Sotd - Saturday the 16th of November.
Prep - Bulldog facial scrub
razor - Parker Variant (1.5)
blade - PermaSharp Super (? - still fine but best bin it - err on the side of safety)
brush - Vie Long Anniversary two-band
soap - Ach Brito Lavanda - vegetarian
post - witch hazel
a/s - Quorum
balm - Weleda
scent - Homme de Caron edt.
Result - just fine.
Not sure how that could have been better - a lovely relaxing lavender themed shave to soothe the savage breast. Much like last weekend - in an attempt to fill the long wakened hours - not by my choice - I wrote about some incredibly obscure shit - which you are welcome to read - as ever - if you don't fancy it - no problem at all - enjoy your shaves - and the rest of the weekend - yours - I.
Oh - all dates are common era - the quote at the end is from the 'Oxford Translation - Revised' - modern but keeps the form and spirit of Tacitus' Latin.
Tacitus - ‘and where they make a desert, they call it peace.'
Publius Cornelius Tacitus - (b.?56 - d.120) - historian, ethnographer, lawyer and Senator.
Given that Tacitus is a primary source for the history of the Roman empire - surprisingly little is known about him - it is by no means certain his first name was Publius - we don't know where he was born - who his parents were or indeed - if he had children himself. His family name - which derives from the Latin - ‘tacere' - ‘to be silent' - must make him one of the most mis-named authors around. His greatest works were ‘The Annals' and ‘The Histories' - which record the republic from the death of Augustus - in 14 - up to the assassination of Domitian in 96. It originally ran to thirty books - which we know he completed - they are referred to in other sources - but sadly - barely half have survived to us. It is crucial in interpreting - in my opinion - anything Tacitus wrote - that not only was he writing history - in the style of Herodotus - but at the same time - holding up a mirror to the political events of his own life.
Tacitus had been deeply scarred by the experience of surviving the rule of the last of the Flavian emperors - Domitian (r.81-96) - who is portrayed as little short of a swivel-eyed paranoid psychotic - which is probably a bit harsh - but there is little doubt the emperor was ruthless with anyone that crossed him - he ran things - relying on an extensive network of informers and the army - with himself at the centre of everything - religion, politics, governance - a personality cult - he stripped the Senate of a significant amount of its traditional authority - a despot - fair to say. Sound vaguely familiar students of modern politics? The dynamic in Tacitus - the past speaks of the present - is never better illustrated than in a pair monographs he published around 98 - shortly after the emperor had been assassinated - he would have been signing his own death warrant if he had tried it during Domitian's life.
‘De origine et situ Germanorum' -
‘The Germania' - on the face of it - is a pioneering ethnographic study of the various peoples that lived in ‘Magna Germania' - at that point - not part of the empire - and it never properly would be - the attempt to do so was a major factor in its eventual collapse. Tacitus never went there - his sources - were mostly soldiers and diplomats who had. It describes the customs and history of such tribes as the Gepids, Burgundians, Vandals and Saxons - all destined to play a major role in the shaping of modern Europe - among others - since lost in history - never heard from again. He describes red haired - blue eyed inhabitants - Celts - tolerant of cold and hunger but not of heat apparently - the women enjoyed a status unknown to their Roman counterparts - a man only took one wife - adultery was rare - all in all - an account that drifts into an imagined egalitarian idyll in places - that almost certainly is seriously inaccurate in some respects - there is more than a hint of the ‘noble savage.' It is not entirely uncritical - the locals were given to indolence and drunkenness - fair enough - being myself of Celtic heritage - I'll take that. Tacitus never explicitly makes the connection to his contemporary Rome - the degradation of the founding ideals as he saw it - but the comparison is never far below the surface. This is probably best illustrated with the other monograph he produced at the same time.
‘De vita et moribus iulli Agricolae' -
‘The Agricola' - is mostly an account of the life, character and career of Roman general Gnaeus Julius Agricola (b.40 - d.93) - a talented commander and the governor of Britain for the better part of his service. It resembles ‘The Germania' - in the respect that it contains ethnographic and geographic information on the ancient Britons - in addition to the main theme. For Tacitus - Agricola was the ideal Roman - happy to serve the emperor without thought of personal advancement - fair, just, un-corrupted by office and typical of the ‘Romanitas' he admired - not the form that Domitian had twisted it into. It is probably worth pointing out at this stage - Tacitus was married to Agricola's daughter - he was his father in law. So not entirely without bias then - but there is a lot to trust in the account of his life - he did indeed seem happy to be a loyal servant - somebody in his position - given the number of troops under his command - might have been expected to have a crack at the top job - he didn't - Constantine did in 306 - having his army proclaim him augustus in Britain - and thence to Rome to defeat the incumbent western emperor. Agricola was tasked with finishing the work begun by Julius Caesar - he set off with an army to bring northern England and ‘Caledonia' - Scotland - to heel. In the latter territory - he finally managed to bring the locals to a major engagement at the battle of ‘Mons Graupius' in 83 - no-one - as yet - has managed to identify the actual location - probably in the Grampians somewhere in my opinion. According to Tacitus - we have no other account - the Caledonians fielded an army of some 30,000 strong - of which 10,000 were slain - the rest melted away into the hills. For Agricola - job done. The most memorable section of the report - almost certainly invented by the author - is an eloquent and powerful speech attributed to the Celtic federation leader Calgacus before battle - there is no supporting evidence that such a person existed - but it is stirring stuff. As ever Tacitus was equally concerned with commenting on his own times - the corruption and degradation of the empire - as recording history faithfully -
‘We, at the furthest limits both of land and liberty, have been defended to this day by the remoteness of our situation and of our fame. The extremity of Britain is now disclosed; and whatever is unknown becomes an object of magnitude. But there is no nation beyond us; nothing but waves and rocks, and the still more hostile Romans, whose arrogance we cannot escape by obsequiousness and submission. These plunderers of the world, after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.'
