What hath Tacitus to do with Ukraine?

When his teaching touches on contemporary issues like the war between Russia and Ukraine, Dr. Bram ten Berge prefers to take a long view. Almost 2,000 years long.

The classics professor’s scholarly analysis and writing focus on Tacitus (c. 55–120 A.D., and that c is soft, like an s). Tacitus was a senator who is today considered one of the preeminent historians of the Roman Empire.

Tacitus’ five surviving texts can be divided into two groups. He wrote three early works: the Agricola, which is a biography of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, a Roman general and governor of Britain (and Tacitus’ father-in-law); the Germania, an ethnography about the tribes that lived in northern Europe; and the Dialogue on Oratory, which is, well, a dialogue on oratory. And he wrote two later historical works, the Histories and the Annals, that together cover the period from the death of the emperor Augustus in 14 A.D. through the death of the emperor Domitian in 96 A.D.

In his new book, Writing Imperial History: Tacitus from Agricola to Annales, ten Berge conducts a comprehensive analysis of all of Tacitus’ surviving writings. It was released by the University of Michigan Press in 2023.

“For the longest time, there’s been this assumption that Tacitus makes a steep progression across his literary career, to the point where people tend to think the real Tacitus can’t be found till we get to his Annals, which is his masterpiece,” says ten Berge. “What my book shows, rather, is that his political outlook, both on the Principate (which is the system of the emperorship) and Rome’s foreign policy, is more or less set by the time he picks up a pen. I posit more of an integrated oeuvre rather than a set of five disparate, independent texts.”

Tacitus’ sharp and comprehensive political outlook is one of the reasons ten Berge finds the Roman historian so timely and relevant to contemporary politics, allowing readers to find insights that could be applied to America’s democratic system as well as to Roman imperial rule, and to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as to Domitian’s campaigns across the Rhine.

Tacitus’ sharp and comprehensive political outlook is one of the reasons Dr. Bram ten Berge finds the Roman historian so timely and relevant to contemporary politics, allowing readers to find insights that could be applied to America’s democratic system as well as to Roman imperial rule, and to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as to Domitian’s campaigns across the Rhine.

It’s a perspective that can be easily missed. Because Tacitus wrote in different genres about diverse subject matters, it’s unusual for all his works to be read together, ten Berge notes. “But if you actually read the entire corpus back-to-back, you start to see these thematic strands that continue from beginning to end. There’s a lot more continuity than difference,” he says.

When viewing Tacitus’ body of work comprehensively, ten Berge sees the historian as deeply critical of the Roman Principate, in which he could see systemic problems independent of the merits or flaws of individual emperors. But Tacitus was also shrewd: He couldn’t openly write about the flaws of the Principate or Rome’s empire without risking the anger of its leadership, so he had to be only implicitly critical.

This is where the Germania and Tacitus’ other early work comes in handy: “Ethnography is a perfect vehicle for criticism, because you can point out the problems in your own society by stressing their absence in other places,” ten Berge says.

The Germania’s ethnographic project is central to one of ten Berge’s courses, Ancient Rome and the Third Reich: Fascist Appropriations of Classical Antiquity. He designed it in 2019 with his Hope colleague Dr. Lee Forester, professor of German. It draws students from multiple disciplines — classics, German, history and Latin — and was recently added to the Anchor Plan, Hope’s new general education curriculum that was implemented in the 2023-24 school year.

Students in the course begin with an overview of Roman history, then read an English translation of the Germania to become familiar with the text in detail. Then, they read Stanford University classics professor Christopher Krebs’ A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich (2012), which describes how the Germania, after its chance rediscovery in the 15th century, was systematically put to wicked use.

“It’s not because Tacitus’ text is dangerous,” ten Berge explains, “but because of the way that people used the text for nationalistic and ideological purposes. It played a significant role in the formulation of scientific racism in Europe, and it ultimately was very high up in the formation of Nazi ideology in Germany.”

Students in the course also study the Germania in a broader context, looking at a series of modern regimes whose rhetoric aims to reinvigorate a glorious past that they’ve since lost. They look at Benito Mussolini’s use of the Roman Empire and of the emperor Augustus as a model; at Saddam Hussein and Mesopotamian kingship models; at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the idea of neo-Ottomanism (broadly, the attempt to restore Turkey’s influence in regions formerly part of the Ottoman Empire).

This spring, students also spent two class periods examining Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric surrounding the current war with Ukraine, including his February interview with Tucker Carlson.

“Students are getting a really in-depth look at how different modern regimes try to restore something that was good in the past and which they’ve since lost,” ten Berge says. “The reason I love the classics is not just to sit and do my niche research, but to help students understand how relevant this is to the modern world.

“I see Tacitus as someone who is so savvy and complex in disentangling the official narratives that come out of a regime,” ten Berge says. “We need someone like Tacitus to write about our world right now.”

“The reason I love the classics is not just to sit and do my niche research, but to help students understand how relevant this is to the modern world.”