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The GERMANIA and AGRICOLA
Of
Caius Cornelius Tacitus
With Notes for Colleges
By W. S. Tyler
Professor of the Greek and Latin Languages in Amherst College
This edition of the Germania and Agricola of Tacitus is designed to meetthe following wants, which, it is believed, have been generally felt byteachers and pupils in American Colleges.
1. A Latin text, approved and established by the essential concurrence ofall the more recent editors. The editions of Tacitus now in use in thiscountry abound in readings purely conjectural, adopted without due regardto the peculiarities of the author, and in direct contravention of thecritical canon, that, other things being equal, the more difficultreading is the more likely to be genuine. The recent German editionslabor to exhibit and explain, so far as possible, the reading of the bestMSS.
2. A more copious illustration of the grammatical constructions, also ofthe rhetorical and poetical usages peculiar to Tacitus, withouttranslating, however, to such an extent as to supersede the properexertions of the student. Few books require so much illustration of thiskind, as the Germania and Agricola of Tacitus; few have received more inGermany, yet few so little here. In a writer so concise and abrupt asTacitus, it has been deemed necessary to pay particular regard to theconnexion of thought, and to the particles, as the hinges of thatconnexion.
3. A comparison of the writer and his cotemporaries with authors of theAugustan age, so as to mark concisely the changes which had been alreadywrought in the language and taste of the Roman people. It is chiefly witha view to aid such a comparison, that it has been thought advisable toprefix a Life of Tacitus, which is barren indeed of personal incidents,but which it is hoped may serve to exhibit the author in his relation tothe history, and especially to the literature, of his age.
4. The department in which less remained to be done than any other, forthe elucidation of Tacitus, was that of Geography, History, andArchaeology. The copious notes of Gordon and Murphy left little to bedesired in this line; and these notes are not only accessible to Americanscholars in their original forms, but have been incorporated, more orless, into all the college editions. If any peculiar merit attaches tothis edition, in this department, it will be found in the frequentreferences to such classic authors as furnish collateral information, andin the illustration of the private life of the Romans, by the help ofsuch recent works as Becker's Gallus. The editor has also been able toavail himself of Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo Saxons, which shedsnot a little light on the manners of the Germans.
5. Many of the ablest commentaries on the Germania and Agricola haveappeared within a comparatively recent period, some of them remarkableexamples of critical acumen and exegetical tact, and others, models ofschool and college editions. It has been the endeavor of the editor tobring down the literature pertaining to Tacitus to the present time, andto embody in small compass the most valuable results of the labors ofsuch recent German editors as Grimm, Günther, Gruber, Kiessling, Dronke,Roth, Ruperti, and Walther.
The text is, in the main, that of Walther, though the other editors justnamed have been consulted; and in such minor differences as exist betweenthem, I have not hesitated to ad