1(;4 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, more arduous work; the history of Rome, in thirty ^^^' books, from the fall of Nero to the accession of Nerva. The administration of Nerva introduced an age of jus- tice and prosperity, which Tacitus had destined for the occupation of his old age ^ ; but when he took a nearer view of his subject, judging, perhaps, that it was a more honourable, or a less invidious office, to record the vices of past tyrants, than to celebrate the virtues of a reigning monarch, he chose rather to relate, under ' the form of annals, the actions of the four immediate successors of Augustus. To collect, to dispose, and to adorn a series of fourscore years, in an immortal work, every sentence of which is pregnant with the deepest observations and the most lively images, was an under- taking sufficient to exercise the genius of Tacitus him- self during the greatest part of his life. In the last years of the reign of Trajan, whilst the victorious mon- . arch extended the power of Rome beyond its ancient limits, the historian was describing, in the second and fourth books of his annals, the tyranny of Tiberius *> ; and the emperor Hadrian must have succeeded to the throne, before Tacitus, in the regular prosecution of his work, could relate the fire of the capital and the cruelty of Nero towards the unfortunate christians. At the distance of sixty years, it was the duty of the annalist to adopt the narratives of contemporaries ; but it was natural for the philosopher to indulge himself in the description of the origin, the progress, and the character of the new sect, not so much according to the knowledge or prejudices of the age of Nero, as ac- cordincr to those of the time of Hadrian. 3. Tacitus very frequently trusts to the curiosity or reflection of his readers, to supply those intermediate circumstances and ideas which, in his extreme conciseness, he has thought proper to suppress. We may therefore pre- sume to imagine some probable cause which could di- P Principatum divi Xervas, et imperium Tiajani, uberiorem securioremque materiam senectuti seposui. Tacit, Hist, i, t See Tacit, Annal. ii. 61. iv, 4.
