THE TACITEAN GERMANICUS: Suggestions for a Re-Evaluation

Abstract

complete failure. Some2) saw in the Annales г more balanced treatment of a Germanicus whose successes and abilities had recently been underestimated by scholars seeking to compensate for Tacitus' hero-worship. Some3) stressed the specific parallelisms constructed by Tacitus between the careers of Agricola and of Germanicus. Some4) evenhandedly and evenheadedly examined Tacitus' Germanicus-portrait and judged it, too, a basically fair treatment of a young officer whose brief career was a mixture of successes and costly errors, all overshadowed by the incongruity of his own situation vis-a-vis his adoptive father. Goodyear does not mention a second, and perhaps even more intriguing, article by Borzsak5), in which the author noting similarities among Antonius, Germanicus, and Caligula in the orientalisierenden Gestionen exhibited by each claims that it was the aim of Tacitus ever a master of subtlety and complexity dem Tyrannen-гаоя-