Both the Agricola and the Aeneid at some level are meditations on what it means to be Roman. Virgil and Tacitus led very different lives: Tacitus, the soldier, senator, Imperial official and functionary. Virgil the rural man of letters, a poet who came to prominence and the attention of the emperor Augustus. But both were men of letters who thought deeply about Romanitas: its origin, nature, and meaning. In other words, Agricola (and to a certain extent Germania), like parts of the Aeneid is an exploration of Roman identity.
As with Virgil, duty and pietas, rather than heroism or individual charisma, define a true Roman. Tacitus describes his father in law as a man who practiced moderation in all things - hardly sounds like Achilles, or Hector. A man who "knew how to obey and had learned to combine expedience with propriety" (7) and who practiced modesty and humility; who combined virtue and morality even in the exercise of power over others: ". . . he was serious and attentive, strict but often merciful. When he had completed his official duties, he no longer wore the mask of power" (8). Most remarkable, Agricola eschewed the sort of quotidian corruption that was part of daily administration in even the distant reaches of the empire, the ancient equivalent of the no-bid contract. He even reformed the administration of the province and made it run more efficiently. For Tacitus, the age of gods and heroes is past, and he is searching for a way to be a good man even in the age of "bad emperors," when Rome has willingly given up its former "freedom" for "stability" in the years after nearly continual civil wars. Agricola, ever duty bound, disclaimed any suspicion even on his deathbed that the emperor Domitian was responsible for his death, the suggestions of Tacitus and others notwithstanding (31).
"Those whose habit is to admire what is forbidden ought to know that there can be great men under bad emperors, and that duty and discretion, if coupled with energy and a career of action, will bring a man to no less glorious summits than are attained by perilous paths and ostenatious deaths that do not benefit the Commonwealth" (31).
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