as a disciple looking up to him with reverence as to "a master";
"the duty of submitting to his influence," and "a desire to obey
his advice":--"tu magister, ego contra"--(Ep. viii. 7): "cedere
auctoritati tuae debeam" (Ep. i. 20): "cupio praeceptis tuis
parere" (Ep. ix. 10); nor would he describe himself as "a mere
stripling when his friend was at the height of fame and in a proud
position": "equidem adolescentulus, quum jam tu fama gloriaque
floreres" (Ep. vii. 20); nor of their being, "all but
contemporaries in age": "duos homines, aetate propemodum aequales"
(Ep. vii. 20). From these remarks chiefly and a few other
circumstances, the modern biographers of Tacitus suppose there was
a difference of ten or eleven years between that ancient historian
and Pliny, and fix the date of his birth about A.D. 52.

This is reconcilable with the belief of Tacitus being the author
of the Annals; for when the boundaries of Rome are spoken of in
that work as being extended to the Red Sea in terms as if it were
a recent extension--"claustra ... Romani imperii, quod _nunc_
Rubrum ad mare patescit" (ii. 61),--he would be 63, the extension
having been effected as we learn from Xiphilinus, by Trajan A.D.
115. It is also reconcilable with Agricola when Consul offering to
him his daughter in marriage, he being then "a young man": "Consul
egregiae tum spei filiam juveni mihi despondit" (Agr. 9); for,
according as Agricola was Consul A.D. 76 or 77, he would be 24 or
25. But it is by no means reconcilable with the time when he
administered the several offices in the State. He tells us himself
that he "began holding office under Vespasian, was promoted by
Titus, and still further advanced by Domitian": "dignitatem
nostram a Vespasiano inchoatam, a Tito auctam, a Domitiano longius
provectam" (Hist. i. 1). To have "held office" under Vespasian he