Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T20:25:10.105Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Agricola and Domitian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

T. A. Dorey
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is now generally acknowledged that in the concluding chapters of the Agricola Tacitus is on several occasions guilty of distortion of the truth. The story told in 40. 2, for example, of the secret mission of one of Domitian's confidential freedmen with an offer of the governorship of Syria as a bribe to Agricola in case he should appear reluctant to obey the orders for his recall is obviously sheer fabrication, designed solely to intensify the picture of suspicion and distrust on the part of the Emperor that Tacitus is endeavouring to create. Again, though in 43. 2 Tacitus records the rumour that Agricola had been poisoned by Domitian (the rumour is repeated by Dio Cassius, lxvi. 20, as sober truth), he does so in such a way as to indicate that he himself did not believe this charge, though he hoped his readers would. There are, however, three points that have never been satisfactorily explained: the relations between Agricola and Domitian between A.d. 85 and 93, Agricola's refusal of the proconsulship of Asia, and the reason for his non-employment in the Danubian wars.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 1960 , pp. 66 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1960

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For a vigorous statement of the traditional point of view, see von Fritz, Kurt, ‘Tacitus, Agricola, and the Problem of the Principate’, Classical Philology, lii, no. 2 (04 1957)Google Scholar. See also Traube, H. W., ‘Agricola's Refusal of a Governorship’Google Scholar, ibid., xlix (1954).