Tories alone, if they were continued on the same scale as the extant portion. If, however, St Jerome meant to include the Annals among the thirty books, the Histories could not have originally occupied more than fourteen books. As Tacitus paid great regard to symmetry, it is the supposition of Ritter, that the Annals contained eighteen books, and the Histories twelve. The Histories are his most finished work, and the space which he allowed himself, as well as the difference in plan, obviated the necessity of that painful conciseness which marks the style of the Annals, and left room for more vivid and animated narrative.

The last and greatest of all his works is the Annals, which could not have been published at the earliest before A.D. 116, because in book ii. chap. 61, he alludes to the expedition in which Trajan extended the boundaries of the empire as far as the Red Sea. Trajan died the year following, and Tacitus, although he survived him, was probably not anxious to fulfil his promise of becoming the historian of his greatness. The Annals comprise a period of fifty-four years, from the death of Augustus, A.D. 14, to the death of Nero, A.D. 68. They have come to us in a very mutilated state, and the entire 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th books are lost.

So profound and accurate a writer as Tacitus must have had some good reason for distinguishing between the titles "Annales" and "Historiae." What was the intended difference has long been a matter of dispute, and is not unimportant to the right understanding of these great works. Without attempting to decide where such eminent writers disagree, we will briefly mention the main opinions on the subject. 1. The classical passage for a description of Annals, is Cicero de Oratore, ii. 12; and they were, he says, dry and jejune records of the facts of each year, published by the Pontifex Maximus—mere notes of the eclipses, prodigies, triumphs, or other events which had happened during the year; whereas the fuller and most embellished style of history commenced with the works of men like M. Cato, Fabius Pictor, and Caius Antipater. 2. Aul. Gellius, who treats of the distinction as a lexicographical problem, makes Annals differ from History, in the fact that in the former regard is had not to epic unity, but to chronological succession. 3. Servius, who has been generally followed by modern writers, makes the difference consist in the contemporaneousness of the History with some part of a person's life. For this reason Grotius gave the name of "Annals" to the earlier, and "History" to the later portion of his History of the Netherlands. Niebuhr, in an admirable paper on this subject, rejects all these opinions, and combines the two first of them, and we entirely agree with him, although Ritter has returned to the definition of Servius. That the distinction between the words was not accurately kept, we may see from the application of the term "Annales," by Livy, to his great work; but Tacitus, doubtless, had in view the difference of style between his two narratives—a difference which probably became less marked as the Annals advanced. We should have been better able to discriminate this difference if the latter books of the Histories, which paint the gloomy reign of Domitian, had survived; for the part which has come down to us treats of a period which, with all its "dreary reality," was an infinite improvement on the times of a Tiberius or a Nero.

"The Annals," says Niebuhr in the paper above quoted, "carefully preserve a resemblance to their prototypes, differing only as a Madonna of Cimabue from one of Raphael. Each year is kept strictly separate, the most heterogeneous events strung together, and many things mentioned, which in a history would have found no place. It is St Peter's seen under the illumination of the Cross, where most parts of the building lie in darkness, while others are more strongly delineated by the shadows with which they are bound. The histories are like the sun falling on the same building through the great window of the tribune, and showing all things in broad day, though not under noonday brightness, not under the clear sky. The difficulties of Tacitus were really insurmountable. Tiberius had made the world torpid, and reduced it to the silence of the grave; its history is confined to himself, his unfortunate house, his victims, and the enslaved senate. In this dreary silence we shudder and speak in a whisper; all is dark, mysterious, perplexing. Was Germanicus poisoned? was Piso guilty? what urged him to his mad violence? did the son of Tiberius die of poison, and Agrippina by assassination? Tacitus knew no more certainly than we." Suetonius had a right instinct in describing this period under the form of biography; but Tacitus was too proud, too deeply wounded, to degrade the history of his country, in form as well as in fact, to the mere life of men so unfortunate and depraved as those who then wielded the sceptre of the world. We have already shown, in the life of Suetonius, how the two writers supplement each other, and how Suetonius solves the problem which the study of Tacitus had excited in the mind of the Emperor Napoleon I., by penetrating into those mysteries of the Palatine which Tacitus was prevented from entering by shame or by disgust.

The writings of Tacitus have the "majestic melancholy" of a tragedy, and indeed the Annals may be divided into the twofold dramas of Tiberius and of Nero, while upon scene after scene falls, like the heavy fold of a curtain, an atmosphere thick with debauchery and blood. It was the influence produced on the mind of Tacitus by having lived through times not dissimilar to those which he describes, that constituted him a philosophic historian. There is no withoutness in his narrative; he writes, not like a cold spectator of past events, but like one who had a living share in their degradation and their horror. Thucydides, desirous only to present unembellished facts, details them without colour and without comment, and, at the most, the veil of individuality which he throws over them is as transparent as the light of the Grecian sky. But in Tacitus every sentence bears the characteristic impress of a profound and troubled soul; and the reader never loses sight of the author in dwelling on the events which he narrates. He writes with the distinct consciousness of an avenging purpose, and something of the world's former terror still trembles involuntarily in his page. It is this deep feeling, joined with the most elevated moral purity and rectitude of purpose, which entitle him to Bussuet's panegyric of having been "the most dignified of historians;" and if he were the author to whom Pliny alludes in the 27th letter of his 9th book, we can easily imagine that he made the polite littérateurs of Trajan's court feel, as they had never felt before, "the power, the grandeur, the majesty, the divinity of history." At the same time, this keen comprehension of the period he was describing led to an exaggerated sensibility, an unconscious affectation, an unnecessary suspicion of profundity, which is the main and almost the only fault of this incomparable writer. He probably owed this defect to the influence of his contemporaries; but in him alone does it become tolerable, and he shares it in a much less degree than the other writers of his age.

Bötticher, in an admirable treatise, De Vita, scriptis, et stilo Taciti, classes his peculiarities under three heads, viz., 1. Love of variety; 2. Brevity and force of expres-

---

1 Gell. v. 18. 2 On. 35a. i. 377. 3 In the Rheinische Mus., translated by Dr Thirlwall, Philology, Mus. ii. 661. 4 Liv. xiii. 13. 5 Anna. iii. 65. 6 Nisard, ubi supra. sion; and 3. A certain poetical colouring of the language, which is almost the only characteristic in which Tacitus resembles the writers of the Decadence. To the first class belong his different modes of spelling and inflecting the same word, his heteroclitics, his copiousness, his coined words, and his interchange of constructions; to the second, the condensed periods and scornful avoidance of every unnecessary word, which makes him so remarkable a contrast to the babbling loquacity of some of his contemporaries; to the third, his numerous Græcisms, his syntaxis ornata, and his rhythmical conclusions.

Tacitus has never been a popular writer, and preferred an audience, "fit though few." This must have been the case at a very early period, or the Emperor Tiberius would have found it unnecessary to publish an edict that ten copies of his Histories should be made at the public expense every year. In spite of this pious care, large portions of them have perished.

The first and incomplete edition of Tacitus was that by Vindelin de Spira, Venice 1470. The first edition of the entire work is that by Beroaldus, Rome 1515. The best modern commentaries are those of Broter, Walther, Ritter, and Orelli. The latter is an admirable work, and contains nearly everything that is necessary for the understanding of Tacitus. Bötticher's Lexicon Taciteum is also useful. Walch has published a separate edition of the Agricola, and Grimm of the Germania, of which there is also an English edition by Dr Latham, containing a vast amount of ethnological information. The Italian translation by Davanzati is the best, and there are English versions by Gordon and Murphy. The former is accurate and antiquated; the latter avoids all the difficulties, but may be read with advantage from its interesting style and undeniable eloquence. It is the work of a man who loved and appreciated the author whom he was translating.

(T.W.F.)