Tacitean Studies - Antiquity and Middle Ages

Antiquity and Middle Ages

Tacitus's contemporaries were well-acquainted with his work; Pliny the Younger, one of his first admirers, congratulated him for his better-than-usual precision and predicted that his Histories would be immortal: only a third of his known work has survived and then through a very tenuous textual tradition; we depend on a single manuscript for books I-VI of the Annales and on another one for the other surviving half (books XI-XVI) and for the five books extant of the Historiae. His books were clearly used by 2nd-early 3rd century historians such as Cassius Dio's report on Agricola's exploration of Britain, and Hegesippus may have borrowed from his account of the Great Jewish Revolt. His difficult historical methods and elliptic literary style, however, went unimitated except by Ammianus Marcellinus, who consciously set out to write a continuation of his works. His popularity waned with time: his unfavorable portrayals of the early emperors could not have earned him favor with Rome's increasingly autocratic rulers, and his obvious contempt for Judaism and Christianity (both troublesome foreign cults in the eyes of a 1st-century Roman aristocrat) made him unpopular among the early Church Fathers. The 3rd century writer Tertullian, for example, blames him (incorrectly—see history of anti-Semitism) for originating the story that the Jews worshipped a donkey's head in the Holy of Holies and calls him "ille mendaciorum loquacissimus", 'the most loquacious of liars'.

In the 4th century there are scattered references to his life and work. Flavius Vopiscus, one of the supposed Scriptores Historiae Augustae, mentions him twice (Aurelian 2.1, Probus 2.7.) and names him among the disertissimos viros, the most eloquent men. Ammianus Marcellinus, as mentioned, started his history where Tacitus had finished. Jerome knew of him, and Sulpicius Severus used him as a source for passages on Nero. By the 5th century only a few authors seem aware of him: Sidonius Apollinaris, who admires him, and Orosius, who alternately derides him as a fool and borrows passages (including many that are otherwise lost) from his works. Cassiodorus and his disciple Jordanes (middle of the 6th century) make the last known antique references; Cassiodorus draws on parts of the Germania and Jordanes cites the Agricola, but both know the author only as Cornelius.

After Jordanes, Tacitus disappeared from literature for the better part of two centuries, and only four certain references appear until 1360. Two come from Frankish monks of the Carolingian Renaissance: the Annales Fuldenses from the monastery of Fulda used Tacitus's Annals, and Rudolf of Fulda borrowed from the Germania for his Translatio Sancti Alexandri. Some of Tacitus's works were known at Monte Cassino by 1100, where the other two certain references appear: Peter the Deacon's Vita Sancti Severi used the Agricola, and Paulinus Venetus, Bishop of Pozzuoli, plagiarized passages from the Annals in his mappa mundi. Hints and reminiscences of Tacitus appear in French and English literature, as well as German and Italian, from the 12th to the 14th century, but none of them are at all certain. It was not until Giovanni Boccaccio brought the manuscript of the Annals 11-16 and the Histories out of Monte Cassino to Florence, in the 1360s or 1370s, that Tacitus began to regain some of his old literary importance. Considering his later importance, it is interesting to note that his Annals only survive in single copies of two halves of the works, one from Fulda and one from Cassino.