other passages habits
of thought and speculation of a widely different bearing. His
sympathies with the Stoic sect were instinctive, but in his reserve and
deep reticence he resembles, not Seneca, but Machiavelli or Thucydides.

A passage in the _Annals_ may fitly represent the impression of reserve
which these three mighty spirits, Tacitus, Thucydides, and Machiavelli,
at moments convey. "Sed mihi haec ac talia audienti in incerto
judicium est, fatone res mortalium et necessitate immutabili an forte
volvantur; quippe sapientissimos veterum, quique sectam eorum
aemulantur, diversos reperias, ac multis insitam opinionem non initia
nostri, non finem, non denique homines dis curae; ideo creberrime
tristia in bonos, laeta apud deteriores esse; contra alii fatum quidem
congruere rebus putant, sed non e vagis stellis, verum apud principia
et nexus naturalium causarum; ac tamen electionem vitae nobis
relinquunt, quam ubi elegeris, certum imminentium ordinem; neque mala
vel bona quae vulgus putet."[7]

And yet the theory of retribution had not been without its influence
upon Thucydides. It even forces the structure of his later books into
the regularity of a tragedy, in which Athens is the protagonist, and a
verse of Sophocles the theme. But his earlier and greater manner
prevails, and from the study of his work the mind passes easily to the
contemplation of the doom which awaited the destroyers of Athens, the
monstrous tyrannies in Syracuse, and Lacedaemon's swift ruin.

Another phase of the position of Tacitus deserves attention. It was a
habit of writers of the eighteenth century, in treating of the
vicissitudes of empires, to state one problem and solve another. The
question asked was, "Is there a law regulating the fall of empires?";
but the question answered, satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily, was, "Is
there a remedy?" Like the elder Cato, Tacitus seems in places to refer
the ruin which he anticipated to Rome's departure from the austerity
and simplicity of the early centuries. In the luxury of the Caesars he
discerns but another condemnation of the policy of Caius Julius.

The use which Gibbon has made of this argument is celebrated. In
Gibbon's life, indeed, regret for the Empire, for the Rome of Trajan
and of Marcus, exercises as strong a sway, artistically, as regret for
the Republic exercises over the art and thought of Tacitus. Both
desiderate a world which is not now, musing with fierce bitterness or