Abstract
The republican narratives of Livy and Plutarch animated American republicanism with the virtues and spirit of Rome’s senatorial aristocracy. But they also told sad stories of lost liberty and the state’s corruption. These led to the dominant dilemma of America’s constitutional debate. Rome’s fine Polybian republic had fallen into despotism. How could the American republics avoid Rome’s fate? Cornelius Tacitus, in particular, had painted a nostalgic picture of mixed republican government as a noble vision, ‘much easier to commend than to create’.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Tacitus, Annals, IV:33, quoted e.g., in Adams, Defence, Ixix. For Tacitus in revolutionary America, see Reinhold, Classick, 99–101. Cf. Benario, ‘Gordon’s Tacitus’. For discussions of Tacitus’s purposes and ideology, see Herbert W. Benario, An Introduction to Tacitus (Athens, Georgia, 1975); T. A. Dorey (ed.), Tacitus (London, 1969); Hans Drexler, Tacitus: Grundzüge einer politischen Pathologie (Frankfurt am Main, 1963) (reissued Hildesheim, 1970); Francis Richard David Goodyear, Tacitus (Oxford, 1970); James Leake, Tacitus’ Teaching and the Decline of Liberty at Rome’, Interpretation 15 (1987):55–96,195–308; Ronald H. Martin, Tacitus (Berkeley, 1981); Ronald Mellor, Tacitus (New York, 1993); Kenneth Schellhase, Tacitus in Renaissance Political Thought (Chicago, 1976); Ronald Syme, Ten Studies in Tacitus (Oxford, 1970); Idem, Tacitus (Oxford, 1963–67).
On Tacitus’s defeatist sensibility see Earl, 93–4; Ronald Syme, Tacitus 2 vols (Oxford, England, 1958), 1:26–7.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1994 M. N. S. Sellers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sellers, M.N.S. (1994). Tacitus and Liberty. In: American Republicanism. Studies in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13347-5_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13347-5_15
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-13349-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-13347-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)