at the age of 34;--"talem vero exsistere eloquentiam qualis fuerit
in Crasso et Antonio ... alter non multum (quod quidem exstaret),
et id ipsum adolescens, alter nihil admodum scripti reliquisset".
(De Orat. ii. 2): so also does Cornelius Nepos speak of Marcus
Brutus, when the latter was praetor, Brutus being then 43 years of
age:--"sic Marco Bruto usus est, ut nullo ille adolescens aequali
familiarius" (Att. 8); to this passage of Nepos's, Nicholas
Courtin, his Delphin editor, adds that the ancients called men
"young" from the age of 17 to the age of 46; notwithstanding that
Varro limited youth to 30 years:--"a 17 ad 46 annum, adolescentia
antiquitus pertingebat, ut ab antiquis observatum est. Nihilominus
Varro ad 30 tantum pertingere ait." But Tacitus being born in 44
is not reconcilable with his being the Author of the Annals, as
thus:--

Some time in the nineteen years that Trajan was Emperor,--from 98
to ll7,--Tacitus, being then between the ages of 54 and 73,
composed his History. He paused when he had carried it on to the
reign of Domitian; the narrative had then extended to twenty-three
years, and was comprised in "thirty books," if we are to believe
St. Jerome in his Commentary on the Fourteenth Chapter of
Zechariah:

"Cornelius Tacitus ... post Augustum usque ad mortem Domitiani
vitas Caesarum triginta voluminibus exaravit." [Endnote 013] It was
scarcely possible for Tacitus to have executed his History in a
shorter compass;--indeed, it is surprising that the compass was so
short, looking at the probability of his having observed the
symmetry attended to by the ancients in their writings, and having
continued his work on the plan he pursued at the commencement, the