very close to us, and �r political education of the last decades fits
expression in the "operating forces" of a culture, but as never finding
us to understand the historian of imperial Rome.
expression at all without reference to these gross, institutional facts.
It is the mark of a great history that sooner or later we become as
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Tacitus Now
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much aware of the historian as of the events he relates. In reading
pointed out that slaves, Christians, Jews, and barbarians are outside
Tacitus we are aware of him from the first page: we are aware of
the circle of his sympathies; he rather despised the Stoic humanihim as one of the few great writers who are utterly without hope.
tarianism of Seneca. Yet, as he says, half his historical interest is in
He is always conscious of his own despair; it is nearly a fault in
the discovery of good deeds, and perhaps nothing in literature has a
him; the attitude sometimes verges on attitudinizing. Yet the great
greater impact of astonishment, a more sudden sense of illuminafact about Tacitus is that he never imposes or wishes to impose his tion, than the occurrence of a good deed in the pages of his histories.
despair upon the reader. He must, he says, be always telling of "the
He represents the fabric of society as so loosened that we can scarcely
merciless biddings of a tyrant, incessant persecution, faithless friendcredit the account of any simple human relationship, let alone a ships, the ruin of innocence, the same causes issuing in the same
noble action. Yet the simple human relationships exist-a soldier
results," and he complains of "the wearisome monotony" of his subweeps at having killed his brother in the civil war, the aristocrats ject matter. But the reader never feels the monotony; despite the
open their houses to the injured thousands when the great amstatements which seem to imply the contrary, Tacitus never becomes phitheater falls down; and the noble actions take place-the freedthe victim of what he writes about-he had too much power of woman Epicharis, when Piso's enormous conspiracy against Nero
mind for that.
was discovered, endured the torture and died, implicating no one,
His power of mind is not like that of Thucydides; it is not really
"screening strangers and those whom she hardly knew." But the
political and certainly not military. It is, on a grand scale, psychohuman relationship and the noble deed exist in the midst of delogical. We are irresistibly reminded of Proust when Tacitus sets pravity and disloyalty so great that we are always surprised by the
about creating the wonderful figure of Tiberius and, using a hungoodness before we are relieved by it; what makes the fortitude of dred uncertainties and contradictions, tries to solve this great enigma
Epicharis so remarkable and so puzzling is that the former slave
of a man, yet always avoids the solution because the enigma is the
screened strangers and those whom she hardly knew "when freeborn
character. In writing of political events his real interest is not in their
men, Roman knights and senators, yet unscathed by the torture, bepolitical meaning but rather in what we would now call their cultrayed, every one, his dearest kinsfolk." From these pages we learn tural meaning, in what they tell us of the morale and morals of the
really to understand those well-worn lines of Portia's about the beam
nation; it is an interest that may profitably be compared with
of the candle, for we discover what Portia meant by a naughty
Flaubert's in L'Education sentimentale, and perhaps it has been reworld, literally a world of naught, a moral vacancy so great and marked that that novel, and Salammbo as well, have elements of
black that in it the beam of a candle seems a flash of lightning.
style and emotion which reinforce our sense of Flaubert as a
The moral and psychological interests of Tacitus are developed at
T acitean personality.
the cost of what nowadays is believed to be the true historical in
Tacitus's conception of history was avowedly personal and moral.
sight. The French scholar Boissier remarks that it is impossible to
"This I regard as history's highest function," he says, "to let no
read the History and the Annals without wondering how the Roman
worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation
Empire could possibly have held together through the eighty years
of posterity to evil words and deeds." This moral preoccupation
of mutiny, infamy, intrigue, riot, expenditure, and irresponsibility
finds expression in a moral sensibility which is not ours and which
which the two books tell us of. At any moment, we think, the politiin many respects we find it hard to understand. It has often been cal structure must collapse under this unnatural weight. Yet almost
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THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
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Tacitus Now
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any modern account of the post-Augustan Empire suggests that we
division which his mind had to endure did not reinforce this quality.
are wrong to make this supposition and seems to imply a radical
For Tacitus hated the Rome of the emperors, all his feelings being
criticism of Tacitus's methods. Breasted, for example, includes the
for the vanished republic; yet for the return of the republic he had
period from Tiberius to Vespasian in a chapter which he calls "The
no hope whatever. "It is easy to commend," he said, "but not to pro
First of Two Centuries of Peace." And Rostovtzeff in his authoritaduce; or if it is produced, it cannot be lasting." He served the ideal tive work gives us to understand that Rome, despite the usual minor
of the republic in his character of historian; the actuality of the emtroubles, was a healthy, developing society. Yet Tacitus finds it pire he served as praetor, consul, and proconsul, and complied with
worthy of comment that at this time a certain man died a natural
the wishes of the hated Domitian. The more he saw of the actuality,
death-"a rare incident in so high a rank," he says.
the more he despaired of his ideal-and the more he loved it. And
It is not, as I gather, that Tacitus lacks veracity. What he lacks is
perhaps this secret tension of love and despair accounts for the poise
what in the thirties used to be called "the long view" of history. But
and energy of his intelle<:t.
to minds of a certain sensitivity "the long view" is the falsest histori
We can see this poise and energy in almost all his judgments. For
cal view of all, and indeed the insistence on the length of perspective
example, he despised the Jews, but he would not repress his wry apis intended precisely to overcome sensitivity-seen from sufficient preciation of their stubborn courage and his intense admiration for
distance, it says, the corpse and the hacked limbs are not so very
their conception of God. The one phrase of his that everyone knows,
terrible, and eventually they even begin to compose themselves into
"They make a solitude and call it peace," he put into the m
outh of a
a "meaningful pattern." Tacitus had no notions of historical develop
British barbarian, the leader of a revolt against Roman rule; it will
ment to comfort him; nor did he feel it his duty to look at present
always be the hostile characterization of imperialist domination, yet
danger and pain with the remote, objective eyes of posterity. The
Tacitus himself measured Roman virtue by imperialist success. He
knowledge, if he had it, that trade with the East was growing or
makes no less than four successive judgments of Otho: scorns him as
that a more efficient bureaucracy was evolving by which well-trained
Nero's courtier and cuckold, admires him as a provincial governor,
freedmen might smoothly administer affairs at home and in the
despises him as emperor, and praises him for choosing to die and
provinces could not have consoled him for what he saw as the
end the civil war. Much as he loved the republican character, he
degradation of his class and nation. He wrote out of his feelings of
knew that its day was past, and he ascribes Galba's fall to his oldthe present and did not conceive the consolations of history and the fashioned inflexibility in republican virtue.
future.
The poise and energy of Tacitus's mind manifest themselves in his
What for many modern scholars is the vice of history was for
language, and Professor Hadas in his admirable introduction to the
Tacitus its virtue-he thought that history should be literature and
useful Modern Library edition tells us how much we must lose in
that it should move the minds of men through their feelings. And so
translation. Yet even a reader of the translation cannot help being
he contrived his narrative with the most elaborate attention to its
aware of the power of the writing. When Tacitus remarks that
dramatic effects. Yet something more than a scrupulous concern for
Tiberius was an emperor "who feared freedom while he hated
literary form makes Tacitus so impressive in a literary way; some
sycophancy" or that the name of Lucius Volusius was made glorious
essential poise of his mind allowed him to see events with both
by his ninety-three years, his honorable wealth, and his "wide avoidpassion and objectivity, and one cannot help wondering if the bitter ance of the malignity of so many emperors" or that "perhaps a sense
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THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
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,
,
,,
of weariness steals over princes when they have bestowed everything, or over favorites when there is nothing left to them to desire,"
we catch a glimpse of the force of the original because the thought
itself is so inherently dramatic. Sometimes we wonder, no doubt
MannerJ; MoralJ; and
foolishly, if we really need the original, so striking is the effect in
translation, as when Sabinus is being led to his death through the
streets and the people flee from his glance, fearing that it will im
the Novel
plicate them: "Wherever he turned, wherever his eyes fell, there was
flight and solitude"; or when the soldiers undertake to "absolve"
themselves of a mutiny by the ferocity with which they slaughter
their leaders; or when, in that greatest of street scenes, the debauchees
look out of their brothel doors to observe with casual interest the
armies fighting for the possession of Rome.
Tacitus is not a tragic writer as, in some strict use of the word,
THE invitation that was made to me to address you this
Thucydides is often said to be. It has been conjectured of Thucydides
evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time,
that he conceived his Peloponnesian War on the model of actual
place, and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it
tragic drama, Athens being his hero; and certainly the downfall of
came to the subject our hosts were not able to specify just what they
Athens, which Thucydides himself witnessed, makes a fable with
wanted me to talk about. They wanted me to consider literature in
the typical significance of tragedy. But Tacitus had no such matter
its relation to manners-by which, as they relied on me to underfor his histories. The republic had died before his grandfather was stand, they did not really mean manners. They did not mean, that is,
born and he looked back at it through a haze of idealization-the
the rules of personal intercourse in our culture; and yet such rules
tragedy had ended long ago; what he observed was the aftermath
•
were by no means irrelevant to what they did mean. Nor did they
which had no end, which exactly lacked the coherence of tragedy.
quite mean manners in the sense of mores, customs, although, again,
His subject is not Rome at all, not Rome the political entity, but
these did bear upon the subject they had in mind.
rather the grotesque career of the human spirit in a society which,
I understood them perfectly, as I would not have understood them
if we may summarize the whole tendency of his thought, appeared
had they been more definite. For they were talking about a nearly
to him to endure for no other purpose than to maintain the long and
indefinable subject.
lively existence of anarchy. From this it is easy, and all too easy, to
Somewhere below all the explicit statements that a people makes
discover his relevance to us now, but the relevance does not account
through its art, religion, architecture, legislation, there is a dim
for the strange invigoration of his pages, which is rather to be exmental region of intention of which it is very difficult to become plained by his power of mind and his stubborn love of virtue mainaware. We now and then get a strong sense of its existence when we tained in desperate circumstances.
deal with the past, not by reason of its presence in the past but by
This essay was read at the Conference on the Heritage of the English-speaking Peoples and Their Responsibilities, at Kenyon College, September 1947.
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Manners, Morals, and the Novel
195
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reason of its absence. As we read the great formulated monuments
special meaning. They are the things that for good or bad draw the
of the past, we notice that we are reading them without the acpeople of a culture together and that separate them from the people companiment of something that always goes along with the formuof anvther culture. They make the part of a culture which is not art, lated monuments of the present. The voice of multifarious intention
or religion, or morals, or politics, and yet it relates to all these highly
and activity is stilled, all the buzz of implication which always surformulated departments of culture. It is modified by them; it modirounds us in the present, coming to us from what never gets fully fies them; it is generated by them; it generates them. In this part of
stated, coming in the tone of greetings and the tone of quarrels, in
culture assumption rules, whic
h is often so much stronger than
slang and humor and popular songs, in the way children play, in the
reason.
gesture the waiter makes when he puts down the plate, in the na
The right way to begin to deal with such a subject is to gather toture of the very food we prefer.
gether as much of its detail as we possibly can. Only by doing so will
Some of the charm of the past consists of the quiet-the great
we become fully aware of what the gifted foreign critic or the
distracting buzz of implication has stopped and we are left only
stupid native one is not aware of, that in any complex culture there
with what has been fully phrased and precisely stated. And part of
is not a single system of manners but a conflicting variety of manthe melancholy of the past comes from our knowledge that the huge, ners, and that one of the jobs of a culture is the adjustment of this
unrecorded hum of implication was once there and left no traceconflict.
we feel that because it is evanescent it is especially human. We feel,
But the nature of our present occasion does not permit this actoo, that the truth of the great ·preserved monuments of the past does cumulation of detail and so I shall instead try to drive toward a
not fully appear without it. From letters and diaries, from the regeneralization and an hypothesis which, however wrong they turn mote, unconscious corners of the great works themselves, we try to
out to be, may at least permit us to circumscribe the subject. I shall
guess what the sound of the multifarious implication was and what
try to generalize the subject of American manners by talking about
it meant.
the attitude of Americans toward the subject of manners itself. And
Or when we read the conclusions that are drawn about our own
since in a complex culture there are, as I say, many different systems
culture by some gifted foreign critic-or by some stupid native oneof manners and since I cannot talk about them all, I shall select the who is equipped only with a knowledge of our books, when we try
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