Tacitus

Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 56 – ca. 120 AD) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire.

Works

The surviving portions of two of his works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those that reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors. These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus in 14 AD to the years of the First Jewish–Roman War, in 70 AD. There are substantial gaps in the surviving texts.

He also wrote a highly detailed biography of his father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola who was born in 40 AD and became the highly regarded and longest ever Governor of Britannia.

His great work Germania (Concerning the Origin and State of the Germanic peoples) discusses the tribes, their origins, gods, traditions, morals, character traits of the Germanic peoples and where they lived. Tacitus, relying upon other Roman authors and testimonies of travellers gave the eastern borders of Germania as the river Vistula and the Carpathian Mountains. Tacitus and several other Roman authors were critical of Jews.

Jews everywhere were showing signs of hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly overt acts… [M]any other nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter. Thus it was not without reason that notable Romans denounced the Jews—among these Seneca (“an accursed race”), Quintilian (“a race which is a curse to others”), and Tacitus (a “disease,” a “pernicious superstition,” and “the basest of peoples”). Prominent German historian Theodor Mommsen reaffirmed this view, noting that the Jews of Rome were indeed agents of social disruption and decay: “Also in the ancient world, Judaism was an effective ferment of cosmopolitanism and of national decomposition.”

See also

• Quotes about races in the Ancient World