_flags_: "manipuli ... postquam turbatum in castris accepere,
_vexilla_ convellunt" (I. 20). The mistake is similar to that
which would be made if any one among ourselves were to give
colours to our volunteers or standards to our yeomanry.

Here it may be noticed that the figures of speech of Tacitus are,
like those of most ancient Romans, chiefly military. To be of the
highest rank is, with him, "to lead the van,"--"primum pilum
ducere" (Hist. IV. 3), or to set about a thing, "to be girt" (as
with a sword),--"accingi" (Hist. IV. 79). The author of the
Annals, though borrowing the latter phrase, goes anywhere but to
the field of battle for his figures; he takes them mostly from the
ways of ordinary civil life, selecting his metaphors, now from the
trader's shop or the merchant's counting-house, as "ratio constat"
(An. I. 6), used when the debtor and creditor sides of an account
balance one another; now from seamen steering and tacking vessels,
or coachmen driving horses, as "verbis moderans" (An. VI. 2),
which Nipperdey says ought to be rendered, "touching-up and
reining-in his words, and driving only at this."

IX. When Julius Caesar came to this country, he found the Britons,
without an exception, thorough barbarians, the best of them living
in places that were fortified woods. The author of the Annals,
only a century after this wild state of things in the barbarism of
the inhabitants and the rudeness of their abodes, speaks of
London, in the reign of Nero, in the year 60, as if it were the
chief residence of merchants and their principal mart of trade in
the civilized world. If there be one thing certain, it is that
centuries after,--in the middle of the fourth,--the people of
London were only exporters of corn;--no certainty that they