In a new reading of Tacitus's account of the quarrel between Helvidius Priscus and Eprius Marcellus at Hist. 4.6.3–4.10.1, I show that the historian stages a confrontation between panegyrical and Realpolitik rhetoric about the Principate. Helvidius uses the consensus-rhetoric of panegyric to propose that the senate claim the freedom they theoretically possess in the regime of a civilis princeps. Eprius describes the autocratic “reality” of the Principate in terms of contingency, necessity, and power. Helvidius's panegyrical fantasy runs up against practical (...) limits, but Eprius's hardheaded truisms prove equally problematic for senatorial oratory. The failures of both speeches comment on the necessity of a consciously fictive “public transcript” such as Pliny's Panegyric while pointing to historiography as the proper place for Realpolitik truths. The debate sheds new light on Tacitus's praise of Trajan and Nerva at the beginning of the Histories as a locus for collective senatorial self-fashioning. (shrink)

I argue that the prologue of Tacitus' Agricola is at pains to maintain for the work the option to be important or to be inconsequential. The goal of this effort is to anticipate a spectrum of possible receptions: if the work is welcomed by its audiences, it can serve as the first step in a prestigious literary career; if it meets with indifference or hostility, Tacitus' already-existing social self can find protection behind the claims to limited importance. In the first (...) section, I describe the rhetorical strategies through which Tacitus advances this doubled set of claims. In the second, I discuss Agricola's relationship to Sallust's monographs and adduce for comparison Pliny the Younger's career as a Catullan poet; I show that claims to write after the manner of a canonical author directly serve the aim of “keeping options open.”. (shrink)

El artículo pretende caracterizar la actitud vital e intelectual que el historiador latino Tácito adopta ante el escenario político y social existente en la época del Principado. En este contexto, se hace conveniente desarrollar un “arte de navegar” en aguas turbulentas, arte que permite vivir en tiempos difíciles con un cierto grado de dignidad personal al tiempo que sobrellevar el resto de “mala conciencia” que produce tal forma de vida. Por estas razones, los escritos de Tácito no deben ser entendidos (...) como la obra de un estoico republicano convencido o de un nostálgico de las prácticas políticas o de la forma de gobierno republicana sino de algunos de los valores propios de la época republicana como es la libertas dicendi de los senadores. Tácito encuentra en una forma de vida consciente del propio colaboracionismo, a mitad de camino entre el ideal de la integridad a ultranza aunque políticamente ineficaz propio del estoicismo no acomodaticio y el servilismo más ruin determinado exclusivamente por el propio interés individual, la única forma de vida objetiva y subjetivamente satisfactoria. (shrink)