On the Style of Tacitus

When we speak of the style of an author, and especially of a great author, we mean the sum total of his linguistic, stylistic and artistic means of expression; we thus do not think purely of the literary tendency or school to which he belongs, or even only of his linguistic usage, his grammar and vocabulary. None the less these last-named factors are of great importance, and it will perhaps be appropriate to start with them. I need not remind you that the style of Tacitus, taken as a whole, bears the general impress of the so-called Silver Age in its most typical form as developed by Seneca. We all know that by that time the long Ciceronian and Livian periods had been given up; in their place we find short, concentrated sentences, often joined to one another asyndetically, and in the more important passages these sentences are condensed into telling, emphatic, sententiae . So, too, in the choice of words all commonplace and popular expressions are avoided; instead, expressions and constructions from poetry are borrowed to a much greater extent than in Cicero's time

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