X-Nico

15 unusual facts about Tacitus


Anders Johan von Höpken

The noble style of his biographies and orations has earned for him the title of the Swedish Tacitus.

Aurél Dessewffy

While still a child he could declaim most of the Iliad in Greek without a book, and read and quoted Tacitus with enthusiasm.

Battle of the Weser River

According to Tacitus, the number of Germanic casualties were between 10,000- 20,000 dead or wounded, while probably less than 10,000 Romans were killed.

Birger Nerman

In 1925 the Swedish Armed Forces published his The Rise of the Swedish Realm (Det svenska rikets uppkomst) in which Nerman argued that the formation of the Swedish state had been completed by the 8th century, that it was the direct continuation of the "powerful Svea kingdom" mentioned by Tacitus, and that Sweden with its history of two millennia held senior rank among the existing nations of Europe.

Ludwig Crocius

He wrote on the De Germania of Tacitus (1618) as a school work, and also the Idea viri boni hoc est octo et quadringenta Sixti sive Xisti sententiae quae vitae honestae et religiosae epitomen complectuntur (1618).

Mediterraneanism

Sergi claimed the Nordics had made no substantial contribution to pre-modern civilization, noting that "in the epoch of Tacitus the Germans ... remained barbarians as in prehistoric times".

Nathanael Richards

Richards's major work was the tragedy Messallina (1640), a historical play based on Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the younger, and the sixth satire of Juvenal.

Opis

However, the Roman historian Tacitus informs us that in the 1st century AD, Greek and native inhabitants still had institutions of their own.

Saleius Bassus

Quintilian credited him with a vigorous and poetical genius and Julius Secundus, one of the speakers in Tacitus' Dialogus de Oratoribus styles him a perfect poet and most illustrious bard.

Saxa Rubra

(Tac. Hist. iii. 79.) At a much later period (312) it was also the point to which Maxentius advanced to meet Constantine previous to the battle at the Milvian bridge.

Stonea

The site is thought to be the site of a battle in 47 AD mentioned by Tacitus, between the Iceni tribe and a Roman auxiliary force under governor Ostorius Scapula.

Suessa Pometia

This was indeed related by some writers of Apiolae, another city taken by Tarquin (Val. Antias, ap. Plin. iii. 5. s. 9), but the current tradition seems to have been that connected with Pometia (Tac. Hist. iii. 72).

Terni

The Roman historian Tacitus is often stated to have been born in Terni, but there is no evidence for the claim, which is circumstantially based on the probable birth there of the emperor of the same name, and on the attested fact that that emperor took care to have his namesake's works widely copied, in the apparent belief that they were related.

The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum

Martin relied on the recently published Pompeiana (1819) by William Gell and John Peter Gandy for background information on the Roman town, and on Edwin Atherstone's 1821 epic poem "The Last Days of Herculaneum", published with Pliny the Younger's letters to Tacitus on the eruption.

Zenata

They may be related to the Cinithii mentioned by Tacitus in the Annals who inhabited the lands to the South of Tunisia saying they were not just a tribe but very numerous peoples.


-lock

Hermann (1928) identifies as such *ansulaikaz the hymns sung by the Germans to their god of war mentioned by Tacitus and the victory songs of the Batavi mercenaries serving under Gaius Julius Civilis after the victory over Quintus Petillius Cerialis in the Batavian rebellion of 69 AD, and also the 'abominable song' to Wodan sung by the Lombards at their victory celebration in 579.

Agesander of Rhodes

Sperlonga is the classical Spelunca mentioned by Tacitus and others, on the coast between Rome and Naples, where the emperor Tiberius had a celebrated villa.

Angrivarii

Although the Angrivarii receive brief mention in Ptolemy (2.10) and the Germania of Tacitus (33), they appear mainly at several locations in Annales.

David E. Potter

He has written and lectured widely on technology and the new economy, including the Stockton Lecture at London Business School in 1998, one of the Millennium Lectures at 10 Downing Street in 1999, and the Tacitus Lecture, 2000 at the Guildhall.

De Situ Britanniae

It would later be determined that it was actually a clever mosaic of information gleaned from the works of Caesar, Tacitus, William Camden, John Horsley, and others, enhanced with Bertram's own fictions.

Franz Passow

Other works by Passow are Grundzüge der griech. und röm. Literatur und Kunstgeschichte (“Foundations of Greek and Roman Literature and History of Art”; 2nd ed., 1829) and editions of Persius, Longus, Tacitus's Germania, Dionysius Periegetes, and Musaeus.

Hellenistic glass

In favor of this argument are comments of classical writers of the period or a little later, like Strabo (63 BC) who mentioned the Belus river on the Syrian coast to have been used for glassmaking or even by writers other such as Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) or Tacitus (c. 56-c. 117 AD).

Kama Tarkhan

An alternative identification would be that he was the chief who led the Huns to appear in the west near the Caspian sea, according to Tacitus at the turn of the 1st century AD, in retreat from the mad campaign of Ban Chao (班超) against the Xiongnu.

Karl Felix Halm

He also edited a number of classical texts for the Teubner series, the most important of which are Tacitus (4th ed., 1883); Rhetores Latini minores (1863); Quintilian (1868); Sulpicius Severus (1866); Minucius Felix together with Firmicus Maternus De errore (1867); Salvianus (1877) and Victor Vitensis's Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae (1878).

Pomponius Secundus

They are spoken of in the highest terms by Tacitus, Quintilian, and the younger Plinius, and were read even in a much later age, as one of them is quoted by the grammarian Charisius.

Publius Ostorius Scapula

He apparently (based on an emendation of a corrupt passage in Tacitus's Annals) declared his intention to disarm all the Britons south and east of the rivers Trent and Severn.

Servilius Nonianus

According to Tacitus and Quintilian, this work at their time was considered a very important Rome history reference book, especially for those historians who belonged to the Senatorial Party.

Superstition

This concerned the religion of the druids in particular, which was described as a superstitio vana by Tacitus, and Early Christianity, outlawed as a superstitio Iudaica in AD 80 by Domitian.

Svetomir Nikolajević

In his Listići iz književnosti (Leaves from Literature), published in two volumes (Belgrade, 1883 and 1888), Nikolajević rendered great services to the study of foreign writers and poets such as Tacitus, Shakespeare, Ludovico Ariosto, Montesquieu, Byron, Luis de Camões and Torquato Tasso.

The March of Brian Boru

Some of the arrangements begin with a classic quote by Calgacus, a statement of resistance against Roman occupation ending with the famous observation that 'where they create a desert, they call it peace', held by historians such as Tacitus to be emblematic of the 'barbarian' spirit of freedom, though in the greater context of Blood Axis' repertoire (and their careful, but not inaccurate, Latin translation) it holds equal symbolic meaning in the modern milieu.

Tiberius Canutius

Whether the Canutius spoken of by Tacitus in his Dialogus de Oratoribus refers to Tiberius, or to the orator Publius Canutius, or a different person altogether, is quite uncertain.

Vardanes I of Parthia

According to Tacitus (Annales xi. 8-10), Vardanes I was expelled temporarily from the throne by Gotarzes II, and fled to take refuge "in the plains of the Bactrians" (possibly the Yuezhi, who occupied Bactria at that time).

Virgilio Malvezzi

John Milton referred to "Malvezzi, that can cut Tacitus into slivers and steaks".

Virius Nicomachus Flavianus

As the title suggests, it might have been a continuation of the Annals by Tacitus: in fact, in the often unreliable Historia Augusta, inside the book devoted to the life of the Roman emperor Aurelian (270–275), it is included a letter from Aurelian to queen Zenobia that the author claims reported by a Nicomachus; it is therefore possible that Nicomachus' work was a continuation of Tacitus' until, at least, Aurelian.

Vittorio Alfieri

In his Filippo he has represented, almost with the masterly touches of Tacitus, the sombre character, the dark mysterious counsels, the suspensa semper et obscura verba, of the modern Tiberius.

William John Woodhouse

Woodhouse was the author of The Fight for an Empire, a translation from Tacitus (1931), and was also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Biblica and the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.