Writing and Empire in Tacitus (review)

Although he did not reach the awesome heights of a Verginius Rufus or Julius Frontinus, Tacitus nonetheless enjoyed a successful public career by the standards of the early principate. Promoted through the cursus honorum by the Flavians, he held a suffect consulship under Nerva, and the proconsulship of Asia under Trajan. But, according to Sailor, under the principate a public career such as this risked giving the impression of servile submission to an imperial master. Prestige was achieved by a "demonstrative, significant noncompliance" (24) that suggested autonomy and even alienation. Historiography was one way—safer than Stoic martyrdom—that independence could be displayed: one opted for free speech in place of parroting the regime's preferred version of events. If speaking in outright opposition only brought a quick end, autonomy could be established by constructing oneself in writing as an outsider to society, "aware of its fictions but not deceived by them" (48). That was the path Tacitus took.

Sailor examines Tacitus' relationship with the principate in his literary works by interrogating programmatic statements in the prefaces of the Agricola and the Histories and representative stretches of narrative in the Histories and Annals. The result is provocative, original, and unevenly argued. In the Agricola (ch.2), Tacitus defines himself against the previous regime by correcting Domitian's representation of Agricola's victories in Britain and by contributing to the condemnation of Domitian's memory. I am less convinced than Sailor (71–72) that at Agr. 3.3 Tacitus' deferring praise of Trajan to a future work is sufficient to make him appear autonomous in the present (the gesture works better in the Histories). Tacitus does praise Trajan (3.1, 44.5), and the Agricola can be interpreted as an attempt to establish authority in the new age.

In the preface of the Histories (ch.3), Tacitus presents an outline of historiography that blames the principate for the decline in the genre. Emperors established "relations of reciprocity" that distorted truth, promoted convenient falsehoods, and inculcated "a sort of psychological enslavement" (133). Such a history might suggest that Tacitus' own project is flawed, but he adopts various techniques to distance himself from his predecessors and their failings. Deferring the treatment of Nerva and Trajan to a future date allows Tacitus to assert his independence in the present: he has not bowed to pressure (spoken or unspoken) to write their history. Tacitus thereby proclaims his narrative to be free from the distorting effects of the principate.

In the Annals (ch.5), by associating himself with Cremutius Cordus, Tacitus tries to counter suspicions that he is a slave of the regime. Cordus is an attractive model since his fate proves that historiography has consequences in the real world. Tacitus has already claimed that his Annals are useful (4.32–33), and the association with Cordus makes them topical, even dangerous. Tacitus depicts Cordus' trial (4.34–35) as the regime's attempt to control historiography and vindicates him by enacting the memorialization that Cordus has predicted and by thwarting Tiberius' concern for his own reputation amongst posterity (4.37.2–38.3). Tacitus' claim of autonomy in rejecting the regime's attempts at controlling memory is balanced by his careful handling of Cordus. Cordus is less outspoken than might have been expected; Tacitus, argues Sailor in what is the strongest part of the book, restrains Cordus' exercise of libertas lest he himself look conformist in comparison.

Tacitus' nuanced handling of Cordus suggests that this thesis of alienation should not be pushed too far or considered a dominating feature of his literary works. On the contrary, Tacitus uses his career to create authority in his literary works. In his mention of Claudius' Saecular games (Ann. 11.11), a passage not discussed by Sailor, Tacitus directs his readers to the Histories for a fuller treatment of the calculation of the saeculum; he simultaneously draws attention to his special role as quindecimvir and praetor during Domitian's Saecular games. This...