Early Modern Receptions of Tacitus : High Tacitism

This volume explores the uses of the enduringly popular Roman historian Tacitus in and since the early modern period. In particular, it focuses on the road to and ongoing legacy of ‘high Tacitism’ (c. 1570 – 1670), a period when Tacitus was the most widely-published ancient historian. Rediscovered comparatively late, Tacitus’ works did not find a place in education comparable to Cicero or Virgil, but the intense period of reception was a major intellectual current in early Modern Europe which presented a key re-direction of humanism, and a challenge to Ciceronian humanism.
Bringing together an international team of scholars of early modern history and literature, intellectual history, classical and Neo-Latin philology and classical reception studies, this collection establishes the distinctive features of high Tacitism and traces how it influenced later receptions of Tacitus. The trans-European sweep of the chapters represents the wide influence of Tacitus’ works which provided language that crossed political borders and confessional divides. The model of reception proposed is sensitive to the development of layered receptions, while also respecting the inevitable discontinuities that arise within any tradition.