Why Read Tacitus?

As I'm reading the Annals and Histories of Tacitus a few pages an evening I've decided to record why Tacitus is so important to us at the moment politically, historically, morally and personally.

1. Tacitus gives a careful and comprehensive picture of the early Roman empire. Seeing his picture enables us to better contextualize and understand current world events.

2. Tacitus is a sinuous and versatile prose master, even in translation, and thus a great teacher of how to speak, think and write.

3. Tacitus is the model historian, to be copied and defined against for all future tellers of true tales.

4. Tacitus really understands tyranny. To educate and reveal the abuses of absolute power, his vision is supreme, and a kind of negative picture of human liberty.

5. Tacitus sees with absolute clarity the differences between liberty and license, and the differences between civic virtue and private immorality. As such, he is in one book a citizen's education.

6. Tacitus is concerned with the nature of civilization as individual virtue. He constantly shows non-Romans as virtuous and noble free men, and Romans are savages, highlighting the reality of virtue as a property in men from all walks of life. He is truly cosmopolitan, concerned with civilization in its most intimate and personal reality as personal virtue. Thus Tacitus is a great moral teacher.

7. Tacitus gives one of the earliest non-Christian reports of Christianity, thus showing us a fascinating outside view of the young cult.

8. Tacitus gives an example of ruthless honesty in assessing one's birth culture, and how to maintain integrity throughout and avoiding alienating oneself from the culture.

9. Tacitus is a wisdom writer, giving the basic mentality of republican virtue in his words, ideas and personality, showing how one can be free even in the midst of a slavish society.

10. Tacitus is a great maker of sayings. For example:

"The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise."

"Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity."

"To show resentment at a reproach is to acknowledge that one may have deserved it."

"It is a principle of nature to hate those whom you have injured."

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."

"Viewed at a distance, everything is beautiful."

"Men are more ready to repay and injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure."

10. For the first and last time in history the entire Mediterranean basin was united in one political unit during the time of Tacitus' histories, so his work is a unique and primary insight into the management of large enterprises such as are commonplace today. Tacitus himself served in this organism as consul and governor.

11. Other than Suetonius and Dio Cassius, both considered inferior historians compared to Tacitus, his is the only history of this key period of time to come down to us mostly intact, and it is said to be by far the best of the three.

12. Critics may equivocate all they like, but Tacitus is self-evidently republican, oligarchical, humanist, and reason-centered. As such, he is an elder contemporary to the Founding Fathers of the United States and valuable as a teacher to the creators of the modern world. He is still relevant for these essential values.

13. Tacitus examines mass psychology alongside and in contrast to individual psychology, delivering acerbic judgements of both; his description of psychology remain powerfully accurate and instructive.

14. Finally, I can no longer see or read the news without seeing them through the eyes of Tacitus, who is the original scholar of dissidents everywhere, and I must record that tyranny is alive and well in the public media - a view which is all thanks to the tutelage of this long-ago Roman historian.

Reading the Jewish Book of Samuel, Part One and Two

I was delighted to read the two books of Samuel in the old testament in the last week, as part of my Great Books readings.

The two books form one story, which is the transition of the rulership of Israel from priestly judges to kings. One can assume this is the shift from oligarchy, or perhaps a federated tribal system, to a centralized monarchy.

In many ways the books of Samuel parallel the Annals of Tacitus when he writes about Tiberius. The same transition from a loose system of government to a focused one is taking place. But in the books of Samuel the transition is located in a kind of primitive mythical state of consciousness.

That is not to say the history is not good. Rather, the characters about which the history are written think in simple terms about complex issues. For example, time and time again, reading about Saul's psychotic jealousy and David's brutal and ruthless realpolitik, I find evidence of the most base desires and instincts in these folk heroes. And what are we to make of Jahweh himself, a character who seems at best whimsical? At times the god of the books of Samuel kowtows to the Israelites, and at other times he reacts with brutal unfairness. The Jahweh of the books of Samuel makes Homer's Zeus look positively humane!

In any case, the way the story is written is remarkable given its antiquity and coherence. I found it an enjoyable read somewhat similar to reading a Robert Jordan fantasy novel, and just as barbaric.

Some subjective impressions:

I keep wanting (as Harold Bloom adjures us) to admire King David, and finding in him nothing to admire beyond the machiavellian intrigue of a Renaissance head of state. I find his brutality disarming. Is this is the blessing of Jahweh, the mercy of the Israeli's? Obviously harsh times require barbaric measures, but more than once I find myself dismayed by David's ethical conduct.

Absalom is an sympathetic character. The tragic dimensions of father against son seem obvious to me, with Greek drama under my belt, but to the historians of old Israel they see only a harsh justice against he in whom Jahweh is not pleased. Absalom dies and David triumphs, but one cannot help but wonder what kind of king Absalom would have made instead of Solomon.

I notice the high quality of the story. Knowing the end of the story from earliest childhood, I cannot help but find these histories exciting reading. At times I try to reconcile this violent and primitive folk story with what I know of Jesus, and cannot. The books of Samuel fall so far short of the gospels as to be hardly of the same dimension of existence. Jesus is to David like salt is to sand; Christ accumulates on top of the ancient king's story without being at all the same as it.