The dates of the birth and death of Tacitus are uncertain,
but it is probable that he was born about 54 A. D.
and died after 117. He was a contemporary and
friend of the younger Pliny, who addressed to him some
of his most famous epistles. Tacitus was apparently
of the equestrian class, was an advocate by training,
and had a reputation as an orator, though none of
his speeches has survived. He held a number of
important public offices, and married the daughter
of Agricola, the conqueror of Britain, whose life
he wrote.
The two chief works of Tacitus, the “Annals”
and the “Histories,” covered the history
of Rome from the death of Augustus to A. D. 96; but
the greater part of the “Histories” is
lost, and the fragment that remains deals only with
the year 69 and part of 70. In the “Annals”
there are several gaps, but what survives describes
a large part of the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius,
and Nero. His minor works, besides the life of
Agricola, already mentioned, are a “Dialogue
on Orators” and the account of Germany, its
situation, its inhabitants, their character and customs,
which is here printed.
Tacitus stands in the front rank of the historians
of antiquity for the accuracy of his learning, the
fairness of his judgments, the richness, concentration,
and precision of his style. His great successor,
Gibbon, called him a “philosophical historian,
whose writings will instruct the last generations
of mankind”; and Montaigne knew no author “who,
in a work of history, has taken so broad a view of
human events or given a more just analysis of particular
characters.”
The “Germany” is a document of the greatest
interest and importance, since it gives us by far
the most detailed account of the state of culture
among the tribes that are the ancestors of the modern
Teutonic nations, at the time when they first came
into account with the civilization of the Mediterranean.
The whole of Germany is thus bounded; separated from
Gaul, from Rhoetia and Pannonia, by the rivers Rhine
and Danube; from Sarmatia and Dacia by mutual fear,
or by high mountains: the rest is encompassed
by the ocean, which forms huge bays, and comprehends
a tract of islands immense in extent: for we
have lately known certain nations and kingdoms there,
such as the war discovered. The Rhine rising in
the Rhoetian Alps form a summit altogether rocky and
perpendicular, after a small winding towards the west,
is lost in the Northern Ocean. The Danube issues
out of the mountain Abnoba, one very high but very
easy of ascent, and traversing several nations, falls
by six streams into the Euxine Sea; for its seventh
channel is absorbed in the Fenns.
