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• To the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole,
• Discourses Upon Tacitus.
• Discourse I.: Upon the Former English Translations of Tacitus.
• Sect. I.: Of the Translation By Greenway and Sir H. Savill.
• Sect. II.: Of the English Translation By Several Hands.
• Sect. III.: Of the Last Translation of the First Annal.
• Sect. IV.: Of the Last Translation of the Second Annal.
• Sect. V.: Of the Last Translation of the Third Annal.
• Sect. VI.: Of the Last Translation of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Annal.
• Sect. VII.: Of the Last Translation of the Eleventh Annal.
• Sect. VIII.: Of the Last Translation of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Annals.
• Sect. IX.: Of the Last Translation of the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Annals.
• Discourse II.: Upon Tacitus and His Writings.
• Sect. I.: The Character of Tacitus.
• Sect. II.: How Much He Excells In Description and Force.
• Sect. III.: Further Instances of the Justness of His Genius, and of His Great Thoughts.
• Sect. IV.: The Morality of Tacitus, and His Spirit Virtuous and Humane.
• Sect. V.: The Stile of Tacitus, How Pertinent and Happy: His Obscurity, a Charge of the Moderns Only.
• Sect. VI.: A General Character of His Works.
• Sect. VII.: Tacitus Vindicated From the Imputation of Deriving Events From Counsels Too Subtle and Malevolent.
• Sect. VIII.: More Proofs of the Candour and Veracity of Tacitus.
• Sect. IX.: Mr. Bayle ’ S Unjust Censure of Tacitus; and How Well the Latter Knew and Observed the Laws of History.
• Sect. X.: An Apology For the Wrong Account By Tacitus Given of the Jews and Christians, and For His Disregard of the Religion Then Received.
• Sect. XI.: The Foolish Censure of Boccalini and Others Upon Tacitus.
• Sect. XII.: Of the Several Commentators and Translators of Tacitus.
• Sect. XIII.: A Conjecture Concerning the Modern Languages, More Largely Concerning the English.
• Sect. XIV.: A Conjecture Concerning the Present State of the English Tongue, With an Account of the Present Work.
• Discourse III.: Upon Cæsar the Dictator.
• Sect. I.: Of Cæsar’s Usurpation, and Why His Name Is Less Odious Than That of Catiline.
• Sect. II.: Of the Publick Corruption By Cæsar Promoted Or Introduced; With His Bold and Wicked Conduct.
• Sect. III.: Cæsar Might Have Purified and Reformed the State; But Far Different Were His Intentions. His Art, Good Sense, and Continued Ill Designs.
• Sect. IV.: The Probability of His Waxing More Cruel, Had He Reigned Much Longer.
• Sect. V.: Cæsar No Lawful Magistrate, But a Public Enemy.
• Sect. VI.: Of the Share Which Casualties Had, In Raising the Name and Memory of Cæsar. the Judgment of Cicero Concerning Him.
• Sect. VII.: How Vain It Is to Extol Any Designs of His For the Glory of the Roman People.
• Sect. VIII.: Of His Death; and the Rashness of Ascribing to Divine Vengeance the Fate of Such As Slew Him.
• Discourse IV.: Upon Octavius Cæsar, Afterwards Called Augustus.
• Sect. I.: Of the Base and Impious Arts By Which He Acquired the Empire.
• Sect. II.: Of the Vindictive Spirit of Octavius, and His Horrid Cruelties.
• Sect. III.: Of the Treachery, Ingratitude, and Further Cruelties of Octavius. That the Same Were Wanton and Voluntary.
• Sect. IV.: Of the Popular Arts and Accidents Which Raised the Character of Augustus.
• Sect. V.: Though Augustus Courted the People, and Particular Senators, He Continued to Depress Public Liberty, and the Senate.
• Sect. VI.: What Fame He Derived From the Poets and Other Flattering Writers of His Time.
• Sect. VII.: Of the False Glory Sought and Acquired By Augustus, From the Badness of His Successors.
• Sect. VIII.: The Character of Augustus.
• Sect. IX.: Of the Helps and Causes Which Acquired and Preserved the Empire to Augustus. His Great Power and Fortune No Proof of Extraordinary Ability.
• Discourse V.: Of Governments Free and Arbitrary, More Especially That of the Cæsars.
• Sect. I.: The Principle of God’s Appointing and Protecting Tyrants, an Absurdity Not Believed By the Romans.
• Sect. II.: The Reasonableness of Resisting Tyrants Asserted, From the Ends of Government, and the Nature of the Deity. Opinions the Most Impious and Extravagant, Why Taught, and How Easily Swallowed.
• Sect. III.: The Danger of Slavish Principles to Such As Trust In Them, and the Notorious Insecurity of Lawless Might.
• Sect. IV.: Princes of Little and Bad Minds, Most Greedy of Power. Princes of Large and Good Minds Chuse to Rule By Law and Limitations.
• Sect. V.: The Wisdom and Safety of Ruling By Standing Laws, to Prince and People.
• Sect. VI.: The Condition of Free States, How Preferable to That of Such As Are Not Free.
• Sect. VII.: The Misery and Insecurity of the Cæsars From Their Overgrown Power.
• Sect. VIII.: A Representation of the Torments and Horrors Under Which Tiberius Lived.
• Sect. IX.: The Terrible Operation of Lawless Power Upon the Minds of Princes; and How It Changes Them.
• Sect. X.: The Wretched Fears Accompanying the Possession of Arbitrary Power, Exemplified In Caligula and Other Roman Emperors.
• Sect. XI.: What It Is That Constitutes the Security and Glory of a Prince; and How a Prince and People Become Estranged From Each Other.
• Sect. XII.: How Nearly It Behoves a Prince to Be Beloved and Esteemed By His Subjects. the Terrible Consequences of Their Mutual Mistrust and Hatred.
• Sect. XIII.: Public Happiness Only Then Certain, When the Laws Are Certain and Inviolable.
• Discourse VI.: Of the Old Law of Treason By the Emperors Perverted and Extended.
• Sect. I.: The Antient Purpose of That Law; the Politics of Augustus In Stretching It.
• Sect. II.: The Deification of the Emperors, What an Engine of Tyranny, and Snare to the Roman People.
• Sect. III.: The Images of the Emperors, How Sacred They Became, and How Pernicious.
• Sect. IV.: What a Destructive Calamity the Law of Majesty Grew, and How Fast Treasons Multiplied Under Its Name.
• Discourse VII.: Of the Accusations, and Accusers Under the Emperors.
• Sect. I.: The Pestilent Employment of These Men, Their Treachery and Encouragement.
• Sect. II.: The Traiterous Methods Taken to Circumvent and Convict Innocence. the Spirit of Accusing How Common, the Dread of It How Universal; and the Misery of the Times.
• Sect. III.: Plots Feigned Or True, an Ample Field For Accusations and Cruelty; and Upon What Miserable Evidence Executions Were Decreed.
• Sect. IV.: What Ridiculous Causes Produced Capital Guilt. the Spirit of the Emperor Constantius; With Somewhat of His Father Constantine.
• Sect. V.: The Black and General Carnage Made Under Constantius, By His Bloody Minister Paulus Catena, For Certain Acts of Superstition and Curiosity.
• Sect. VI.: The Ravages of the Accusers Continued; Their Credit With the Emperors; Yet Generally Meet Their Fate. the Falsehood of These Princes. the Melancholy State of Those Times.
• Sect. VII.: The Increase of Tyranny. Innocence and Guilt Not Measured By the Law, But By the Emperor’s Pleasure and Malice.
• Sect. VIII.: What Tacitus Means By Instrumenta Regni.
• Sect. IX.: How Much These Emperors Hated, and How Fast They Destroyed All Great and Worthy Men. Their Dread of Every Man For Any Reason.
• Sect. X.: Reflections Upon the Spirit of a Tyrant. With What Wantonness the Roman Emperors Shed the Blood of the Roman People. the Blindness of Such As Assisted the Usurpation of Cæsar and Augustus.
• Sect. XI.: Why Under Such Tyrants, the Senate Continued to Subsist.
• Sect. XII.: How the Unrelenting Cruelty of the Emperors Hastened the Dissolution of the Empire. the Bad Reigns of Constantine and Constantius. the Good Reign of Julian. the Indiscreet Behaviour of the Christians. Continued Tyranny; and End of the Em
• Sect. XIII.: The Excellency of a Limited Monarchy, Especially of Our Own.
• Discourse VIII.: Of the General Debasement of Spirit and Adulation Which Accompany Power Unlimited.
• Sect. I.: The Motives of Flattery Considered. Its Vileness, and Whence It Begins.
• Sect. II.: Men of Elevated Minds Irreconcileable to Arbitrary Power, and Thence Suspected By It. the Court Paid to It Always Insincere, Sometimes Expedient, But Seldom Observes Any Bounds.
• Sect. III.: The Excessive Power of the Imperial Freed Slaves; With the Scandalous Submission and Honours Paid Them By the Romans.
• Sect. IV.: The Excessive Flattery of the Senate, How Ill Judged.
• Sect. V.: The Free Judgment of Posterity a Powerful Warning to Princes, to Reign With Moderation and to Detest Flatterers. the Name and Memory of the Roman Tyrants How Treated.
• Sect. VI.: How Lamentably Princes Are Debauched and Misled By Flatterers.
• Sect. VII.: The Pestilent Tendency of Flattering Counsels, and the Glory of Such As Are Sincere.
• Discourse IX.: Upon Courts.
• Sect. I.: Of Freedom of Speech; and How Reasonable It Is.
• Sect. II.: The Spirit of Courtiers What; Some Good Ones.
• Sect. III.: The Arts of Courtiers; Their Cautiousness, and Its Causes.
• Sect. IV.: Of Slanderers and Tale-bearers In Courts. the Folly of Craft.
• Sect. V.: How Much Worthless People Abound In Courts, and Why.
• Sect. VI.: The Remarkable Fickleness and Insincerity of Courtiers.
• Discourse X.: Of Armies and Conquest.
• Sect. I.: The Burden and Danger of Maintaining Great Armies.
• Sect. II.: Great Armies the Best Disciplined, Whether Thence the Less Formidable to a Country. Their Temper and Views.
• Sect. III.: Princes Ruling By Military Power, Ever At the Mercy of Military Men.
• Sect. IV.: Instances of the Boldness and Fury of the Roman Soldiery.
• Sect. V.: The Humour of Conquering, How Injudicious, Vain, and Destructive.
• Sect. VI.: The Folly of Conquering Further Urged and Exemplified.
• The Annals of Tacitus.
• Book I.
• Book II.
• Book III.

Sect. III.

The Images of the Emperors, how sacred they became, and how pernicious.

AS flattery begot servitude, so it was by servitude propagated, and whatever tended to sink and debase the spirit of the people, as sycophancy did, exalted the Tyrants; nay, their Images and Statues became sacred and revered; and any villain or profligate might offer what outrage he pleased to every worthy man, every slave insult his Lord, every criminal escape justice, by sheltering himself under the Emperor’s Statue, or by carrying his Effigies about him. Nor could so considerable a man as a Senator of Rome, even in the face of the Tribunal, and in the very portal of the Senate, escape the insults and menaces of a profligate woman, who thus defended herself with the Image of Tiberius, though he had legally convicted her of forgery; so far was he from daring to bring her to judgment. So that in this impious reverence to a silent Stone, all Law, and punishment, and protection was swallowed up. This gives probability to what Philostratus tells us in the life of Apollonius Tyaneus, that a master was condemned, as one sacrilegious and accursed, for having chastized a slave, who happened to have about him a small coin impressed with the Effigies of Tiberius. So vastly had servitude grown upon the Romans so early as the Reign of Tiberius, and in the best part of his Reign, even while he yet kept tolerable measures with Law and Liberty, and warily avoided all excesses of power and cruelty. Yet in his second year, Granius Marcellus being arranged of high Treason, it was one of the Articles, that the Statue of Marcellus stood higher than that of the Cæsars, and from that of Augustus the head had been taken off, and the head of Tiberius put on. At the recital of this Tiberius waxed into such a flame and fury, that, departing from his wonted caution and silence, he cried aloud, he would vote in this cause himself under the tie of an oath. He was excellently answered by Cneius Piso, who asked him; “In what place, Cæsar, will you chuse to vote? if first, I shall have your example to follow; if last, I fear, through ignorance, I may happen to differ from you.” Hence the reflection of Tacitus, that there even then remained some faint traces of expiring Liberty c .

It is not strange, however hideous, to find afterwards these Statues, these dead representatives of the dead, invested with such extravagant and inviolable sanctity, that it was death without redemption for a master to chastize his slave near the picture or image of Augustus; death, to change one’s garments there; death, to carry a coin or a ring with his Image into the Privy or into the Stews; death, to drop a word that seemed to censure any action or any saying of his; and death was the portion of that unhappy man, who suffered some public honour to be decreed him by his Colony, on the Anniversary of the same day, when Augustus had once public honours decreed to him.

The execrable Caligula, who was a professed foe to the human race, a monster gorged with blood, and dyed in it, assumed Godhead as well as the rest, and claimed all the apparatus of Divinity, a Temple and Altars, Worship and choice Sacrifices. It is incredible what dreadful punishments he inflicted upon many even of principal fashion, for no other crime, than that they had never invoked his celestial Genius by an Oath. This was capital, it was Majesty violated; and for it the offenders, after they had been first torn and mangled with stripes, were doomed to the mines, or to the drudgery of mending the public roads, or to be thrown to wild beasts; and some were sawed asunder. A bloody Deity! Had he been omnipotent, the race of men must have been extinct. All his own murders, all the efforts of his malice and rage, were not able to accomplish it, and he wished to derive the Glory of his Reign from some signal Calamities happening in it; as if the monster himself had not been curse and calamity enough! He envied Augustus the happiness of an Army massacred, and Tiberius the sad disaster at Fidenæ, where fifty thousand souls were maimed, or perished outright by the fall of the Amphitheatre there. Hence he longed passionately for the blessing of some public Calamities great and dreadful, the Slaughter of great Armies, Famine, Pestilence, Conflagrations and Earthquakes. The acclamations of the crowd in the Theatre differing from his, he uttered a Godlike wish, “That the whole Roman People had but one common neck; for then one execution would have dispatched them all.” To complete the Character of this benevolent Deity, he boasted, that of all his great Qualities, none delighted him so much as his defiance of all shame d .

These celestial Titles and Worship divine, were sometimes bestowed upon the wives of the Emperors, their sisters, harlots, and infants. Caligula was wont to swear by the Divinity of Drusilla his sister and concubine. Claudius had divine Honours decreed to Livia his grandmother. Nero’s daughter by Poppæa was deified; Worship, Priest, and Chapel were assigned her; and it was one of the crimes imputed to Thrasea Pætus, that he did not believe Poppæa herself to be a Divinity. Nay, it would seem as if Nero’s Voice had been created a Divinity, since I think, it was Treason never to have sacrificed to it; a crime imputed to the same Thrasea. Domitian likewise adjudged himself a God, and proved much such another as Caligula.

[c ]Manebant etiam tum vestigia morientis libertatis.

[d ]Nihil majus in natura sua laudare se ac probare quam ἀδιατρεψιαι.