Caligula into the temple; and that when Pompey took Jerusalem, he found no image of any deity, and the sanctuary empty. He adds, that they sacrifice rams in order to show contempt to Jupiter Ammon, and oxen, because, under that form, Apis was worshipped by the Egyptians; that they abstain from pork in remembrance of their having been afflicted with leprosy, to which that animal is subject, and eat unleavened bread as a memorial of their once having stolen food. On the seventh day, which terminated their wanderings, they do no work, and in like manner the seventh year they devote to idleness. This Sabbath, some assert that they keep holy in honour of Saturn. They believe in the immortality of the soul, and in future rewards and punishments, and embalm their dead like the Egyptians. Such are the various traditions respecting the Jews which Tacitus incorporates in his Histories..

4

The Annals, which were written subsequently to the Histories, were so called, because each historical event is recorded in historical order under the year to which it belongs. They consist of sixteen books; commence with the death of Augustus, and conclude with that of Nero.5 The only portions extant are -the first four books, part of the fifth, the sixth, part of the eleventh, the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and the commencement of the sixteenth book. The Annals are rather histories of each successive emperor than of the Roman people; but this is the necessary condition of narrating the fortunes of a nation which now possessed only the bare name, and not the reality of constitutional government. The state was now the emperor; the end and object of the social system his security; and every political event must therefore be treated in relation to him.

But a history of this kind in the hands of one who had such skill in diving into the recesses of man's heart, who could read so shrewdly and delineate so vigorously human character, whọ possessed as a writer such picturesque and dramatic power, becomes the more interesting from its biographical nature, and its philosophical importance as a moral rather than a political study.

It is not, owing to circumstances over which the author had no control, the history of a great nation, for the Romans, as a whole, were no longer great. Neither does it paint the rise, progress and development of constitutional freedom, for it had reached its zenith, had declined, become paralyzed, and finally extinct. But still there existed bright examples of heroism, and courage, and self-devotion, truly Roman, and instances not less prominent of corruption and degradation. Individuals stand out in bold relief, eminent for the noblest virtues or blackened by the basest crimes. These appear either singly or in groups upon the stage: the emperor forms the principal figure; and the moral sense of the reader is awakened to admire instances of patient suffering and determined bravery, or abject slavery and remorseless despotism.

The object of Tacitus, therefore, was not, like that of the great philosophical historian of Greece, to describe the growth of political institutions, or the implacable animosities which raged between opposite political principles-the struggles for supremacy between a class and a whole people-but the influence which the establishment of tyranny on the ruins of liberty exercised for good or for evil in bringing out the character of the individual. Rome, the imperial city, was the all-engrossing subject of his predecessors; Romans were but subordinate and accessary. Tacitus delineated the lives and deaths of individuals, and showed the relation which they bore to the fortunes of their country.

It would have been impossible to have satisfied a people whose taste had become more than ever rhetorical, without the introduction of orations. Those of Tacitus are perfect specimens of art; and probably, with the exception of Galgacus,' far more true than those of other Roman historians. Still he made use of them, not only to imbody traditional accounts of what had really been said on each occasion, but to illustrate his own views of the character of the speaker, and to convey his own political opinions.

Full of sagacious observation and descriptive power, Tacitus engages the most serious attention of the reader by the gravity of his condensed and comprehensive style, as he does by the wis'Life of Agricola.

dom and dignity of his reflections. The purity and gravity of his sentiments remind the reader even of Christian authors.

Living amidst the influences of a corrupt age he was uncontaminated; and by his virtue and integrity, his chastened political liberality, commands our admiration as a man, whilst his love of truth is reflected in his character as an historian. Although he' imitated, as well as approved, the cautious policy of his fatherin-law, he was not destitute of moral firmness.

It derogates nothing from his courage that he was silent during the perilous times in which great part of his life was passed, and spoke with boldness only when the happy reign of Nerva had commenced, and the broken spirit of the nation had revived. Like the rest of his fellow-countrymen he exhibited a remarkable example of patient endurance, when the imperial jealousy made even the praise of those who were obnoxious to the tyrant treason; when it was considered a capital crime for Arulenus Rusticus to praise Pætus Thrasea, and Herennius Senecio to eulogize Priscus Helvidius.

In

In those fearful times he himself says, that "as old Rome had witnessed the greatest glories of liberty, so her descendants had been cast down to the lowest depths of slavery; and would have been deprived of the use of memory, as well as of language, if it were equally in man's power to forget as to be silent." such times prudence was a duty, and daring courage would have been unavailing rashness. In his praise of Agricola, and his blame of Pætus, he enunciates the principles which regulate his own conduct-that to endanger yourself without the slightest prospect of benefiting your country is mere ostentatious ambition. "Sciant," he writes, "quibus moris illicita mirari, posse etiam sub malis principibus magnos viros esse; obsequiumque ac modestiam, si industria ac vigor adsint, eo laudis excedere quo plerique per abrupta, sed in nullum reipublicæ usum ambitiosa morte inclaruerunt." Again, "Thrasea Pætus sibi causam periculi fecit, cæteris libertatis initium non præbuit."3

In the style of Tacitus the form is always subordinate to the matter; the ideas maintain their due supremacy over the lan

1 Vit. Agric. ii.

2

Agric. 42.

3 Ann. xiv. 12.

guage in which they are conveyed. There is none of that striving after epigrammatic terseness which savours of affectation. His brevity, like that which characterizes the style of Thucydides, is the necessary condensation of a writer whose thoughts flow more quickly than his pen can express them. Hence his sentences are suggestive of far more than they express: they are enigmatical hints of deep and hidden meaning, which keep the mind active and the attention alive, and delight the reader with the pleasures of discovery and the consciousness of difficulties overcome. Nor is this natural and unintentional brevity unsuitable to the cautious reserve with which all were tutored to speak and think of political subjects in perilous times. It is extraordinary how often a similarity between his mind and that of Thucydides inadvertently discovers itself—not only in his mode of thinking, but also in his language, even in his grammatical constructions, especially in his frequent substitution of attraction for government, in instances of condensed construction, and in the connexion of clauses grammatically different, although they are metaphysically the same.

Nor is his brevity dry or harsh-it is enlivened by copiousness, variety, and poetry. He scarcely ever repeats the same idea in the same form. No author is richer in synonymous words, or arranges with more varied skill the position of words in a sentence. As for poetic genius, his language is highly figurative; no prose writer deals more largely in prosopopoeia: his descriptions of scenery and incidents are eminently picturesque; his characters dramatic; the expression of his own sentiments and feelings as subjective as lyric poetry.

C. SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS.

469

CHAPTER VII.

C.

SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS-HIS BIOGRAPHY-SOURCES OF HIS HISTORY-HIS GREAT FAULT-Q. CURTIUS RUFUS-TIME WHEN HE FLOURISHED DOUBTFUL-HIS BIOGRAPHY OF ALEXANDER-EPITOMES OF L. ANNEUS FLORUS-SOURCES WHENCE

HE DERIVED THEM.

C. SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS.

C. SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS1 was the son of Suetonius Lenis, who served at tribunus angusticlavus of the thirteenth legion at the battle of Bedriacum, in which the Emperor Otho was defeated by Vitellius. The time of his birth is uncertain; but from a passage at the end of his Life of Nero it may be inferred that he was born very soon after the death of that emperor, which took place A. D. 68; for in it he mentions that, when twenty years subsequent to Nero's death, a false Nero appeared, he was just arriving at manhood (adolescens.) The knowledge of language and rhetorical taste displayed in the remains of his works on these subjects prove that he was well instructed in these branches of a Roman liberal education: and a letter of the younger Pliny, whose intimate friend he was, speaks of him as an advocate by profession. This letter represents him as unwilling to plead a cause, which he had undertaken, because he was frightened by a dream. It is probable that this anecdote is an authentic one, because so many examples occur in his memoirs of his superstitious belief in dreams, omens, ghosts, and prodigies.4

The affectionate regard which Pliny entertained for his friend was very great, and led him to form too high an estimate of his

1 See A. Krause de Font. et Auctor. Suet. 3 Ep. I. 18.

4 See e. g. Cæs. 81; Aug. 6, 94; Tib. 14, 74; Calig. 5, 57, &c.

2 Cap. 57.