nobles perished like dumb beasts. Give them at least their due meed, a tomb apart from the vulgar herd, the rueful commemoration of a lament. The rest is silence. Tacitus will not see the new virtues which are redeeming the Roman world. In such evil days, so great a master of psychological analysis can impute little but evil motives to men's actions. His subtle scrutiny cannot allow him the joy of a simple belief in good. Virtue and vice were unequally matched. "Most men will proclaim every man his own goodness, but a faithful man who can find ? Tacitus is at least the candid critic always ready to attribute every man his own evil. Such a writer is unlikely to draw for us a fair picture of the Princes round whose persons and authority centred all the new recuperative forces of the State. A Tiberius, cruel, crafty, incredibly vicious; a Claudius, pedant, dotard, incredibly vulgar; a Nero, buffoon, poseur, incredibly dirty ; are these in honest fact those Julio-Claudian Emperors under whose rule the Empire seemed verily re-born? Did not those Princes minister to that Empire's needs ?1 Tacitus is among the Immortals. Yet he is an imprison'd soul, of those who despair of human nature : And while they try to stem The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest, Death in their prison reaches them, Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest. 1 In this rapid sketch of Tacitus my debt to H. Peter is very obvious. For once Boissier seems to me not so well to hit the mark in his Tacite. With a few notes concerning the lack of " Authorties "I now end. Even within the limits of the periods of Roman history designed for special study there are great stretches of the road along which the student has to grope his way without an without an "ancient" guide to help him. When a Polybius or a Tacitus has us by the hand we are thankless enough at times to gird at them. But we miss them very sorely when they leave us to pursue such desolate portions of the journey. 66 For part of the way the student is really solitary. The "Fifty Years" of Roman history from 43 B.C.-A.D. 14 are those in which the transition from Republic to Principate was effected. Few periods might seem to offer more chances of interest to him. Yet for the history of all these years he reads no single Ancient Authority," the Monumentum Ancyranum possibly excepted. Dio's continuous narrative, even when eked out by Suetonius, is sorry ditchwater. Plutarch does his valiant best to attract him. But for the most part the student passes hurriedly along, in his hand some modern text-book, school history, or biography, until Tacitus picks him up as convoy. The loss to him is serious. He seems almost doomed to miss the fascination of Antony, the greatness of Octavian.1 Shakespeare and Virgil may hasten to his aid. But the schoolboy's rejoinder that poetry is not history is not inapt. What is first-hand evidence of facts? 1 I hardly dare refer him to Gardthausen's massive work on Augustus. But even Shuckburgh's Life of Augustus is not always read. There is the same lack of good ancient evidence for the reign of Caligula, part of that of Claudius, and, chiefest of sorrows, for Trajan. Again, the line of least resistance is the modern textbook, a restewed hash of poor ingredients. There is no Mommsen even here to impose authority upon the student. It is still but a very faint light upon the horizon which heralds the coming of a still greater, and an English, Master.1 The history of the early Principate on a grand scale remains still to seek, an unwritten work of genius. There is one earlier period in which the student, though bereft of worthy guides, is anything but solitary on his journey. This is that other "Fifty Years"-from Gracchus to Sulla. In reality it is the better part of a century, from 146 B.C. to Cicero's consulship in 63 B.C. And here his task is so different that it should become perhaps the most pleasurable work of all. For here out of a multiplicity of evidence of indifferent quality he has to construct his own narrative and form his own opinion for himself. What historical study could be so inspiring, so profitable, as this? Textbooks lie in wait lurking for him on every hand. Let him forget his schoolboy days and spurn their insidious temptations. Mommsen's thunders descend upon his head. Let him defy the Olympian himself and 1 Mommsen's Provinces can hardly be cited as a history of the period. Gibbon (in small mouthfuls) has been appropriated by the Honour School of Modern History(!). Prof. Bury's masterly textbooks both for Greek and for Roman Imperial History may perhaps be said to have saved the situation. Though many an Oxford man would doubtless like to contribute to a statue of the Cambridge Professor (to be erected in the Examination Schools) I am not quite sure that such a situation is worth saving. challenge him for evidence. Biographies offer him their lure of all delight. Let him play indeed with the Flower-maidens, but remember in time his mission. Lecturers invite his presence. Let him most sedulously avoid them. Labour - saving appliances and a shorter working-day are not Oxford ideals. On the earlier part of this journey he finds a guide is thrust imperatively upon him. Let him deal with the fellow as courteously as he may, but yet know him always to be just the ignorant Alexandrian sciolist that the rascal is.1 To discover, to compare, to weigh; to appreciate, to explain, to reject-these are our student's happy tasks. He may be grateful for material conveniently collected for his use. It is "up to him " to sift it. In his travel through the diversified country of the history of these years he must find his own "authorities," he must, to use the plain talk of childhood, make up his own mind. Let him at least pluck up heart and essay the task, resolute never to be satisfied with a borrowed judgment: Sed non ante datur telluris operta subire, The golden bough of the tree of that knowledge which gives access to the story of the past and affords converse with the Shades of the dead is surely courage. 1 It is quite impossible to forgive the substitution of Appian Book I for Plutarch's Lives of the Gracchi in the statutable requirements for Lit. Hum. Is it not a wiseacre's part to make a shibboleth of continuity of narrative as such? 2 As e.g. in Greenidge and Clay's Sources for Roman History R.c. 133-70, or (still better) Niccolini's Fasti Tribunorum Plebis. [I APPENDICES A. ON READING FOR GREATS REPRINT here a pamphlet of mine (privately printed) which for a dozen years past I have been in the habit of giving to each one of my Greats pupils when he comes to me on beginning his course in Ancient History. It applies particularly to any Oxford man just through Moderations." But other students of Roman history may possibly find something serviceable in it.] 66 I. IN GENERAL You have just finished with one examination. Its results in your case, if good, may well serve as encouragement, if bad, need be no discouragement, to you in your work for Greats. For while pre-eminently a "Classical" School, so that the good scholar has here still an advantage, Greats work differs so widely in nature and scope from Moderations work that every man who is willing to be a student- -and that means just the love of reading and of thinking for their own sake-can do well in Greats whatever his class in Mods. You have just finished with one examination. In two and a quarter years comes another, the Final, examination. For two whole years I want you, if you can, to put away altogether the thought of the examination. In that charming little book, a book which gives us all much to think about, called An Oxford Correspondence of 1903, Mr. Warde Fowler of Lincoln College makes |