/lit/ - Literature

alright gents, allow me to frame this for you: i initially approached tacitus as an assignment for a strategic policies class, and he was intended to be read as principally a commentator on military strategy. as such, we had to read agricola and germania: agricola is the recounting of an exceptional roman general (by the same name) and his impressive conquest of britannia. the text is extremely lucid and offers more than a handful of absolute gems of political/military strategy. it is, mainly, a description of agricola's battles: beautiful renditions of iron splintering flesh and wood, cavalry ripping through misplaced lines, of armies run up against the sea and facing utter annihilation--absolutely epic stuff.

and then there is this one passage that comes out of nowhere. tacitus is basically done with the text; he has traced agricola's military and political trajectory, and has drawn some substantial conclusion from it. but then, without much warning, he ends the text with this (see next post):