{"id":347,"date":"2018-03-06T09:25:02","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T14:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/vepagan\/?page_id=347"},"modified":"2026-03-19T08:31:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:31:43","slug":"about-the-project","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/vepagan\/about-the-project\/","title":{"rendered":"About the Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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About the Project<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

\"funeraryinscription\"<\/a>The<\/em> Tacitus Encyclopedia<\/em> is the first and only comprehensive reference work to be published in English on Tacitus (c. 56-120 CE), one of our richest sources for the history of the early Roman Empire. His magisterial style is peerless, his narratives are intricate, and his speeches a tour-de-force of rhetoric and metahistory. Therefore, his language is inextricably bound with his philosophy of human nature, and his prose is haunted by an eerily familiar sense of survivor\u2019s guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Tacitus left five extant works. The Life of Julius Agricola <\/em>is a biography of his father in law who was governor of Britain under the reign of Domitian. The Germania<\/em> is a brief treatise on the customs and peoples of Germania. The Dialogue on Orators<\/em> is a discussion among friends about the importance and decline of public speaking. Of the Histories<\/em>, only the first five books survive. They recount the Long Year 69, when four emperors ruled Rome: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian, founder of the Flavian dynasty. Finally, the Annals<\/em> chronicle the Julio-Claudian emperors. The reign of Tiberius is covered in Books 1-4 and the fragments of Books 5 and 6. The books from the end of 6 to the beginning of 11 are missing, hence the entire reign of Caligula is lost. Books 11-12 cover the end of the reign of Claudius, Books 13-16 the reign of Nero. The manuscript of the Annals<\/em> breaks off in the middle of Book 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

In classical antiquity there are only scattered references to these works, due in part to the accidents of transmission. Tacitus appears to have been neglected in late antiquity and the middle ages (650-850 CE). By 1362, the Florentine scholar and poet Giovanni Boccaccio was reading Annals<\/em> Books 11-16 and Histories<\/em> Books 1-5; by 1473, a first edition of the Germania<\/em> and Dialogue on Orators<\/em> appeared in Venice. With the publication of Annals<\/em> Books 1-6 and the Agricola<\/em> in 1515, Tacitus experienced a revival of epic proportion: 45 editions of his work appeared in the 16th<\/sup> century including the monumental edition by the Flemish philologist Justus Lipsius in 1574, and 103 more in the 17th<\/sup>. Between 1580-1700, 100 commentaries on the works of Tacitus were published. As a result, the political thought of Tacitus cut a broad swath across European intellectual history. In the Renaissance and Reformation eras Tacitus was appropriated for the competing aims of monarchic absolutism and religious reform. Under the Ancien R\u00e9gime, Tacitus was widely read and criticized. The 18th<\/sup> century was the age of Tacitism in Britain, the 19th<\/sup> in Germany. By the early 20th<\/sup> century, he was claimed by translators, historians and philosophers\u2014and eventually Nazis, as Christopher Krebs has demonstrated. Throughout the 20th<\/sup> century and into the 21st<\/sup>, artists and writers continue to harness the power of Tacitus\u2019 imagery to convey the essence of the human condition. Novelists Robert Graves, Naomi Mitchison, and Lion Feuchtwanger were inspired by Tacitus; between 2003-2006, Manda Scott published three novels about Boudica, the warrior queen whose legacy in literature, art, movies, and documentaries can be traced to Tennyson\u2019s poem \u201cBoadicea.\u201d\u00a0 In Tacitus, post-war German artist Anselm Kiefer and American poet Frank Bidart find inspiration for works of art that confront, and perhaps even seek to heal, the traumas of the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Therefore, because his style is notoriously difficult, his content indispensable to the study of ancient history, and his imprint on Western thought is indelible, perhaps no other classical Latin author requires an encyclopedia more than Tacitus. The cast of characters in the works of Tacitus is daunting; approximately 1,000 individuals are named (only 124 of them are women) and about 300 of these are known only from Tacitus. Because he was writing during the reign of Trajan, when the Roman Empire at its height stretched from Britain to Babylon, his works are also filled with the names of approximately 400 regions, cities, towns, and geographical and topological features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

This two-volume set is designed to complement existing scholarship by providing readers of all levels an approachable means of access to Tacitus. With standard background information necessary for enhanced appreciation of the people, places, and topics fundamental to Tacitean studies, entries treat the content and contexts of Tacitus\u2019 history and reception from antiquity to the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The encyclopedia surpasses volumes currently available. Fabia\u2019s Onomasticon Taciteum<\/em> (1900) contains only the names of persons mentioned in Tacitus. Because the Oxford Classical Dictionary<\/em> covers the entire classical world in one volume, entries are selective and brief. Although the 80 volumes of the monumental Realencyclop\u00e4die der classischen Altertumswissenschaft<\/em> have been updated and revised in Brill\u2019s New Pauly<\/em>, the scope is so broad that even if a minor figure from Tacitus is included, the entry cannot possibly situate the figure within the broader context of Tacitus\u2019 works. Edited collections introduce various aspects of Tacitean scholarship and reception, e.g., Luce and Woodman (1993); Mellor (1995); Woodman (2009); Pag\u00e1n (2012). In spite of their breadth, none gives fingertip access to the essentials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The<\/em> Tacitus Encyclopedia<\/em> consists of entries of two types:<\/p>\n\n\n\n