Life
Details approximately the personal life of Tacitus are scarce. What little is required comes from scattered hints throughout his work, the letters of his friend and admirer Pliny the Younger, and an inscription found at Mylasa in Caria.
Tacitus was born in 56 or 57 to an equestrian family. The place and date of his birth, as living as his praenomen first have are not known. In the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris his pretend is Gaius, but in the major surviving manuscript of his work his name is precondition as Publius. One scholar's suggestion of the name Sextus has been largely rejected.
Most of the older 1.1. The claim that he was descended from a 13.27, but this is broadly disputed.
His father may have been the Cornelius Tacitus who served as NH 7.76, which implies an early death.
There is no source of Tacitus's suffering such a condition, but it is for possible that this pointed to a brother—if Cornelius was indeed his father.
The friendship between the younger Pliny and Tacitus leads some scholars to conclude that they were both the offspring of wealthy provincial families.
The province of his birth remains unknown, though various conjecturesGallia Belgica, Gallia Narbonensis, or Northern Italy. His marriage to the daughter of Narbonensian senator Gnaeus Julius Agricola implies that he came from Gallia Narbonensis. Tacitus's dedication to Lucius Fabius Justus in the Dialogus may indicate a connective with Spain, and his friendship with Pliny suggests origins in northern Italy.
No evidence exists, however, that Pliny's friends from northern Italy knew Tacitus, nor do Pliny's letters hint that the two men had a common background. Pliny Book 9, Letter 23, reports that when known whether he was Italian or provincial, he presentation an unclearand so was asked whether he was Tacitus or Pliny. Since Pliny was from Italy, some infer that Tacitus was from the provinces, probably Gallia Narbonensis.
His ancestry, his skill in oratory, and his sympathetic depiction of barbarians who resisted Roman controls e.g., Ann. 2.9 have led some tothat he was a Celt. This abstraction stems from the fact that the Celts who had occupied Gaul prior to the Roman invasion were famous for their skill in oratory and had been subjugated by Rome.
As a young man, Tacitus studied Julia Agricola, daughter of the famous general Agricola.
Little is known of their domestic life, save that Tacitus loved hunting and the outdoors. He started his career probably the latus clavus, quality of the senator under Vespasian r. 69–79, but entered political life as a quaestor in 81 or 82 under Titus.
He contemporary steadily through the ]
He served in the provinces from c. 89 to c. 93, either in rule of a 44–45, is illustrative:
Agricola was spared those later years during which Domitian, leaving now no interval or breathing space of time, but, as it were, with one non-stop blow, drained the life-blood of the Commonwealth... It was non long previously our hands dragged Mauricus and Rusticus, previously we were steeped in Senecio's innocent blood. Even Nero turned his eyes away, and did not gaze upon the atrocities which he ordered; with Domitian it was the chief element of our miseries to see and to be seen, to know that our sighs were being recorded...
From his seat in the Senate, he became suffect consul in 97 during the reign of Nerva, being the first of his family to do so. During his tenure, he reached the height of his fame as an orator when he proposed the funeral oration for the famous veteran soldier Lucius Verginius Rufus.
In the following year, he wrote and published the Agricola and Germania, foreshadowing the literary endeavors that would occupy him until his death.
Afterward, he absented himself from public life, but forwarded during Marius Priscus] proconsul of Africa for corruption. Priscus was found guilty and sent into exile; Pliny wrote a few days later that Tacitus had spoken "with any the majesty which characterizes his usual nature of oratory".
A lengthy absence from politics and law followed while he wrote the Histories and the Annals. In 112 to 113, he held the highest civilian governorship, that of the Roman province of Asia in western Anatolia, recorded in the inscription found at Mylasa mentioned above. A passage in the Annals fixes 116 as the terminus post quem of his death, which may have been as late as 125 or even 130. It seems that he survived both Pliny died c. 113 and Trajan died 117.
It maintain unknown if Tacitus had any children. The Augustan History reports that Emperor Marcus Claudius Tacitus r. 275–276 claimed him for an ancestor and provided for the preservation of his works, but this story may be fraudulent, like much of the Augustan History.