iron ages? Should I not have deduced the decline of the Empire from the
Civil Wars that ensued after the Fall of Nero or even from the tyranny
which succeeded the reign of Augustus? Alas! I should; but of what avail
is this tardy knowledge?"[71] We may echo Gibbon's regret that he had
not commenced his history with the reign of Tiberius, as, in his
necessary use of Tacitus, we should have had the running comment of one
great historian on another, of which we have a significant example in
Gibbon's famous sixteenth chapter wherein he discusses Tacitus's account
of the persecution of the Christians by Nero. With his power of historic
divination, he would have so absorbed Tacitus and his time that the
history would almost have seemed a collaboration between two great and
sympathetic minds. "Tacitus," he wrote, "very frequently trusts to the
curiosity or reflection of his readers to supply those intermediate
circumstances and ideas, which, in his extreme conciseness, he has
thought proper to suppress."[72] How Gibbon would have filled those
gaps! Though he was seldom swayed by enthusiasm, his admiration of the
Roman historian fell little short of idolatry. His references in "The
Decline and Fall" are many, and some of them are here worth recalling to
mind. "In their primitive state of simplicity and independence," he
wrote, "the Germans were surveyed by the discerning eye and delineated
by the masterly pencil of Tacitus, the first of historians who applied
the science of philosophy to the study of facts."[73] Again he speaks of
him as "the philosophic historian whose writings will instruct the last
generation of mankind."[74] And in Chapter XVI he devoted five pages to
citation from, and comment on, Tacitus, and paid him one of the most
splendid tributes one historian ever paid another. "To collect, to
dispose, and to adorn a series of fourscore years in an immortal work,
every sentence of which is pregnant with the deepest observations and
the most lively images, was an undertaking sufficient to exercise the
genius of Tacitus himself during the greatest part of his life."[75] So
much for admiration. That, nevertheless, Gibbon could wield the critical
pen at the expense of the historian he rated so highly, is shown by a
marginal note in his own printed copy of "The Decline and Fall." It will
be remembered that Tacitus published his History and wrote his Annals
during the reign of Trajan, whom he undoubtedly respected and admir