much the most useful ... there are in it
more precepts than stories: it is not a book to read, 'tis a book to study
and learn: 'tis full of sententious opinions, right or wrong: 'tis a nursery

of ethic and politic discourses, for the use and ornament of those who
have any place in the government of the world.... His pen seems most
proper for a troubled and sick state, as ours at present is; you would
often say it is us he paints and pinches.' Sir Henry Savile, Warden of
Merton and Provost of Eton, who translated the Histories into racy
Elizabethan English at a time when the state was neither 'troubled' nor
'sick' is as convinced as Montaigne or the theorists of the French
Revolution that Tacitus had lessons for his age. 'In Galba thou maiest
learne, that a Good Prince gouerned by evill ministers is as dangerous
as if he were evill himselfe. By Otho, that the fortune of a rash man is
Torrenti similis, which rises at an instant, and falles in a moment. By
Vitellius, that he that hath no vertue can neuer be happie: for by his
own baseness he will loose all,