it without distinction to Germanicus, who was the son of an
Emperor, as to the Emperors Caligula, Claudius and Nero, when
speaking of the daughter of Germanicus, Agrippina, who was the
mother of Nero, wife of Claudius and sister of Caligula: "quam
_imperatore genitam_, sororem ejus, qui rerum potitus sit, et
conjugem et matrem fuisse" (XII. 42); he applies it even to the
wife of an Emperor's son, for he styles Agrippina, the wife of
Germanicus, "imperatoria uxor" (I. 41); he gives the title to the
barbarian generals among the Germans (II. 45), which no Roman in
the time of the Empire, or, perhaps, even of the Republic, could
have possibly done; and, further, to military chiefs, who
corresponded then to our present generals of division, for, when
speaking of Caractacus as "superior in rank to other _generals_
of the Britons," he expresses himself: "ceteros Britannorum
_imperatores_ praemineret" (XII. 33).

That a modern European wrote the Annals is also very clear from
the undistinguishing use in that work of the cognate word,
"princeps," which, like "imperator," had two different meanings at
two different periods of Roman history, meaning, in the time of
the Republic, merely "a leading man of the City," and, in the time
of the Empire, the Emperor only. This every Roman, of course,
discriminated; hence Tacitus everywhere uses the word in its
strictly confined sense of "Emperor" (Hist. I. 4, 5, 56, 79 _et al._).
For "the leading men of the Country," his phrase is not, as a
Roman would have expressed himself in the Republican period,
"principes viri urbis," but "primores civitatis." The author of
the Annals, who was in the dark as to this, uses "principes" in
the Republican sense of "leading men," as occurs in the
observation: "the same thing became not the _principal