Tacitus on empires and wastelands

Tacitus (born c. 56 AD) was one of the greatest Roman historians, whose Annals and Histories narrated the volatile condition of Rome’s political order of his day. His readers, then and ever

since, could see that these works communicated a subtext. Tacitus was by profession a diplomat, whose career took him to senior positions in Rome’s imperial administration. He would have

sensed that Rome’s empire must have looked impregnable to anyone looking out, from inside the capital. But, on the other hand, to anyone looking in from the outside, from the provinces,

cracks were apparent.

Tacitus wrote two works that held up a mirror to his Roman peers, De Germania and Agricola. Today we might describe these works as political counterfactuals.

One of these, De Germania, described in idealised terms the homespun ways of rustic Germanic folks, a relief for readers to set against smug, sophisticated Romans. Agricola was a biography

of Tacitus’ father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who had overseen Roman peacekeeping missions in Britain. The Germans of De Germania are based on hearsay, the Britons in Agricola came to

Tacitus by way of first-hand accounts heard from his father-in-law. Wrapped into this biography were long passages quoting the voices of native Britons.

Tacitus commended Agricola for bringing law and order to Britain:

Agricola, for all his unequivocal loyalty to the interests of Rome, was also mindful that the aims of imperial overlords were at odds with the interests of their subjects. To anyone who

cared to read closely, Agricola in many places issued warnings:

Tacitus thus put his compatriots on notice: Roman armies brought in tow stable social conditions and personal security. Still, Roman rule was brittle, for material comforts alone would not

engender acquiescence. In fact, once pacified,

Tacitus further described how Agricola quelled uprisings and planned to expand Rome’s reach to Ireland. But Agricola was mindful, Tacitus affirmed, that once Rome’s legions were established

in Ireland, “Roman troops would be everywhere and liberty would sink, so to speak, below the horizon.”

Agricola stopped short of invading Ireland, but he did lead his troops into Scotland. There, on the eve of the decisive battle of Mons Graupius, Calgacus, the commander of the Scots,

impressed on his warriors who and what they were fighting against:

Casual readers of Tacitus must have considered this record of a military triumph a vindication of Roman statecraft, and the description of self-inflicted mayhem evidence of the need for

Roman rule in the best interest of the barbarians who were vanquished.

To readers who looked ahead into the long term, on the other hand, Agricola must have been disquieting. Tacitus’ foreboding over the fate of Rome was premature: when he died in c.120 AD, the

empire was still expanding. But not for much longer. And his intuition, if premature, was vindicated. Once Roman rule lost the hearts and minds of their subjects, the mightiest of empires

of the ancient world disintegrated. Its subjects were no longer grateful for the Pax Romana, having come instead to subscribe to the words of Calgacus: solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant

(“they make a wasteland and they call it peace”).

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