THE LIFE OF CNAEUS JULIUS AGRICOLA.


[This work is supposed by the commentators to have been written before the
treatise on the manners of the Germans, in the third consulship of the
emperor Nerva, and the second of Verginius Rufus, in the year of Rome 850,
and of the Christian era 97. Brotier accedes to this opinion; but the
reason which he assigns does not seem to be satisfactory. He observes that
Tacitus, in the third section, mentions the emperor Nerva; but as he does
not call him Divus Nerva, the deified Nerva, the learned commentator
infers that Nerva was still living. This reasoning might have some weight,
if we did not read, in section 44, that it was the ardent wish of Agricola
that he might live to behold Trajan in the imperial seat. If Nerva was
then alive, the wish to see another in his room would have been an awkward
compliment to the reigning prince. It is, perhaps, for this reason that
Lipsius thinks this very elegant tract was written at the same time with
the Manners of the Germans, in the beginning of the emperor Trajan. The
question is not very material, since conjecture alone must decide it. The
piece itself is admitted to be a masterpiece in the kind. Tacitus was son-
in-law to Agricola; and while filial piety breathes through his work, he
never departs from the integrity of his own character. He has left an
historical monument highly interesting to every Briton, who wishes to know
the manners of his ancestors, and the spirit of liberty that from the
earliest time distinguished the natives of Britain. "Agricola," as Hume
observes, "was the general who finally established the dominion of the
Romans in this island. He governed, it in the reigns of Vespasian, Titus,
and Domitian. He carried his victorious arms northward: defeated the
Britons in every encounter, pierced into the forests and the mountains of
Caledonia, reduced every state to subjection in the southern parts of the