THE “GERMANIA” of Tacitus stands first among the historical essays of Greece and Rome. It gives the first definite suggestion of the modern historical method of studying human nature in connection with all the circumstances which environ it; and though this method could not have been fully developed except as a concomitant of the scientific theory of evolution, the genius of Tacitus is so great that his work does not suffer by comparison with the best historical essays of the nineteenth century. It does not give the “Germania” undue credit to call it one of the greatest historical essays in the history of literature. If the “ten greatest” were balloted on as is sometimes done for the amusement of students, it would scarcely be omitted from any list prepared by a reader well informed in the world’s literature. Its style is admirable, but it derives its greatest importance from the fact that it is a close philosophical study by one of the greatest men of the classical civilization, of the new intellectual mode out of which at last were to develop the results of modern civilization. Of course when such a man as Tacitus studies thus closely so rude a people as the Germans of his day, it is because he has recognized in them a new mode in the operations of intellect—a strange new method by which the common nature of the race had begun to manifest forces omnipotent for change and growth. When, a little earlier, it had been asserted in Jerusalem that out of material as low and unformed as the stones under the feet of “the children of Abraham,” God could create a new civilization, the assertion, though it could have come only from a knowledge too far-reaching for definition, suggests the nature of the impulse which must have moved Tacitus to study the forces inherent in the race which was to create modern times. The historical value of the results of his study is too great to be estimated. Modern history, to be at all intelligible, must be studied with the “Germania” as a starting point. “Breastplates are uncommon. In a whole army, you will not see more than one or two helmets.” Tacitus wrote of the men who, when art, science, literature, philosophy, and religion were all decadent, and when the degraded imperialism of Rome had made political liberty impossible under the old order, were to lead the forlorn hopes of progress. He did not miss the most vital and essential fact of their history. When sirred to action by the subconscious race impulse which controls them, they have always been “Berserkers,”—men who fight bare-breasted, throwing themselves headlong upon their opportunities and, where all depends on the force of the onset, never stopping to defend either head or breast. The supreme force of individual initiative has always been in the Gothic breed from the times of Tacitus to our own. The founders of the United States of America recognized it and trusted it when they attempted to found a republic greater than Rome, without any other force to support it than the reserve forces of the individuality which can seize the initiative at a crisis, and, though “breastplates are uncommon,” use it, as it has been used at so many forgotten Sempachs, to open the way for progress.

  Tacitus was born under the Emperor Claudius in the early part of the second century (about 55 A.D., according to some authorities; between 52 and 54 A.D., according to others). He held the office of questor under Vespasian (78 or 79 A.D.) and in 97 A.D., became consul. These offices, however, meant little under the empire, and the fact that Tacitus held them only made him feel the more keenly the loss of Roman liberty and the degradation of morals which resulted from political servitude. In his “Dialogue on Orators” as in his “Annals” and his “Histories,” he starts always from the premise that civilization can increase and morality exist as a controlling force only in the measure in which liberty exists. He was a friend of the Younger Pliny and a son-in-law of Julius Agricola. Beyond these scanty facts, we know little of his life except that in addition to his great work as a historian and essayist, he practiced at the Roman bar and was one of the most noted orators of his time. He died near the close of the reign of Trajan, perhaps in the year 117 A.D. Brodribb says that he “ranks beyond dispute in the highest place among men of letters of all ages.” If such a generalization is ever safe it is certainly safe in the case of the historian who, when political liberty was lost and political virtue had become a reproach, remained true to his high ideals and dared “to rescue merit from oblivion and to hold up the condemnation of posterity as a menace to baseness.”