to himself in omitting the past time (fuisse) when no doubt is left
by the preceding context or the immediate sequel in the same sentence,
that the past time is referred to in the passage where Silius
boasts that "his soldiers continued to be loyal, while others fell
into sedition; and that his empire would not have remained to
Tiberius, if there had been a desire for revolution also in those
legions of his": "suum militem in obsequio duravisse, cum alii ad
seditiones prolaberentur: neque mansurum Tiberio imperium, si iis
quoque legionibus cupido novandi fuisset" (IV. 18), where after
"mansurum," according to Dr. Nipperdey, there should be "fuisse."

Further proof is afforded by the use of the word "imperator," that
the diction in the Annals is not that of Tacitus. Having lived in
the time of the Caesars, he never could have heard a countryman in
speech or writing use "Imperator" other than as signifying one
individual, not the commander in chief of the army, but the
occupant of the supreme civil authority, "Imperator" being the
noun proper of "imperium." In this restricted sense Tacitus always
uses the word, because it was understood with that signification
by every Roman of his time. For example, in his Agricola (39), he
means by "imperatoria laus" "the renown in arms of the Emperor,"
who was then Domitian. The author of the Annals, who was not aware
of this nice distinction, uses Imperator, not as it was used in
the time of Tacitus, but as it was used in the days of the
Republic. He, too, like Tacitus, uses the noun in its adjectival
form, but he does not apply it, as Tacitus does, to that which
belongs to the Emperor, but to that which belongs to a general;
for he means by "imperatoria laus" (II. 52), "the fame of a
general," even of Germanicus. He seems to have thought that it
could be given to any member of the imperial house, for he applies