Latin Literature Assignment
Hi everyone, what I’m supposed to do on this homework is the following: The main objective of this homework is to learn more about an ancient Latin writer as well as his major works, style and particular genre of writing. In this case, the author I’ve been assigned is “Tacitus”, thus having to choose one of his historical volumes, this is why in this case I’ve chosen to read and analyze his particular (as a starting point to learn more about the author’s genre and particular way of writing) work known as “The histories”, which is one of his most famous works all ever. By the way, here is the link where I’ve found, downloaded and read “The histories” translation in Spanish: http://www.freelibros.org/historia/historias-cayo-cornelio-tacito.html.
Firstly, before explaining what I’ve learned from Tacitus and his particular genre of writing by reading some pages of “The Histories”, I will start by summarizing what is this that I’ve learned from the couple of pages I’ve just read. The pages I’ve read go from page 1 to 11 of the translation book (from page 6 to page 16 within the PDF document). So, basically what I’ve read in all these pages is the particular Tacitus opinion and description of the facts and events that were happening in ancient Rome, since the fall of the Roman emperor “Neron” until Galba’s rise to the throne (this is where I stayed on page 11). Basically, in all these pages, Tacitus is describing the specific events and facts that have been happening in Rome as well as the specific impact and consequences that these have brought/provoked in the Roman society, army and politics.
Tacitus is expressing all his particular thoughts and feelings with reference to all these consequences and events, as he thinks that all these are negative and are having such a bad impact on the specific way of living (habits and costumes) of the Romans; we can clearly notice the extremely huge disagreement and anger of Tacitus with reference to Galba’s (and other emperors) specific way of ruling/governing, as he expresses and criticizes the fact that a lot of cruel and bad things are afflicting the Romans rights and necessities, as the Romans no longer enjoy the same freedom, liberty and many other rights they used to have. There’s a specific line that summarizes Tacitus opinion about Galba’s Empire: “It was everyone's opinion that he was capable of ruling the empire, had he never ruled”. From this extract, we can notice that what Tacitus really thought about Galba was that he was an ignorant and weak person, incapable of running the Roman Empire. In a few words, it can be said that what Tacitus was trying to express during all these pages was the inefficiency and the wrong that the Roman Empire of that times was carrying itself as a way of government.
Once I’ve already read these few pages and I’ve already researched more about Tacitus and his most famous works, now I can truly understand more about the specific genre Tacitus used to write about as well as about his brilliant way of writing. Then, Tacitus specific genre was “history”, with a huge emphasis on ancient politics (on the ancient ways of governments), this is why he was considered as one of the most brilliant historians or national historians of those times, since he is nowadays considered as an historical figure that represents how is was like to be a talented and successful historian over those ancient times. So, now I can affirm that after analyzing this, I’ve learned a lot more about the history genre itself, such as the fact that a branch of the history genre that was very important during those times was the Political History, this is why we can observe during this specific Tacitus work (“The histories”) the fact that he dedicates a whole of his volume/book/work to describe and talk about the historical political system/empire that was taking place in those times, so we can deduce from this the fact that a lot of historians, and people who were into this genre, we’re very into this particular branch of history (the Political History of nations/empires or National History).
Talking a little bit more about other details and interesting things that I’ve learned about this genre in particular, another fact which I already knew that was very present in all the historians that use to write at these times but I could corroborate/confirm was the “subjective” character/nature present in most and/or in a lot of the ancient historians. As we can realize, Tacitus, in this work, is definitely writing from his subjective point of view since he is expressing what he THINKS and what he BELIEVES about the Romans ancient emperors in general: why he THOUGHT they weren’t capable of ruling, what were the consequences he THOUGHT these Roman empires were causing, etc, etc.
So far, this is all I can say about what I’ve learned by doing this long but very interesting assignment… Hope this is clear for you ;)