Tacitus on Principate and Empire: from the Agricola to the Annales.

Tacitus;Roman Historiography;relationship and interactions between the opera minora and opera maiora;Agricola;Germania;Dialogus de Oratoribus;Classical Studies;Humanities;Classical Studies

ten Berge, Bram L. H.Frier, Bruce W ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Tacitus;    Roman Historiography;    relationship and interactions between the opera minora and opera maiora;    Agricola;    Germania;    Dialogus de Oratoribus;    Classical Studies;    Humanities;    Classical Studies;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/120889/bltenber_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=n

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation is a holistic examination of the relationship and interactions between Tacitus’ early monographs (the Agricola, Germania, and Dialogus de Oratoribus) and his later historical works Historiae and Annales. The study serves in part to confront several preconceptions about Tacitus and his writings that have informed much scholarship on the historian in the past century. In particular, it takes issue with the assumption that the opera minora are immature and essentially preliminary to the historical works, with the claim that Tacitus’ outlook on the Principate and the Empire shifts throughout his literary career, and with the generic determination on his corpus common in modern scholarship. One consequence of the above assumptions and approaches has been that the different texts often are read in isolation; the historical works receive most attention, while the shorter works continue to be comparatively marginalized. By reading the different works in conjunction and illustrating the thematic and conceptual consistency across them, I show that the corpus forms an integrated project, in which the different works interact with and build on one another, rather than being disparate intellectual attempts. I argue that, in the Agricola, Germania, and Dialogus, Tacitus sets out theories of the Roman state, imperial rule, and the nature of historical analysis, respectively, theories which he subsequently applies to his account of the early Principate in the historical works. The Agricola, Germania, and Dialogus formulate a series of well articulated topics that will continue to draw Tacitus’ attention in the Historiae and the Annales. What emerges from the approach I take is that Tacitus’ thinking progressively develops, while his methods of analysis largely remain consistent. In advocating this approach, I engage with scholarship that has tended to see Tacitus reaching full maturity as a thinker only in his Annales. My method of looking at thematic and conceptual continuity across the different works further serves to suggest that particular aspects of Roman thought are environmentally determined rather than, as is often the case now, dictated by the form in which they are composed, prompting us to reconsider the nature of genre.