Tacitus and Varro

Critical Commentary

Tacitus, born AD 56, was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire, who wrote two major works on the reigns of the emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those of the Year of Four Emperors. His work covers the period from the death of Augustus in AD 14 to the First Jewish-Roman War in AD 70 however the work does have a substantial gap with books 7-10 missing along with parts of books 5, 6, 11 and 16.

This section taken form book 4 provides us with information into the location of various legions throughout the empire at the time of Tiberius. This material shows us the extent of the Roman Empire at the time of Tiberius whilst at the same time allowing is to highlight the most volatile points of the empire. Here we can see that on the Rhine the main bulk of the army is stationed providing a defence against the Gauls and the Germans, ‘Spain, lately subjugated, was held by three’ here we see that Spain had only recently been brought under Roman control so therefore needed to have more men there to provide support in case of any rebellion. The source also provides us with the role of the legions under Tiberius portraying the importance of the auxiliary troops that supported them but also the manoeuvrability of these units as they can travel to where they are needed. ‘There were besides, in commanding positions in the provinces, allied fleets, cavalry and light infantry, of but little inferior strength.’ Here we can see those that are not in the legions not having as important role as the soldiers in the main bulk of the army. ‘But any detailed account of them would be misleading, since they moved from place to place as circumstances required, and had their numbers increased and sometimes diminished.’ It als...

... middle of paper ...

...r slaves work harder. Important in this is Varro’s suggestion that the first action of a foreman to maintain control is not to reach for the whip but to try and talk to his slaves however if that fails then the whip is a good second option. His work is almost a guide to good management providing the owner of the farm help in being able to manage and select management in his farm.

This source is important in understanding how slaves were treated on farms and how their days were organised. Although this is merely a guide it does provide us with ideas of the time on how a farm would be organised this is reinforced with Varro’s work in agriculture both in reform but also his family farm. His ideas show the importance of using slaves to control other slaves to keep the day to day of a farm keep running.

Works Cited

Tacitus, Annals 4.5, Varro, On Agriculture 1.17.4-5