Tacitus

Life

Tacitus is believed to have been born around AD 56. His birthplace is thought to have been Gaul (roughly modern France) or northern Italy, but this is uncertain. His personal name is likewise unsettled; it is given as either Publius or Gaius.

After marrying the daughter of the general Agricola, he advanced through a succession of Roman offices. He served as praetor in 88 and as suffect consul (a consul who replaced another during the term of office) in 97. Around 112 he is known to have served as governor of the province of Asia in Asia Minor. The year of his death is not recorded, but it is generally placed around 120. He was not a Christian, and he wrote from the perspective of traditional Roman religion and the senatorial class.

Works and Achievements

His principal works are the following:

• Agricola, a biography of his father-in-law
• Germania, an account of the customs of the Germanic peoples
• Histories, covering the years 69 to 96
• Annals, covering the period from the death of Augustus to the reign of Nero

The Histories and the Annals survive only in part. Book 5 of the Histories contains a description of the Jews and an account of the beginning of Titus's siege of Jerusalem in 70.

The passage most often cited in church history is Annals 15.44. It relates that after the Great Fire of Rome in 64, Nero, seeking to quell the rumors directed at him, laid the blame on a group called Christiani. Tacitus wrote that Christ, from whom the name derived, had suffered the extreme penalty under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Emperor Tiberius. He also recorded that Christians were covered in the skins of animals and torn to death by dogs, crucified, or burned at night as human torches. He called Christianity a "pernicious superstition." Yet he also noted that public sentiment turned to sympathy, since the executions were seen as serving not the public good but the cruelty of one man.

Influence on the Korean Church

In the Korean church, Tacitus is chiefly presented as a non-Christian source attesting to the historicity of Jesus Christ. He is frequently cited in books of Christian apologetics (the rational explanation and defense of the faith) and in sermons, alongside the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman authors Pliny the Younger and Suetonius. In accounts of the persecution endured by the early church, he also serves as the principal source for the Neronian persecution. In this context he is sometimes mentioned together with the church tradition that Peter and Paul were martyred under Nero, although Tacitus himself does not mention either apostle.

Assessment

Most scholars regard Annals 15.44 as Tacitus's own writing. A commonly cited reason is that its hostile tone toward Christianity makes it unlikely to be a later Christian addition. A minority of scholars, however, have raised the possibility of a later interpolation.

Several limitations have also been noted. An inscription discovered at Caesarea in 1961 shows that Pilate's actual title was not procurator, as Tacitus wrote, but praefectus. It is also unknown whether Tacitus consulted Roman official records or simply relayed stories then circulating about Christians. Consequently, some hold that the passage independently corroborates the execution of Jesus, while others see it as reporting what Christians were saying in the early second century.