I have read Tacitus The Agricola and The Germania five times now, annotated its pages thrice. My eyes are tired and I dedicate this day, 8/2/25, in San Jose, to summarizing the work in six parts, taking breaks to walk about the calm streets and collect the eyes for another peek. I must paraphrase much of what I wished to quote, as switching from screen to book stresses this tiny, bipolar, ocular nation.

The Agricola is a historical essay as an ode, written by Tacitus, who was an officer under Agricola, sharing his battles in Britain, and was married to the daughter of Agricola. The subjects of the final conquest of Britain are three:

-1. The heroism of the Barbarians; savages of friendly, allied, enemy and hostage nations. For the legions were mostly spectators to the battles, standing back in order, as Agricola and officers led barbarian conscripts and volunteers from Germany against their cousins in Britain. The Roman soldiers are described as garrison troops who were a threat to their own officers until Agricola came on the scene, and with a combination of fairness, strength and a barbarian like heroism of his own, and as well his barbarian troops taken from Germania into the island against their fathers’ good behavior, cowed the criminal legions.

-2. The helpless, soft, urban and suburban nature of the Roman folk colonizing Britain.

-3. The criminal nature of the unnamed parties in charge of tax collecting, supply of the army, and provision of forced labor.

These were the three challenges faced by Agricola.

Tacitus, present during the campaign, seems sorrowed over the fate of such a heroic people, of their binding in servitude. Yet, pitiless according to his Roman ethos, in his reflections, sees the enslavement of every race by the Romans as another rear guard action won by his race against the universal enslavement that must engulf all peoples. The best quotes in Agricola, are those the Britons and Picts, who alone call for liberty and freedom and who rally against slavery. As is ever the case, as with Spartacus, the best rebels are slain, the most honest and pious freedom fighters are slaughtered, and the worst of us submit…

Let us save these subjects of race and slavery for the next two sections, and first look at Agricola and his fate under the Flavians. He distinguished himself in Britain under the father of the dynasty, Vespasian, then served under Titus, who died of plague, and finally under Domition, the younger brother, who had no redemptive quality and seems to have been a creature of the un-named government officials and contractors who “served” his administration.

Agricola employed an exiled Irish prince as an advisor. That Island was well known to Roman officials in Britain due to extensive trade networks. Together with merchant and firsthand intelligence, the general was confident that a Legion and barbarian troops could take Ireland and hold it, and that this legion could be drawn from Britain, for, once the Picts were cornered and had no allies to retreat to across the Irish Sea, they would be less restive. Agricola circumnavigated Scotland and conquered the Orkneys. Tacitus knew well of Thule, that more distant lands, north and west, to where the sea “heaved like a lung” did exist.

Domition did not permit conquest of Ireland, by the one man capable of it [and he was largely capable of it based on the Germanic slave soldiers who served him] because he was afraid that Agricola would be seen as greater than he and the legions would elect him emperor. 200 years later these German and Sarmatian slave armies in Britain, would raise Constantine to the Imperial Purple and take Rome easily.

Agricola was granted a civic post in Rome after serving Vespasian in Briton, assigned to restoring looted temple treasuries. He avoided friends, fame and compliments, humbling himself constantly to avoid suspicion of conspiracy, as conspiracy was regarded as the norm. No matter how eagerly the spies of Domition sought evidence of conspiracy they found none. No matter the insults heaped on the old general by his young emperor, he humbly declined to defend himself. The old soldier’s humble lack of ambition, his measures to ensure that his wife and daughter were not killed to spite what should have been his normal conspiratorial Roman thirst for power, even the brat emperor could not deny demonstrated a superior morality. He was not a stoic and did not show undue emotion or pretend a Stoic detachment at the passing of a child. This decent man proved a cipher in Rome, where all was assumed wicked and base, corrupt and grasping. The times are described as hedonistic, debauched, sodden with drunkenness, adultery and gluttony. Agricola’s piety and probity were an insult to the ruling order, and an alternative to any who might dream of a return to virtuous traditions.

The General, doing good civic duties as instructed, and giving all credit to his master, was stricken ill, and not permitted visitors, not even family. His son-in-law and daughter were stationed on the frontier. Court physicians came and went and the old soldier died in curtained enclaves in such a way as suggests poisoning, though Agricola veers far away from making this charge, as did his contemporary Arrian discussing the deaths of Hephastion and Alexander, young and healthy when they fell ill just after restoring treasures to temples and tombs.

Might all three have been poisoned by the financial interests which used corrupt priests to loot these temples and tombs?

Their biographers decline any such suggestions, yet leave the trail of suggestive facts in tact.

Below are some quotes from the civic record of Agricola.

“Famous men of old had their lives and characters set in record; and even our generation, with all its indifference to the world around it, has not quite abandoned the practice. An outstanding personality can still triumph over the blind antipathy to virtue which is a defect of all states, small and great alike.”

-Chapter 1

“But in these times, when I planned to recount the life of one no longer with us I had to crave an indulgence which I should not have sought for invective. So savage and hostile to merit was our age.”

-Chapter 1

“The public executioners, under official instructions, made a bonfire in Comitium and Forum of these literary masterpieces. So says the record. In those flames the government imagined it could silence the Senate and men’s knowledge of truth. Rome once explored the outer limits of freedom; we plumb the inner depths of slavery, robbed as we are by spies of the rights to exchange ideas in conversation.”

-Chapter 2

…

Part 2 & 3

The balance of the civic maxims are preserved for contrast as to the record of the Roman dealings with the Britons, which are often taken from the speeches of barbarians.