Through the generosity of the late Professor Benedict Anderson and Ajarn Charnvit Kasetsiri, the Thammasat University Library has newly acquired over 2800 books from the personal scholarly library of Professor Benedict Anderson at Cornell University, in addition to the previous donation of books from the library of Professor Anderson at his home in Bangkok.

These newly available items are on the TU Library shelves for the benefit of our students and ajarns. They are shelved in the Charnvit Kasetsiri Room of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus.

Among them is a newly acquired book that should be useful to TU students who are interested in European history, political science, military history, Latin, translation studies, linguistics, and related subjects.

Histories is a Roman historical chronicle by Tacitus. Written almost two thousand years ago, it discusses what happened in Ancient Rome after the downfall of the Emperor Nero, and the leaders who followed him.

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman historian and politician. He is admired for his very concise writing, with relatively short sentences. In addition, he is appreciated for his understanding of the psychology of political power.

The TU Library collection includes several other books by and about Tacitus.

The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories examine the reigns of the several emperors. Some of his accounts were written only thirty years after the events took place.

The writings of Tacitus remain fresh because they give a sense of a rapid-fire story. There are many summaries and omissions to avoid slowing down the reader.

He is noted for describing crowds, when they are calm and also when they are rebelling.

Tacitus tends to look down on the military of his time and place as well as overambitious politicians. He explains that unlike their public image, senators tend to be busy flattering others while at the same time plotting against them. Their ambition leads them to make many mistakes. Much of the Histories examines this Roman legacy of violence, dishonesty, and injustice.

Here are some thoughts by Tacitus from books owned by the TU Library:

They rob, kill and plunder all under the deceiving name of Roman Rule. They make a desert and call it peace.

• Agricola

It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured.

• Agricola, Chapter 42

It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.

• Histories Book I, 1

Once killing starts, it is difficult to draw the line.

• Histories Book I, 39

There is a division of duties between the army and its generals. Eagerness for battle becomes the soldiers, but generals serve the cause by forethought, by counsel, by delay oftener than by temerity. As I promoted your victory to the utmost of my power by my sword and by my personal exertions, so now I must help you by prudence and by counsel, the qualities which belong peculiarly to a general.

• Histories Book III, 20

Some might consider him as too fond of fame; for the desire for glory clings even to the best men longer than any other passion.

• Histories Book IV, 6

The gods are on the side of the stronger.

• Histories Book IV, 17

The histories of Tiberius, Caius, Claudius, and Nero, while they were in power, were falsified through terror, and after their death were written under the irritation of a recent hatred. Hence my purpose is to relate a few facts about Augustus – more particularly his last acts, then the reign of Tiberius, and all which follows, without either bitterness or partiality, from any motives to which I am far removed.

• Annals Book I, 1

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.

• Annals Book III, 27

And now bills were passed, not only for national objects but for individual cases, and laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.

For I deem it to be the chief function of history to rescue merit from oblivion, and to hold up before evil words and evil deeds the terror of the reprobation of posterity.

• Annals Book III, 65

When people of talent are punished, authority is strengthened.

• Annals Book IV, 35.

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

• Annals Book XV, 50

And here are some comments about Tacitus by writers in the TU Library collection:

Tacitus has written an entire work on the manners of the Germans. This work is short, but it comes from the pen of Tacitus, who was always concise, because he saw everything at a glance.

• Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book XXX, Section 2

Tacitus I consider the first writer in the world without a single exception. His book is a compound of history and morality of which we have no other example.

• Thomas Jefferson, to his grand-daughter Anne Cary Bankhead, in a letter dated 1808.

It has been said that Tacitus never has been translated, and probably never will be. No one can know better than ourselves that in the present work we have attempted a task of peculiar difficulty. The genius and idiom of the Latin language are so different from our own, as to be a source of perpetual embarrassment to the translator. There is a neat conciseness and terse vigour about it which it is almost impossible to represent adequately in English. Especially is this the case with the writings of Tacitus. The chief merit of his style is that it possesses these qualities in a very high degree; its fault is that they some- times degenerate into obscurity and affectation. Thus its principal characteristic is even to exaggerate the special difficulties which always beset the task of translation from Latin into English. But if no Roman author is more intractable in the hands of a translator, no one, we believe, better repays any labour that may be spent upon him. His writings are indeed of the utmost interest both for their subject-matter and their style. They may be chargeable with many faults ; it may be true, that, as an historian, he has at times sacrificed strict impartiality to his thorough love of freedom, to his intense hatred of the imperial despotism and of the corruption inseparable from it; it may be equally true, that, as a writer, he is often led astray by the love of effect, and even occasionally prefers obscurity to the least departure from conciseness. But this last, we must remember, was not so much the fault of Tacitus as that of the age, which regarded point and antithesis as the first merits of style.

• The History of Tacitus by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1894)

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)