Tacitus' claim that history should inspire good deeds and deter bad ones should be taken seriously: his exempla are supposed to help his readers think through their own moral difficulties. This approach to history is found in historians with clear connections to Stoicism, and in Stoic philosophers like Seneca. It is no coincidence that Tacitus is particularly interested in the behavior of Stoics like Thrasea Paetus, Barea Soranus, and Seneca himself. They, and even non-Stoic characters like Epicharis and Petronius, exemplify (...) the behavior necessary if Roman freedom was to survive the monarchy. (shrink)

Augustus' account of the events of 28 and 27 b.c. is maddeningly vague. In part the problem is simply that his individual phrases are ambiguous, but a more fundamental difficulty is the very nature of the Res Gestae itself. The idea of publishing such a self-satisfied account of one's own doings is so alien to our modern sensibilities that we tend to read the Res Gestae as though Augustus were capable of saying almost anything. We have concluded too easily, therefore, (...) that at R.G. 34.1 Augustus is telling an outrageous lie, or at least an outrageous half-truth. After saying that he ended the civil wars, and acquired supreme power, Augustus claims to have handed over the state to the senate and the people of Rome. On the traditional reading this last claim is seriously misleading; Augustus may have handed over the state, but he fails to mention that the senate handed it back. (shrink)