ABSTRACT
Tacitus began his Annals something like a hundred and fifty years after the murder of Cicero; that nearly two hundred years separate early Cicero from late Tacitus. Tacitus himself is deeply influenced by Virgil. Little in the admiration for the writers of the past pulled Tacitus men back in the direction of Cicero. Take Tacitus well-known epigrammatic appraisal of the Emperor Galba, that he was 'equal to being emperor, if he hadn't been emperor'. Tacitus started perhaps with the idea that Galba was a disappointment. One of Tacitus greatest achievements as an historical artist is to avoid the stridently moralizing note that is characteristic of the Roman prose tradition. The superiority of Tacitus over Pliny is not simply superiority of a writer with dramatic instinct over the retailer of moralizing anecdote. The use Tacitus makes of an alternation between aoristic perfect and historic present closely follows Virgilian practice. After a few details, Tacitus passes to the analysis of Nero's conscience.
