An Island Nation: Re-Reading Tacitus' Agricola

Abstract

Tacitus' Agricola is one of the most tantalizingly enigmatic of ancient texts. Coming from the pen of one who was to become a renowned historian, it is notoriously hard to place in generic terms. It fails to conform to any commonly accepted model of political history, and yet, as I shall argue, it has much to tell us about Tacitus' views of Roman political life. We can turn to the parallel of the Germania for another possible way out of the dilemma, and yet the ethnographic details which the Agricola undoubtedly encompasses could hardly be seen as its main focus. The most natural cast to give the work draws on its ostensibly biographical aspect. Commemorating the res gestae of Tacitus' father-in-law, Agricola, is the purpose signalled to the reader from the first sentence onwards: ‘to hand on to future generations the deeds and values of distinguished men’ (‘clarorum virorum facta moresque posteris tradere’). All of these interpretations have had their proponents. But I shall argue here for a different reading of the Agricola, one which not only highlights an aspect of the text which has tended to be sidelined, but also provides an interpretative framework within which some of the other, more extensively treated, themes may be reconsidered. My reading of the Agricola is focused not on the state of Rome under the emperor Domitian, nor on the customs of the inhabitants of Britain, nor even on the figure of Agricola himself, but on the actual location of his res gestae. I shall consider how Tacitus' portrayal of Britain itself may ultimately offer us insights into Agricola, Domitian, and Roman political life.

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