Nearly a century ago, Friedrich Leo argued with his characteristic acumen that the neo-Ciceronian style of Tacitus'Dialogus de oratoribuswas as much a function of its genre as its subject. ‘The genre’, he observed, ‘demands its style. One who deals with different genres must write in different styles.’ Alfred Gudeman, the target of Leo's review, had therefore missed a key step in the argument for Tacitean authorship when he invoked ‘the influence of subject-matter’ without considering the demands of genre. In (...) hindsight, the point seems almost obvious, and the sophistication of recent work on the date and style of theDialogushas left Gudeman's discussion far behind. The advance in method—if not necessarily in results—has been profound. Leo's success in linking genre and style, however, has also had a second, less happy result: it has encouraged belief in a corresponding link between genre and content, as if Tacitus necessarily embraced Ciceronian values along with his Ciceronian forms. TheDialogusis often thought to accept Cicero's aesthetic agenda and to examine why the orators of succeeding generations failed to maintain its ideals and standards. Perhaps inevitably, its analysis is then read as a rather depressing tale of oratory's literary, social, and moral decline. This view demands reconsideration. To explore, as theDialoguscertainly does, the collapse of Ciceronian values is not necessarily to regret that collapse. We have, I think, too often read our own prejudices into theDialogusby presuming a post-Augustan decline in oratorical standards and, in the process, reducing our sensitivity to important variations in and departures from the generic conventions that Tacitus so deliberately recalls. The result is a significant distortion of theDialogus' view of oratory under the empire. (shrink)

quippe Byzantium fertili solo, fecundo mari, quia uis piscium in metapontum erumpens et obliquis subter undas saxis exterrita omisso alterius litoris flexu hos ad portus defertur.For Byzantium is favoured with fertile soil and teeming seas, since a multitude of fish, bursting out and spooked by rocks slanting beneath the water, leave off the curve of the opposite shore and are wafted to these harbours. That is the text of the second Medicean and all of its descendants. For centuries now the (...) unfitness of the words in metapontum has been obvious to editors. J. Lipsius conjectured innumera Pontum, G. Brotier innumera Ponto, N. Bach and G.A. Ruperti immensa Pontum. F. Ritter returned to the problem again and again, first proposing immensa Ponto, then immensum Ponto, i.e. ‘immensa multitudine’, and finally in meatu Ponti. Bach's and Ruperti's remedy is clearly the most efficient. Modern editors agree in printing uis piscium immensa Pontum erumpens, ‘an immense multitude of fish, bursting out of the Pontus'. Neat, but perhaps unnecessary. My object here is to defend the text of the manuscripts. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show, by the example of Hugo Grotius's Annales et Historiae de rebus Belgicis (AH), that the nature and content of the concept of Tacitism (Tacitist, Tacitean) in the period around 1600 was markedly different from modern perceptions of the style and political purport of Tacitus's works. This gap between current and early-modern conceptions of Tacitus is important to bear in mind for intellectual historians dealing with early-modern intellectual currents such as Reason (...) of State, Neo-Stoicism, Tacitism, and others. This article first describes how the Tacitean style is characterised in literary criticism around 1600; then it explores the qualities of Hugo Grotius's imitation of Tacitus from the 17th-century perspective and from that of some main aspects of the present-day view of Tacitus. It concludes that Grotius's imitation shows Tacitus's style in a characteristically 17th-century mirror, in that it puts emphasis on Tacitean syntax, brevity and choice of words (the stylistic micro-level), as well as on political iudicium and Reason of State, but omits imitation of the narrative and structural qualities of Tacitus's composition, and their implications, which are central to modern interpretations. ☆ This article is part of the outcome of a research project on Grotius's Annales et Historiae conducted at the Radboud University Nijmegen in 2004–2008 with a VENI-grant from the Dutch research organisation NWO. I thank Corinna Vermeulen, Marc van der Poel, Hans Blom and HEI's anonymous referees for their comments on this piece. (shrink)

Juan de Vera’s El Enbaxador (1620) was one of the main treatises on the role of the ambassador in Early Modern Europe and the first one published in Spanish. At the time, Spain was no exception to the influence of Tacitus as a significant ancient author to inspire the political practice of the age. Juan de Vera, a nobleman and writer, soon an ambassador and entitled count, incorporated his own reading of Tacitus into El Enbaxador. Justus Lipsius, the (...) outstanding editor of Tacitus’ works, was also a main source for this book which was defined by John Elliott as a ‘quintessentially Lipsian handbook for diplomats’. The focus of this article is on Tacitus’ citations in El Enbaxador and their contexts within the book. My aim is to identify the specific themes for which Tacitus served as an exemplary source of guidance according to this particular text. Notably, some of such themes pertain to ambassadorial affairs, while others are common political topics in Early Modern Europe. Vera's reading of Tacitus in El Enbaxador gained wider dissemination beyond Spain as the work was subsequently translated into French and Italian. (shrink)

Boccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnasso (1612) provides us with a satirically inflected view of how Tacitean quotation was used throughout the sixteenth century as a medium of political knowledge. A detailed analysis of some Tacitean scenes in Ragguagli will help us to elicit some of the issues underlying the turn to Tacitus in the intellectual climate of the period: the search for truth in a new era of moral relativism; debates about the applicability of ancient maxims to contemporary realities; and (...) the connection between externally acquired techniques and internalized wisdom. In both Ragguagli and Comentarii Tacitus’ characterization of the emperor Galba becomes emblematic of the gulf that can open up between theoretical knowledge and practical understanding. When the same model is used to measure Tacitus’ own unsuccessful tenure of power over Lesbos in Ragguagli, Boccalini presents a case study of how ‘properly’ to make use of Tacitean political insight. (shrink)

Tacitus understands himself as a historiographer who writes against forgetting. This essay examines how Tacitus conceives of forgetting and how he depicts processes of forgetting. (1) First I will introduce forgetting as an important research theme in modern memory studies. Research on forgetting can help us to understand transformations in the collective memory of modern and ancient social groups. (2) In Tacitus’ works about Roman imperial history forgetting stands out as a crucial topic. (3) When analysing processes (...) of forgetting in the Annals, the Histories and the Agricola, we can distinguish different forms of forgetting (such as ‘automatic forgetting’ and ‘directed forgetting’) as well as certain methods that Tacitus depicts as supporting or impeding forgetting. I will focus on ‘removing’ as an ambivalent method of forgetting, and on ‘writing’, which is central to Tacitus’ concept of the historiographer. This analysis of Tacitus’ works reveals that his ideas on forgetting are highly relevant to the twenty-first century. Tacitus’ age, like our own, was one of dramatic societal change, in which social frames are transformed, while the objects of collective memory are questioned and reevaluated. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to investigate the intertextual relationship between Spinoza and Tacitus in the Political Treatise, underlining how Spinoza uses Tacitus’ quotes against his main political enemy: Tacitism. I will show that Spinoza’s use of Tacitus is very selective and can be aptly characterized as a twofold political use: Tacitus’ quotes shape Spinoza’s political insights, but they are also used to confront Tacitism. To develop this twofold reading, after a brief introduction, I (...) will consider Tacitus’ reception in Early Modern period, describing Tacitism and its political standpoints. Then, I will analyse Spinoza’s use of Tacitus, considering his approach to three core themes: the nature of peace and sedition, the nature of the masses and the use of secrets (arcana). Finally, I will draw a comparison between the use to which Tacitus’ quotes are put by Spinoza on the one hand and by the Tacitists on the other, stressing how this comparison contributes to our understanding of their opposed political positions: democracy for Spinoza and monarchy for the Tacitists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Veritas Filia Temporis: Experience and Belief in Early Modern Culture *Brendan DooleyFew observers in the seventeenth century had any illusions about the reliability of political information imparted by the sources newly minted or voluminously increased during the course of the century. The newsletters appeared to be concocted from malicious gossip. 1The newspapers seemed to be published at the bidding of powerful political interests with little inclination to tell the (...) truth, 2and histories of recent events seemed to be based on faulty sources even when the writers endeavored to procure faithful accounts. “Truth is by nature elusive and slippery,” history theorist Agostino Mascardi admitted. All he could recommend as a defense for the inaccurate historian was the injunction against throwing the first stone: “Omnis homo mendax,” said David the holy king; and those who are such harsh critics of historians’ involuntary lies may well be astute trammelers of perfidy and deceit in their own lives.” 3He had no answer about historians who deliberately distorted the truth. In fact just when readers might have desired it most, from the earliest episodes of the Thirty-Years War to the last episodes of the Turkish Wars at the end of the century, the possibility of [End Page 487]gaining a realistic picture of the contemporary world seemed to be getting more and more remote.The argument of this article centers around a discussion of the cultural consequences of this late seventeenth-century trend. To some of the readers, writers, thinkers, and theorists in this period, the unreliability of information about their own time or about the past, however compounded by contemporary political and social circumstances, was nothing but a minor nuisance. To others it was a hint about the bad faith of the governments who influenced writers. To still others, this same unreliability raised deeply troubling questions about human nature and existence. It provided social and political reasons for historical skepticism, quite apart from one’s familiarity with Sextus Empiricus or the elite intellectual trends of the time. It placed everyday social and political reality in a new light, thus adding a more mundane element to the uneasy feeling produced by the new science and cosmology—the feeling, that is, of being borne along in uncontrollable currents whose exact nature the best minds nonetheless seemed incapable of understanding. It added to the disquiet produced by confessional disputes, suggesting that truth might be beyond human capacity to grasp. 4Not only in Italy but throughout Europe in the late seventeenth century this discussion will show, existing methods of ascertaining facts in political and military affairs both in the present and in past times came under a new sort of scrutiny as part of what some scholarship has regarded as no less than a wide-ranging “crisis of consciousness” at the threshold of the Enlightenment. 5The conclusion opens briefly onto the sequel of these episodes. The crisis was resolved at least in part by a corresponding movement for methodological change as well as by a reform of ideas about the proper place for intellectual improvisation in the formation of narrative in order to make historical writing persuasive as well as civically useful again. If the product of error and fraud was skepticism, the product of skepticism was modern historiography. 6 [End Page 488]History and ExperienceObviously, the elusiveness of political truth that helped touch off the late seventeenth-century crisis was no novelty of the age. Deliberate misinformation was a fully-recognized political strategy at least by the time that Machiavelli made it an explicit part of prudence by recommending the cultivation of good appearances and expressing his admiration for Pope Alexander VI and Ferdinand I of Spain as being the best liars of their time. 7In the late sixteenth century theorists all over Europe sought to join Machiavelli’s insights about the inner workings of state power to those of Tacitus in the light of conventional morality. 8In Italy it was the Piedmontese writer Giovanni Botero who, exploring these Tacitist perspectives in his Reason of State, expressed the fewest reservations about insisting on the propriety of a policy of state secrecy and misinformation. 9Florentine political theorist... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 167-187 [Access article in PDF] Amelot de La Houssaye (1634-1706) Annotates Tacitus Jacob Soll Thousands have worked on Tacitus. Some have translated him, others have commented on him. Some have put his text into paraphrases, because of his obscurity: Some others have sucked out the juice and marrow, which is to say, the Sentences, Aphorismes, Apophtegms, and the Political (...) Axioms, of which he is as fertile, as he is sterile in words. His Translators have made him speak every Language, well or badly, according to what they understood or did not. Of his Commentators, some, as if they were Grammarians, have only picked through his Latin, and his fashions of speaking, which are all extraordinary. The others, like students of Politics, neither stopping to look at his phrases, nor his diction, have studied to penetrate the mysteries, and the secrets of the Art-of-governing, of which he has been the Master, and universal Oracle, for more than five-hundred years. 1Thus wrote Nicolas-Abraham Amelot de La Houssaye in the preface of his book, Tibère: Discours politiques sur Tacite (Paris: chez Frédéric Léonard, 1684). He was describing what has become known as the Tacitist movement of political theory, based on the work of the Roman historian Tacitus, which began in the 1580s and lasted until the French Revolution. 2 The practice of translating, commenting [End Page 167] on, or writing like Tacitus began in earnest in the late sixteenth century. Authoritative Latin editions as well as vernacular translations flourished and great kings turned to these now accessible texts as manuals for ruling. 3 Tacitus provided examples from history which could be used to form the basis of a practical political "science." Alongside Machiavelli, practitioners of reason of state placed the works of Tacitus as the founding stones of their humanist canon of secular political philosophy. 4 Marc-Antoine Muret began teaching Tacitus at the University of Rome in 1580, and at the same time Justus Lipsius and Carolus Paschalius began a Latinist tradition of commenting on Tacitus's works. 5 Lipsius, by far the most influential of the sixteenth-century Tacitists, was not only a philologist interested in reestablishing Tacitus's original text but also a commentator who sought to extract moral and political sententiae from the Roman historian. 6 Thus humanist scholarly practices served as the basis of Tacitean political theory as historical exempla, verified by philology, became useful for practical politics. 7 Scholarship and secular political science were bound for the long journey into the modern age. 8 [End Page 168]If humanist scholarship formed the basis of Tacitean political theory, it is also the key for understanding how it worked. Tacitism was an editorial practice and thus scholarly editors became political theorists. Justus Lipsius did not attempt to write his own version of a Tacitean Annales. Instead, he chopped up Tacitus's text, making a commonplace notebook for absolutist princes with his Politicorum libri sex (Leiden: Plantin, 1589). 9 Understanding the Lipsian tradition--the process by which Tacitus was read, broken down and "represented" by scholarly editors--clarifies an unexplored yet essential element of the evolution of secular political theory from a tool of Absolutism to an arm of revolutionary republicanism. 10The most striking example of the Lipsian tradition can be found in the works of Amelot de La Houssaye, whose vision of Tacitean scholarship we have already seen. Between 1670 and his death in 1706 Amelot was the most prolific translator and commentator of Tacitus in France. Between 1676 and 1808, at least 107 editions of 23 different works by Amelot were published in French, almost all Tacitean in nature. 11 These books were widely read and inspired numerous foreign editions. The unifying thread of this extraordinarily large corpus of works is Amelot de La Houssaye's fascination with Tacitus. He not only translated and commented on Tacitus; he also represented the major works of secular political philosophy of his time as Tacitean in origin. Machiavelli, for example, was "proven... (shrink)

It is often claimed that in the ancient world character was believed to be something fixed, given at birth and immutable during life. This belief is said to underlie the portrayal of individuals in ancient historiography and biography, particularly in the early Roman Empire; and tc constitute the chief point of difference in psychological assumptions between ancient and modern biography. In this article, I wish to examine the truth of these claims, with particular reference to Plutarch and Tacitus.

This study delves into the unexplored intersection of Socinianism, a religious movement challenging Christian orthodoxy in the Early Modern period, and Tacitism, a political discourse inspired by Tacitus. Both fostered critical thinking, intertwining in nuanced ways. Socinianism’s theological skepticism questioned established beliefs, while Tacitism scrutinized historical and political accounts. Their controversial nature resulted in covert existence among elite intellectuals, shaping socio-political discourse. Socinianism’s theological nonconformity, akin to Tacitism’s critique of traditional political narratives, often sparked conflicts with authorities, revealing the (...) intricate relationship between religion and politics in the Early Modern Era and influencing the development of secular thought. (shrink)

It is often claimed that in the ancient world character was believed to be something fixed, given at birth and immutable during life. This belief is said to underlie the portrayal of individuals in ancient historiography and biography, particularly in the early Roman Empire; and tc constitute the chief point of difference in psychological assumptions between ancient and modern biography. In this article, I wish to examine the truth of these claims, with particular reference to Plutarch and Tacitus.

Book 4 of the Annals, covering the years A.D. 23–8, traces the turning-point in the story of Tiberius' reign. Tacitus prepares us for disaster from the start. After a reference to fortuna in suitably Sallustian language and the deum ira in rem Romanam , we are told that the year A.D. 23 ‘initiated the deterioration in Tiberius’ principate .1 Modern historians are agreed that a decisive factor in this’ deterioration was the emperor's determination to leave Rome in A.D. 26, (...) a move which Tacitus gloomily portends in chapter 41 and eventually records, in due chronological sequence, at 57. 1. Suetonius is our other main source for this momentous event, and it is instructive to compare his treatment of it with that of Tacitus. (shrink)

This is a book that contrary to common practice, shows the commonalities of ancient and modern theories of freedom, law, and rational actions. Studying the works of the ancients is necessary to understanding those that follow. Thomas Chaimowicz challenges current trends in research on antiquity in his examination of Montesquieu's and Burk's path of inquiry. He focuses on ideas of balance and freedom. Montesquieu and Burke believe that freedom and balance are closely connected, for without balance within a state there (...) can be no freedom. When Montesquieu speaks of republics, he means those of antiquity as they were understood in the eighteenth century. In this view, freedom can develop only within the framework of established tradition. Edmund Burke's greatest service to political thought may lie in making use of this idea when he fought against the abstractions of the French Revolutionaries. Antiquity as the Source of Modernity examines Montesquieu's "Roman mind," meaning not an attitude influenced by the ancients, but one primarily influenced by Roman heritage. It speaks to the antithesis of monarchy and despotism in Montesquieu's thought and the influence of Tacitus and Pliny the Younger on him. The separation of powers and its relation to the concept of the mixed constitution as well as Montesquieu's smaller masterpiece Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans are examined in detail. Finally, the discussion leads seamlessly to Burke, who, as a critical admirer of Montesquieu, partly incorporated his interpretation of the English constitution into his own thinking threatened by teachings of the French Revolution and its British adherents. The central idea of Antiquity as the Source of Modernity is timeless. It is that the ancient past can lead to a clearer understanding of what follows. This perspective represents a reversal of the conventional procedures for conducting this kind of research, but it is a reversal that Chaimowicz embraces in order to add a new dimension to the study and impetration of both Montesquieu and Burke. Thomas Chaimowicz was a distinguished visiting professor at the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein and honorary professor of Roman Lay at the University of Salzburg. This is the final work commissioned by the late Russell Kirk for his efforts on behalf of the Transaction Library of Conservative Thought. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to assess the nature and proper context of Grotius's imitation of Tacitus. It starts by establishing how the Tacitean style is characterised in the literary criticism around 1600. It then explores the qualities of Grotius's imitation from both the seventeenth-century and the modern perspective. It concludes that Grotius's imitation shows Tacitus's style in a characteristically seventeenth-century mirror, in that it emphasises Tacitean syntax, brevity and choice of words , as well as political (...) edge and iudicium, but overlooks the narrative and structural qualities of the longer lines of composition in Tacitus's works, that are recognised in modern interpretations. (shrink)

This paper explores political fear in classical thought. Through an analysis of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, and Sallust, I discuss two broad uses of fear: fear as a source of unity and of moral energy. In addition, the paper addresses the enervating role of political fear in Tacitus’ writings. The discussion centers on three issues: first, I draw attention to an important and often neglected set of themes in classical thought; second, I provide a historical resource for contemporary discussions of (...) political fear; third, I argue that fear’s multiple uses in political theorizing ought to be a focus of scholarly inquiry. (shrink)

The Germania of Tacitus is the most extensive account of the ancient Germans written during the Roman period, but has been relatively neglected in the scholarship of the English-speaking world: the last commentary appeared in 1938, and only a handful of studies have appeared since that time. In recent decades, however, there have been important scholarly developments that significantly affect our understanding of it. Ongoing archaeological work in western and central Europe has greatly increased our knowledge of the iron-age (...) cultures in those regions, while new anthropological and literary approaches have called into question some of the traditional assumptions that shaped the use of this text as a historical source. This new commentary, together with the extensive introduction, provides a current and comprehensive guide to the relevant textual and archaeological evidence and also examines the methodological issues involved in the interpretation of this important work. (shrink)

`Long may the barbarians continue, I pray, if not to love us, at least to hate one another.' Cornelius Tacitus, Rome's greatest historian and the last great writer of classical Latin prose, produced his first two books in AD 98. He was inspired to take up his pen when the assassination of Domitian ended `fifteen years of enforced silence'. The first products were brief: the biography of his late father-in-law Julius Agricola and an account of Rome's most dangerous enemies, (...) the Germans. Since Agricola's claim to fame was that as governor for seven years he had completed the conquest of Britain, begun four decades earlier, much of the first work is devoted to Britain and its people. The second is the only surviving specimen from the ancient world of an ethnographic study. Each in its way has had immense influence on our perception of Rome and the northern `barbarians'. This edition reflects recent research in Roman-British and Roman-German history and includes newly discovered evidence on Tacitus' early career. (shrink)

This article traces the association between the European overseas empires and the concept of sovereignty, arguing that, ever since the days of Cicero—if not earlier—Europeans had clung to the idea that there was a close association between a people and the territory it happened to occupy. This made it necessary to think of an “empire” as a unity—an “immense body,” to use Tacitus’s phrase—that would embrace all its subjects under a single sovereign. By the end of the eighteenth century (...) it had become possible, in this way, to speak of “empires of liberty” that would operate for the ultimate benefit of all their “citizens,” freeing them from previous tyrannical rulers and bringing them under the protection of more benign regimes. In such empires sovereignty could only ever be, as it had become in Europe, undivided. The collapse of Europe's “first” empires in the Americas, however, was followed rapidly by Napoleon’s attempt to create a new kind of Empire in Europe. The ultimate, and costly, failure of this project led many, Benjamin Constant among them, to believe that the age of empires was now over and had been replaced by the age of commerce. But what in fact succeeded Napoleon was the modern European state system, which attempted not to replace empire by trade, as Constant had hoped, but to create a new kind of empire, one that sought to minimize domination and settlement, and to make a sharp distinction between imperial ruler and imperial subject. In this kind of empire, sovereignty could only be “divided.” Various kinds of divided rule were thus devised in the nineteenth century. Far, however, from being an improvement on the past, this ultimately resulted in—or at least contributed greatly to—the emergence of the largely fictional and inevitably unstable societies that after the final collapse of the European empires became the new states of the “developing world.”. (shrink)

The utterances of Claudius were celebrated, or rather notorious. Suetonius, like Tacitus himself, points out that he could be eloquent but that, especially when he spoke impromptu or added unrehearsed remarks to a prepared speech, he revealed that he had no sense of what was appropriate to his dignity as Princeps, or to the time, place and audience. The biographer cruelly collected various examples of his subject's verbal ineptitude.

It is not enough, says Quintilian , to assemble the various parts of a speech. The orator must arrange his points in the natural and logical order for his purposes, and he must unify the different sections so skilfully that no join will show , producing a single body instead of assorted limbs. If we define ascommissura the rhetorical device which welds together different themes or chapters with an associative link in word or thought , Tacitus already had this (...) lesson by heart when he wrote the Germania. That he exploited the same technique in his major works, concentrating on his transitions as hard as would Macaulay on his, appears not to have been noticed, and certainly has not received systematic study. (shrink)

It is not enough, says Quintilian (7.10.16), to assemble the various parts of a speech. The orator must arrange his points in the natural and logical order for his purposes, and he must unify the different sections so skilfully that no join will show (‘ne commissura perluceat’), producing a single body instead of assorted limbs. If we define ascommissura(ortransitus)the rhetorical device which welds together different themes or chapters with an associative link in word or thought (sometimes matching like with like, (...) more frequently depending on antithesis), Tacitus already had this lesson by heart when he wrote theGermania. That he exploited the same technique in his major works, concentrating on his transitions as hard as would Macaulay on his, appears not to have been noticed, and certainly has not received systematic study. (shrink)

**A newly revised edition of two seminal works on Imperial Rome** Undeniably one of Rome’s most important historians, Tacitus was also one of its most gifted. *The Agricola* is both a portrait of Julius Agricola-the most famous governor of Roman Britain and Tacitus’s respected father-in-law-and the first known detailed portrayal of the British Isles. In the *Germania*, Tacitus focuses on the warlike German tribes beyond the Rhine, often comparing the behavior of "barbarian" peoples favorably with the decadence (...) and corruption of Imperial Rome. (shrink)

The utterances of Claudius were celebrated, or rather notorious. Suetonius, like Tacitus himself, points out that he could be eloquent but that, especially when he spoke impromptu or added unrehearsed remarks to a prepared speech, he revealed that he had no sense of what was appropriate to his dignity as Princeps, or to the time, place and audience. The biographer cruelly collected various examples of his subject's verbal ineptitude.

Seit 1923 erscheinen in der Sammlung Tusculum maßgebende Editionen griechischer und lateinischer Werke mit deutscher Übersetzung. Die Originaltexte werden zudem eingeleitet und umfassend kommentiert; nach der neuen Konzeption bieten schließlich thematische Essays tiefere Einblicke in das Werk, seinen historischen Kontext und sein Nachleben. Die hohe wissenschaftliche Qualität der Ausgaben, gepaart mit dem leserfreundlichen Sprachstil der Einführungs- und Kommentarteile, macht jeden Tusculum-Band zu einer fundamentalen Lektüre nicht nur für Studierende, die sich zum ersten Mal einem antiken Autor nähern, und für Wissenschaftler, (...) die spezifische Aspekte eines Werkes vertiefen möchten, sondern für alle, die sich durch vertrauenswürdige Übersetzungen einen Zugang zur Antiken Welt verschaffen wollen. In der Reihe wurden bisher über 270 Titel publiziert, alle erhältlich als Buch und eBook. Dadruch werden bislang vergriffene Titel und Raritäten wieder vollständig verfügbar gemacht. Zusätzlich zu der Buchreihe erscheint bei De Gruyter zum 90-jährigen Jubiläum das eBook-PaketTusculum Online, eine digitale Sammlung aller von 1923 bis 2013 erschienenen Titel -eine gebührende Würdigung eines wichtigen Stücks deutscher Verlagsgeschichte. Mehr Informationen rund um Tusculum erhalten Sie unter: www.degruyter.com/tusculum. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

Tacitus behandelt in seinem Rednerdialog die Gründe für den Verfall der römischen Beredsamkeit beim Übergang von der Republik zur Kaiserzeit, ferner Dilettantentum und echte Wissenschaft, die Bedeutung der Philosophie für die Erziehung, das Verhältnis zwischen Zeitgeist und wahrer idealistischer Beredsamkeit. Dem Text und der Übersetzung sind Zeugnisse zur Überlieferungsgeschichte beigegeben; die umfangreiche Einführung enthält eine Biographie des Tacitus unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Tätigkeit als Redner und erörtert in übersichtlicher Weise alle wesentlichen Fragen, die im Zusammenhang mit dem Rednerdialog (...) stehen. Literaturhinweise und ein erklärendes Namenverzeichnis vervollständigen diese Ausgabe. (shrink)

For Malraux, modernity in art is not only about modern art; it is also about the birth of what he aptly terms “the first universal world of art.” This event was a consequence of the process of metamorphosis which is central to Malraux’s account of the relationship between art and time. The article explains this event, noting also that modern aesthetics has not provided an explanation. (This is the English version of the final which will be in French.).

Jetzt beim Akademie Verlag: Sammlung Tusculum - die berühmte zweisprachige Bibliothek der Antike! Die 1923 gegründete Sammlung Tusculum umfasst ca. 200 klassische Werke der griechischen und lateinischen Literatur des Altertums und bildet damit das Fundament der abendländischen Geistesgeschichte ab. Die Werke Ciceros, Ovids und Horaz’ gehören ebenso zum Programm wie die philosophischen Schriften Platons, die Dramen des Sophokles oder die enzyklopädische Naturgeschichte des Plinius. Die Reihe bietet die weltliterarisch bedeutenden Originaltexte zusammen mit exzellenten deutschen Übersetzungen und kurzen Sachkommentaren. Von renommierten (...) Altphilologen betreut, präsentiert Tusculum zuverlässige Standardausgaben mit klassischer Einbandgestaltung für Wissenschaftler und Bibliotheken, Studenten und Lehrer sowie das allgemeine Publikum mit Interesse an antiker Dichtung und Philosophie. Der Name der Reihe geht auf die ehemalige Stadt Tusculum in Latium zurück, in der Cicero eine Villa besaß, die ihm als Refugium diente und in der er die Tuskulanen verfasste. Neben der hochwertig ausgestatteten Hauptreihe erscheinen in der Serie Tusculum Studienausgaben einschlägige Texte für Universität und Schule im Taschenbuch. Im Akademie Verlag startet die Reihe 2011 mit sieben wichtigen Neuerscheinungen. (shrink)

Frontinus appears only once in Tacitus'Agricola, at a moment in the text where Tacitus is filling in some background, sketching a rough history of the Roman occupation of Britain up to the time when Agricola took over as governor of the province. His appearance is brief, and the momentum of the whole section makes it tempting to see him as a mere footnote in the tale of Agricola's life and career. I will argue, however, that Frontinus' role in (...) the text is more significant than that. Indeed, it is my contention that he is closely bound up with – and helps Tacitus and his readers to explore – one of the text's most pressing concerns: namely senatorial conduct, status and identity, in Domitianic and post-Domitianic Rome. (shrink)

In the modern age, the political secret has acquired a bad reputation. With modern democracy’s ideal of transparency, political secrecy is identified with political crime or corruption. The article argues that this repression of secrecy in modern democracies falls short of a substantial understanding of the structure and workings of political secrecy. By outlining a genealogy of political secrecy, it elucidates the logic as well as the blind spots of a current culture of secrecy. It focuses on two fundamental logics (...) of secrecy, deduced from the Latin terms ‘ arcanum’ and ‘ secretum’. Whereas the logic of arcanum regards secrecy as a legitimate dimension of government, a modern logic of secretum is marked by an inextricable dialectics between the withdrawal and communication of knowledge, between secrecy and publicity. Here, the secret is not so much a piece of withheld knowledge as a ‘secrecy effect’ that binds the realm of secrecy to the public sphere by a dialectics of permanent suspicion and scandal. Instead of falling into the trap of this ‘secrecy effect’ it is worth taking a closer look at the tradition of thought on the arcana imperii, from Tacitus to early modern doctrines of raison d’état to Carl Schmitt. What this tradition deals with is the functionality of secrecy and its complicated relation to the law. The arcana tradition elaborates the crucial point of secrecy: its potential, but also its profound ambivalence. Secrecy opens up a discretionary space of action exempt from the rule of law, and, according to Carl Schmitt, ignores the law so as to allow it to become effective. Secrecy serves to protect and stabilize the state, but at the same time it opens a space of exception from the rule of law that breeds violence, corruption and oppression. Instead of seeing secrecy as the opposite of a political culture of transparency, it is more productive to regard secrecy as transparency's complement – a counterpart, however, that is marked by the profound paradox of being both a consolidation of and a threat to democracy. (shrink)

According to Tacitus, this was Galba's verdict on Nero's fall. The tyrant's undoing had been of his own making. As for what determined the outcome, Galba is unequivocal. Two factors had proved decisive: Nero's immanitas and luxuria.

At one stage in his account of the war against Tacfarinas, Tacitus describes the strategy of the proconsul of Africa, P. Cornelius Dolabella, as follows: ‘excito cum popularibus rege Ptolemaeo quattuor agmina parat, quae legatis aut tribunis data; et praedatorias manus delecti Maurorum duxere: ipse consultor aderat omnibus’.