The Weekly Sage hopes to regularly bring brief profiles of key contributors to thought and faith before a Christian audience for historical education and awareness of valuable resources.

Tacitus

–          “My policy is to trace proposals in detail only if conspicuously honorable or of noteworthy disgrace, for in my view the principle obligation of histories is that manifestations of excellence not go unspoken and , for perverse words and deeds, to generate fear from posterity and infamy.”[1]

–          “This Lepidus, I find, was a consequential and wise man in that period: he steered many manners away from other men’s violent obsequiousness into a better course. Nor did he lack balance, if he flourished with authority and Tiberius’ favor unchanging. This makes me wonder. Are fate and one’s birth-lot the source, as of other things, also of an emperor’s inclination towards some and grievance against others? Or is it something in our choices? Can one forge, between craggy defiance and degrading deference, a path clear of favor-seeking and danger?”[2]

Cornelius Tacitus (56-120 AD) was a historian and senator in the early Roman Empire, balancing to great success the demands of the Imperial Court and the productivity of his mind. While the Roman world in which Tacitus lived was full of turmoil, he was born in Southern Gaul, an area known today as Provence.[3] This region had long been under Roman rule and was far enough from the border areas as to be distant from the constant struggle that characterized the period. Thus, it is likely that Tacitus grew up with the institutions of education, economic order, and law that Rome nurtured, without the chaos or military brutality that developed on the fringes of the Empire.

Born to a civil servant, by the age of nineteen Tacitus was in the City of Rome itself, practicing as an orator.[4] In this period, the Flavian emperors, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian came to power, bringing a period of roughly 20 years’ general stability and administrative efficiency that contrasted with Nero’s disastrous rule of cruelty and licentiousness. While Tacitus was a successful politician under the Flavians, Domitian’s descent into cruelty and his murder created new power struggles, leading to Tacitus’ withdrawal and development as a historian.[5]

It is in this capacity that Tacitus appears as a relevant sage for believers today to consider. Tacitus’ ancient setting differs sharply from the other leading thinkers and writers that have been brought forward in the Weekly Sage so far, and the absence of any evident Christian influence on his thought is another significant difference. Nevertheless, Tacitus’ writing is characterized by what one scholar calls a “strong moralizing ethos” that demonstrates how to integrate a firm belief in a moral order with work and life in a time when that order is no longer in control of the society it brought forth.

Tacitus, in his main works, Annals and Histories, treats of a period of Roman history where luxury, moral degradation, and violence ran rampant in a culture that had its origin in law, restraint, and justice. In so doing, he honestly treats the events of his time, producing a consistent, factual, and skillful account. Nevertheless, he does not simply relate events as they occurred. Rather, Tacitus draws out the implications of lost virtue, touching on the family strife, military defeats, and political instability that resulted from the continued procession of self-serving decisions.

After studying Tacitus, the reader is left with a profound sense that living in such times would have certainly been undesirable. Yet, this automatically entails a realization that living in such ways – pursuing accumulation, power, and prestige instead of benevolence, compassion, and justice – will lead to the strife and turmoil he recounts. Thus, Tacitus provides a clear and valuable message for our society and any society: to achieve the goals we all want, a safe home, a promising future, and material well-being, we must all strive to live rightly.

For Christians, recognizing this message in a secular voice should cause us to consider our own advocacy of such clear principles. Have we developed our skills, as Tacitus did, to relay the truths of how people ought to live together? Have we publicly engaged our society, as Tacitus did, to provide a platform for proclaiming these truths? Have we pursued the information and understanding we need to touch our neighbors with the truth? Have we built relationships with those neighbors? Or have we simply sat back, toying with Netflix, pop fiction, social media, and pets? Have we, paraphrasing Lewis, been playing with mud-pies instead of taking a holiday to the sea? Have we, as Steven Curtis Chapman put it in “See the Glory,” been playing Game Boy while standing in the middle of the Grand Canyon?

After all, modern Christians, unlike Tacitus, have the commands in Colossians 4 and Ephesians 5 to “Walk in wisdom towards outsiders,” and “Look carefully then how you walk,” in both cases “making the best use of the time.” Unlike Tacitus, we know that history is not a long procession of ongoing Imperial history, but a specific unveiling of the will of God, with a coming consummation. Moreover, we have a better message. The sacrificial love of Christ and a personal relationship with the holy, loving Triune God triumphs over the repetitive, stale duties of Roman religion. While the latter may be necessary to save the state, the former are necessary to save the soul.

May we then learn from the Annals and the Histories the value of striving vigorously for impact by cultivating, for God’s glory, the skills and relationships he has graciously given us for that end. Tacitus began his writing career with Agricola, simply a biography of his father-in-law. He ended as the prestigious proconsul of Asia.[6] Let us likewise embrace the simple opportunities around us to grow and engage, trusting God to do the rest with a world of His own making.

–          “The fire was ordered, people believed. To destroy this rumor Nero supplied as perpetrators, and executed with elaborate punishments, people popularly called Christians, hater for their perversions. (The name’s source was one Christus, executed by the governor Pontius Pilatus when Tiberius held power. The pernicious creed, suppressed at the time, was bursting forth again, not only in Judea, where this evil originated, but even in Rome…Their deaths were accompanied by derision: covered in animal skins they were to perish torn by dogs, or affixed to crosses to be burnt for nocturnal illumination when light faded. Nero offered his park for the show and staged games in the Circus, mixing with the crowd in the garb of a driver or riding a chariot. This roused pity. Guilty and deserving of extreme measures though they were, the Christians’ annihilation seemed to arise not from public utility but for the one man’s brutality.”[7]

–          Bonus Quote: “This same year (60 AD) one of Asia’s notable cities, Laodicea, after collapsing in an earthquake, revived without our assistance, using its own resources.”[8]

Coming after the significant spread of the gospel in Laodicea, and in the period of the early church’s intense charity and benevolence, I would like to believe that this brief anecdote from Tacitus, standing so much in contrast with the avarice and self-gratification of Rome, represents the growing power of the Church to reorganize communities without the aid or oversight of the Emperors.

Pondering a question on politics, culture, the Christian life, or really any topic? Submit it to mailbag.bereans@gmail.com! Your question may feature in Matt’s Marvelous Monday Mailbag.

[1] Tacitus, Annals, trans. Cynthia Damon (UK: Penguin Classics, 2012), 117.

[2] Ibid, 134.

[3] Ibid, i.

[4] Ibid, i.

[5] Ibid, i.

[6] Ibid, i.

[7] Ibid, 325-326.

[8] Ibid, 287-288.