Agricola
De Vita Iulii Agricolae
It is possible for a genuinely good man to serve honorably under a tyrant without either open resistance or moral surrender, as Tacitus's own father-in-law Agricola did governing Britain under Domitian, and preserving the memory of such careful integrity matters as much as celebrating open defiance.
- can decent service under a tyrant preserve moral integrity
- combined biography, ethnography, and political meditation
- the invented Calgacus speech critiquing Roman imperialism
- reflects Tacitus's own compromised position under Domitian
A biographical eulogy of Tacitus's father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola, governor of Britain under Domitian, combining a compressed ethnographic account of Britain, including the famous speech Tacitus invents for the British chieftain Calgacus denouncing Roman conquest as making 'a desert and calling it peace,' with an account of Agricola's career and, implicitly, a meditation on how a decent man could serve a tyrannical emperor without either destroying himself through resistance or being corrupted by complicity. Written in the immediate aftermath of Domitian's assassination and the relief of Trajan's more moderate rule, the work is as much about Tacitus's own uneasy position, having served under Domitian himself, as about Agricola. The invented Calgacus speech became one of the most quoted passages in Roman writing critical of empire, ironically composed by the empire's own historian.
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