The Agricola, written around 98 AD, is a eulogy of Tacitus’s father in law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who had been a Roman general and governor in Britain. It is the first written work of Tacitus (56-120 AD), a great Roman historian more known for his magisterial Annals and Histories, chronicling the time between Augustus and Domitian in the first century AD. His purpose in the Agricola is, at first sight, more limited: to honor the memory of his father-in-law, a man of great virtue and prudence who preserved order on the imperial frontier and protected his family in the capital. But, in its elegant brevity, the book is also a manual on how to defeat insurgencies, on how to be a good commander, and on how to survive under bad emperors.
The core strategy pursued by Agricola in Britain—the Roman version of counterinsurgency—was to use decisive force, followed by the speedy implementation of justice and establishment of order. As Tacitus points out, “little was accomplished by force if injustice followed.” The use of force has serious political limits and alone can never suffice to maintain political order. Hence, as the historian states, Rome educated the sons of local chieftains “in a liberal education,” bringing Latin and the toga, then the “the promenade, the bath, the well-appointed dinner table.” The British called it culture, but it was a “factor of their slavery.” Assimilation, that is, was part of the imperial strategy to defeat the insurgency at the frontier.
The harsh reality that Rome was under the control of a corrupt emperor, Domitian, meant that Agricola had to navigate carefully his return to the capital. His military success was dangerous to the jealous emperor, and Agricola wanted to preserve the safety of his family, the foundation of his life. He did so by withdrawing from Rome’s politics because higher political positions would have made him a simple servant of the emperor, not of the law—and thus would have also contradicted the basic approach he followed back in the rebellious British provinces.
The book is also worth reading because it has some of the most memorable lines in Latin prose. For instance, in a famous speech, allegedly given by the rebel Calcagus before the battle at Mons Graupius (83 AD), the Scottish rebel gives a stunning description of the Romans: “To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace” (ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant). Oratory, for Tacitus, was possible only away from the Forum, in lands not yet corrupted by court intrigues and suspicious emperors.
