the substance but to the manner[1]. Tacitus uses the dramatic form more variously than Sallust, but with a stricter historical conscience than Livy. He resembles Thucydides and Polybius in never introducing a speech merely for oratorical effect, but always for the purpose of illustrating a political situation or character[2]. There is a well-known instance—the only one in ancient literature—in which the discourse given by the historian can be compared with an official record of the discourse really delivered. In the Eleventh Book of the Annals the Emperor Claudius addresses the Senate in support of a proposal for imparting the Roman franchise to the provincials of Gallia Comata[3]. The bronze tablets found at Lyons in the sixteenth century, and now in the Museum there, give what purports to be the real speech of Claudius on this occasion. Tacitus and the tablets disagree hopelessly in language and in nearly all the detail, but agree in the general line of argument[4]. Knowing
- ↑ Bellum Jugurth. 31—a striking illustration of the Roman feeling that oratory, for its own sake, deserved a place in history.
- ↑ Ulrici, indeed (Charakteristik der antiken Historiographie, p. 148), regards some of the speeches in Tacitus as inserted merely for dramatic ornament; e.g. Ann. i. 17, 22, 42, 43, 58, 59; ii. 14, 45, 46; iii. 16, 61; iv. 34, 35; xii. 10. But in all such cases, I think, it will be found that a more serious motive is also present.
- ↑ Tac. Ann. xi. 24.
- ↑ The text of the two bronze tablets, found in 1524, has been edited by A. de Boissieu in his Inscriptions antiques de Lyon. It is printed in Orelli's edition of Tacitus at the end of Book xi. of the Annals, p. 342.
