Tacitus notes that both of Agricola’s grandfathers were “procurators of Caesars,” which he says is the “equivalent of nobility” (55). These chapters focus on Agricola’s family lineage and early life (40-76 AD). He says he will find “some satisfaction” in “recording the servitude” he and his fellows once suffered and “gratefully acknowledging the blessings we now enjoy” (55). Tacitus heralds a new era, that of Nerva Caesar, but notes that it takes time to outgrow the vices learned under an old regime that encouraged them. Those who burned these texts, Tacitus says, may have thought they were extinguishing the Senate’s freedom and “the moral consciousness of the human race,” but erasing people’s memories is not as easy as burning texts (54). He cites the case of eulogies written by Arulenus Rusticus for Paetus Thrasea and Herennius Senecio for Priscus Helvidius, which were “treated as capital offenses” and burned (54). However, in the current climate, it is easier to write an invective than to recount the life of a virtuous man, which he points out as a sign of how times have changed. Tacitus notes that it is a tradition to tell great men’s stories. Clusters of chapters are grouped around topics, as indicated below in the summary and analysis. These numerical divisions are not Tacitus’s design. Mattingly and Rives follow a convention established by an early modern editor of Tacitus who created numbered divisions known as chapters. The Penguin Classics edition discussed below was translated by Harold Mattingly and updated and revised by J.
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