Cornelius Tacitus

The Germania and Agricola of Caius Cornelius Tacitus

Umbria, and that he received a part of his education at Massilia (the modern Marseilles), which was then the A thens of the West, a Grecian colony, and a seat of truly Grecian culture and refinement. It is not improbable that he enjoyed also the instructions of Quintilian, who for twenty years taught at Rome that pure and manly eloquence, of which his Institutes furnish at once such perfect rules, and so iine an example. Hwe admit the Dialogue de Claris Oratoribus to be the work of licitus, his bean-ideal of the education proper for an orator was no less comprehensive, no less devated, no less liberal, than that of Cicero himself; and if his theory of education was, like Ciceroâs, only a transcript of his own education, he must have been disciplined early in all the arts and sciencesin all the departments of knowledge which were then cultivated at Rome; econclusion in which we are confirmed also by the accurate and minute acquaintance which he shows, in his other works, with all the atiairs, whether civil or military, public or private, literary or religious, both of Greece and Rome. The boyhood and youth of Tacitus did, indeed, fall on evil times. Monsters in vice and crime had filled the throne, till their morals and manners had infected those of all the people. The state was distracted, and apparently on the eve of dissolution. The public taste, like the general conscience, was perverted. The fountains of education were poisoned. Degenerate Grecian masters were inspiring their Roman pupils with a relish for a false science, a frivolous literature, a vitiated eloquence, an Epicurean creed, and a voluptuous life. But with sudicient discernment to see the follies and vices of his age, and with sufiicient virtue to detest them, Tacitus must have found his love of wisdom and goodness, of liberty and law, strengthened by the very disorders and faults of the tim
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)