
Tacitus’ Perfect Man - diodorus
http://www.historytoday.com/emma-southon/tacitus’-perfect-man
======
valuearb
This dragged me into quite a wonderful wikipedia sinkhole, which led me to

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarion)

Everyone knows how amazing his father, Julius Caesar, was. But popular culture
only remembers on the legendary beauty of his mother. Cleopatra was almost
certainly a genius. She could speak 10 languages, and was the first Ptolemy
ruler to speak Egyptian (she was actually Greek/Macedonian, the Ptolemy
descended directly from Alexanders greatest general). She was educated in
math, philosophy and astronomy, introduced Julius Caesar to the astronomer
Sosigenes of Alexandria to help create the Julian calendar, and wrote a
medical treatise.

Sad that the product of two of histories great geniuses had to be killed by
Octavian to protect his claim to the empire. Though the child seldom matches
their parents, seems like an irreplaceable genetic loss.

After Germanicus died, the Roman empire went from bad to worse in it's choice
of emperors. Tiberius led to Caligula, then Claudius, then Nero, and his death
lead to the tumultuous year of the Four emperors.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Four_Emperors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Four_Emperors)

From that year comes interesting parallel to Germanicus, the story of Lucius
Verginius Rufus.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Verginius_Rufus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Verginius_Rufus)

He helped put down uprisings by governors intending to become Emperor and
twice that year his armies offered to put him on the throne, and he refused
both times. In an era where emperors regularly killed anyone who had the
political means to be a threat to their throne, he was able to live to the age
of 83, where he was again selected as Consul by Emperor Nero.

~~~
SirensOfTitan
Something else to note here: Julius Caesar lived most of his life working
toward great purpose. It almost seemed like he got bored being in the same
place for too long. One of the only true times he took a break in his life was
with Cleopatra after the Pompean-Caesarian Civil War turned in his favor. It
was actually a bit of a disastrous hiatus for him, but I think it speaks to
how absolutely engaging Cleopatra was (although many commentators might just
say after 10 years of warfare, he just needed a break).

> Sad that the product of two of histories great geniuses had to be killed by
> Octavian to protect his claim to the empire. Though the child seldom matches
> their parents, seems like an irreplaceable genetic loss.

I think this statement jumps on the "nature" bandwagon, but I'd argue that at
least Caesar wasn't born a political and military genius, but got there by:

1\. Good tolerance of failure. Great Roman military commanders like Pompey and
Caesar were known to have an uncanny ability to learn from their defeats.

2\. Luck. Certain decision making like going to Britain twice and making the
same mistake almost to his end played out well for Caesar. Also decisions to
march to save his garrisoned legion during the greater Gallic rebellion during
wintertime, while admirable (the safety of his soldiers was of supreme
importance to him), worked out where they seemed like they shouldn't most of
the time.

3\. Stupidity of his enemies. How many times did Caesar attack the Pompeans
during the Civil War during winter? They never learned. It's remarkable
really. One can also look at Caesar's merciful treatment of enemies during the
civil war as evidence of his genius -- he won so many by being gentle, even
though he had to fight Ahenobarbus like 4 times because he kept letting him
go.

With that, Caesar turned into an absolute master by making reasonable
calculated risks and surviving them. By the point he was clearing the last of
the Pompeans in Africa at the end of the Civil War, he didn't even leave his
tent to give commands -- so confident and expertised in warfare that he didn't
even have to see the field of battle.

This is a bit of a ramble. I really admire Julius Caesar and think there's so
much to learn by studying his life and habits.

~~~
unFou
"By the point he was clearing the last of the Pompeans in Africa at the end of
the Civil War, he didn't even leave his tent to give commands"

Was this an indication of the experience and initiative of his commanders and
non-coms? So Caesar might decide on the overall approach, make sure all his
commanders knew what that was, and let them figure out how best to achieve
that based on the situation.

~~~
SirensOfTitan
> Was this an indication of the experience and initiative of his commanders
> and non-coms? So Caesar might decide on the overall approach, make sure all
> his commanders knew what that was, and let them figure out how best to
> achieve that based on the situation.

This interestingly largely didn't seem to be the case. By Africa most of
Caesar's experienced legions (who campaigned with him during the Gallic Wars
and the first half of the Civil War) weren't with him (he campaigned mostly
with Pompey's newly raised legions out of Greece). His commanders were either
new or of questionable skill. In particular, his most capable commander during
the Gallic Wars, Labienus, defected to the Pompey early in the Civil War, and
was one of Caesar's chief opponents during his African campaign.

As an interesting note, it seems Labienus likely defected from Caesar for two
reasons:

1\. At the beginning of the Civil War it looked extremely unlikely Caesar
would win.

2\. Labienus felt as though Caesar took more credit than he ought to have in
the Gallic Wars, depriving him of his "auctoritas" (sort of prestige) he felt
he rightfully deserved.

Caesar's skilled defeat of Pompey and Labienus show his military skill outside
of his use of good commanders.

~~~
fapjacks
I hope you see this after all this time. Do you have a trailhead to lend me so
I can read about this instance of not having to leave his tent to give
commands? I have never heard this before and it's very interesting to me.

------
omalleyt
It's a symptom of postmodernism that nowhere in this text is it even suggested
that Tacitus is maybe just, you know, relating the facts about Germancius as
accurately as he can.

Instead we're sitting here quibbling over what literary fiction trope
"Tacitus's Germanicus" fulfills in his "story"

~~~
benbreen
Reading texts critically, thinking about the context that produced them, and
debating the author's rhetorical strategies has a lot more to do with
Renaissance humanism than with postmodernism. Simply reading all historical
texts with the expectation that the author meant to tell the facts and nothing
but leads to the acceptance of frauds like the Donation of Constantine:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine)

~~~
omalleyt
Well, it's not like I wholly disagree with what you're saying, but I think the
paragraph above is a straw man of what I'm saying.

First, here is the element of Postmodern discourse I'm talking about:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction)

Second, my complaint is that it's not even considered as a possibility that
Tacitus is telling the truth. In relation to The Annals (a public document
concerning public affairs thousands of contemporaries would have had firsthand
experiences of) do you really think it's a forgery? Or do you really think
Tacitus is so biased he can't record history accurately? The idea that someone
becomes so corrupted by their interests (especially race and class) that they
cant be objective is a uniquely postmodern idea. The Enlightenment was
premised on the idea that objective rationality was accessible to all.

Further, we can test your hypothesis about the Renaissance. The Renaissance
writers read Tacitus, and when they mention him, they treat his works like a
complete and unmitigated factual account. Also, Tacitus is not engaged in
rhetoric. That's the point. He's writing history, not philosophy.

~~~
swordswinger12
You're letting your modern biases color how you view Tacitus' writings. Most
people educated in the last ~hundred years or so were taught "history" as you
understand it - an impartial account of the facts of an actual event or
person. This view of history is actually pretty recent, and it's widely
understood that ancient historians did _not_ practice what we would consider
the modern discipline of history. For example, Herodotus is considered the
historian ne plus ultra of the ancient world, but he still wrote about lots of
weird shit like zombies and races of headless people.

It's not so much that modern historians think Tacitus was too "biased" to
"record history accurately"; they read his works critically because they know
he wasn't really even trying to record history accurately in the way we think
about doing that today.

EDIT: Another good example of ancient versus modern history is Pericles'
Funeral Oration, as related to us by Thucydides:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pericles%27_Funeral_Oration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pericles%27_Funeral_Oration)
Thucydides probably edited the speech heavily (even by adding or removing
content), and may have even combined multiple different speeches to create
what we know as _the_ speech. A modern historian would most likely blanch at
the thought of doing this, but Thucydides was fine with it because he wasn't
even trying to relay an impartial and 100% accurate account of the events of
the Peloponnesian War (as a modern historian would).

~~~
omalleyt
Historical records did not begin 100 years ago, that much I don't think anyone
can truly believe. We have detailed contemporary histories of the American
Revolutionary War, for one, and they seem no more "biased" than histories of
WWII.

There is a 500 year difference bt Herodotus and Tacitus. Even so, Herodotus
did no more than accurately record what he was told, assiduously pointing out
when he saw something first hand. Early ancient historians made up speeches,
that much is known. But by Tacitus's day, the act of writing an objective
history was not a novelty, and in fact he complains in the beginning of his
text that he is undertaking the work because he thinks his peers, also
ostensibly engaged in objective history, have not been objective enough out of
fear or hatred when covering the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and
Nero. Once again, with no reason to doubt him, I ask: why not even consider
taking one of the greatest historians whose works have been preserved for
posterity at face value?

Is there anything in particular Tacitus says in any of his works that you
doubt happened?

