30 pages • 1 hour read
TacitusAgricola
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 98A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
How to Live With Integrity and Serve the Public Good Under a Tyrannical Regime
Tacitus’s evident purpose in “Agricola” is to pay tribute to his admired and respected father-in-law, Agricola. By extolling Agricola’s virtues, Tacitus also speaks to a larger concern in imperial Rome: how to be a good man under an emperor who suppresses freedom and transparency. Agricola’s life story, in particular the consistent virtue he exhibited, according to Tacitus’s account, provide an example of how to live with integrity separate from the whims of a tyrannical emperor. This purpose, along with the conventions of ancient Graeco-Roman biography, helps explain why Tacitus focuses on Agricola’s virtues and significant military achievements rather than providing a balanced account of his entire life.
Throughout “Agricola,” Tacitus contrasts Agricola’s virtues with Domitian’s vices. Where Agricola was moderate and modest, Domitian envied the achievements of others and sought to undermine them. While Agricola communicated transparently, Domitian cultivated secrecy and uncertainty, never allowing those in his orbit to know exactly how he felt about them. As a result, though Agricola inspired love in those who served under him, Domitian inspired paranoia. Fearful of informers and rumors, citizens became wary of speaking openly about their thoughts and opinions. Tacitus believed this anxiety ultimately penetrated people’s consciousness, such that they lost the ability to think for themselves.
The question then becomes, for Tacitus, how to respond to the restrictions imposed on citizens. Some scholars believe that Tacitus was traumatized by the treason trials of 93, which resulted in prominent men who were critical of Roman tyranny being put to death or sent into exile. It is possible, some scholars argue, that Tacitus viewed defiance of the prevailing authority as ultimately self-promoting and pointless, since the offending figures were killed or sent away, where they could no longer exert their influence. A more productive course, according to Tacitus, is continuing to serve the people to the best of one’s ability. Through his modest service, Agricola provided Tacitus a model for how to do so. He carried out his tasks with moderation, sound judgment, and restraint.
“Agricola” is among Tacitus’s earliest works, and he began writing it the year after Domitian’s assassination in 96. This suggests that Tacitus discovered another course for resisting tyranny: becoming a historian. By documenting an alternative narrative to the emperor’s and exposing its manipulations, the historian disrupts the attempt to control freedom of thought by recording his own memory and narrative. At the conclusion of “Agricola,” Tacitus writes that Agricola’s virtues “shall abide in the hearts of men, through endless ages, in the chronicles of fame” (82). Given that the essay continues to be read and studied almost 2,000 years after its composition, Tacitus can be said to have achieved that objective.
Tacitus’s Complex View of Roman Imperial Expansion
In “Agricola,” Tacitus does not indicate that he objects or opposes Roman imperial expansion. He lauds Agricola for his military gains in Britannia, devoting much of the work to Agricola’s governorship there. Tacitus also criticizes Domitian for pulling troops out of the region after Agricola was recalled to Rome, attributing the decision to Domitian’s jealousy. In this sense, Tacitus viewed Roman conquest as acceptable, even desirable, though he resented attempts to withhold freedoms from Roman citizens.
At the same time, Tacitus takes great care to provide a thorough portrait of the tribes of Britannia that Rome conquered. He describes them as spirited and brave, with a strong infantry, and he credits Rome’s victories in part to their tribal enemies’ inability to cooperate among themselves. Once conquered, the Britanni were willing to accept “the levy, the tribute and the other obligations of empire” as long as they were not abused (61). In addition to enumerating some of the conquered people’s strengths, Tacitus describes their grievances against the empire in considerable detail, which is presented in translation as reported speech: “Nothing now is safe from their greed, nothing safe from their lust” (62). He notes that the Britanni believed they fought for their “country, wives and parents” while the Romans sought only to replenish their treasury and aggrandize themselves. In this sense, Tacitus suggests that uprisings against Roman conquerors were motivated more by legitimate complaints about Romans’ behavior than by an unwillingness to be absorbed into the Roman empire.
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