Tacitus and the Incomplete

Plato and Aristotle agree that a well-made, complete text is akin to a body in which all the various parts are integrated and subordinated to the whole (Phaedrus 264c, cf. Poetics 1459c-2460b).

This paper explores a major section of the 'incomplete' in Tacitus: the large lacuna between books 7-11 in the Annals. Focusing on the reign of Caligula, this paper will pursue a two-pronged analysis that will explore the impact of this 'gap' in Tacitus' historiography and reception.

Although Tacitus wrote his (surviving) works after the death of Domitian, he remains a historian of the Flavian era, for it is under Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian that Tacitus became Tacitus. It is only by accident that we do not possess what probably was the most significant–and personal–narrative of Tacitus’ output, that is, the reign of Domitian.

This paper considers how Tacitus may have portrayed the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in the now-lost portion of the Histories, and how this might have affected readers’ experience of the Histories as a religious narrative.

In 1591 Sir Henry Savile, Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and Greek tutor to Queen Elizabeth I, published the first English translation of Tacitus (specifically, the Agricola and Histories 1-4) and dedicated it to the Queen.