Tacitus

===Prose===
His Latin style is highly praised.<ref>Donald R. Dudley. Introduction to: ''The Annals of Tacitus''. NY: Mentor Book, 1966. p. xiv: "No other writer of Latin prose—not even Cicero—deploys so effectively the full resources of the language."</ref> His style, although it has a grandeur and eloquence (thanks to Tacitus's education in rhetoric), is extremely concise, even [[epigram]]matic—the sentences are rarely flowing or beautiful, but their point is always clear. The style has been both derided as "harsh, unpleasant, and thorny" and praised as "grave, concise, and pithily eloquent".

A passage of [[s:The Annals (Tacitus)/Book 1#1|''Annals'' 1.1]], where Tacitus laments the state of the historiography regarding the last four emperors of the [[Julio-Claudian dynasty]], illustrates his style: "The histories of Tiberius, Gaius, 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",<ref>[https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=The_Annals_(Tacitus)/Book_1&oldid=3754977#1 The Annals (Tacitus)/Book 1#1] Translation based on Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1876). [[Wikisource]], 15 April 2012.</ref> or in a word-for-word translation:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Latin
! Translation
|-
| <poem>Tiberiī Gāīque et Claudiī ac Nerōnis rēs
flōrentibus ipsīs—ob metum—falsae,
postquam occiderant—recentibus ōdiīs—compositae
sunt.
</poem>
| <poem>Tiberius's, Gaius's and Claudius's as well as Nero's acts
while flourishing themselves—out of fear—counterfeited,
after they came to fall—resulting from new-found hate—related
are.</poem>
|-
| colspan="2" | Interpunction and line breaks added for clarity.
|}

Compared to the [[Classical Latin#Authors of the Golden Age|Ciceronian period]], where sentences were usually the length of a paragraph and artfully constructed with nested pairs of carefully matched sonorous phrases, this is short and to the point. But it is also very individual. Note the three different ways of saying ''and'' in the first line (''-que'', ''et'', ''ac''), and especially the matched second and third lines. They are parallel in sense but not in sound; the pairs of words ending "''-entibus'' … ''-is''" are crossed over in a way that deliberately breaks the Ciceronian conventions—which one would, however, need to be acquainted with to see the novelty of Tacitus's style. Some readers, then and now, find this teasing of their expectations merely irritating. Others find the deliberate discord, playing against the evident parallelism of the two lines, stimulating and intriguing.<ref>Ostler 2007, pp.&nbsp;98–99 where the quoted example is used; Further quotes from the book: "…some writers—notably the perverse genius Tacitus—delighted in disappointing the expectations raised by periodic theory." – "this monkeying with hard-won stylistic norms…only makes sense if readers knew the rules that Tacitus was breaking."</ref>

His historical works focus on the motives of the characters, often with penetrating insight—though it is questionable how much of his insight is correct, and how much is convincing only because of his rhetorical skill.<ref>John Taylor. ''Tacitus and the Boudican Revolt''. Dublin: Camvlos, 1998. p. 1 ff</ref> He is at his best when exposing hypocrisy and dissimulation; for example, he follows a narrative recounting Tiberius's refusal of the title ''pater patriae'' by recalling the institution of a law forbidding any "treasonous" speech or writings—and the frivolous prosecutions which resulted (''Annals'', 1.72). Elsewhere (''Annals'' 4.64–66) he compares Tiberius's public distribution of fire relief to his failure to stop the perversions and abuses of justice which he had begun. Although this kind of insight has earned him praise, he has also been criticized for ignoring the larger context.

Tacitus owes most, both in language and in method, to Sallust, and [[Ammianus Marcellinus]] is the later historian whose work most closely approaches him in style.