ABSTRACT

This article offers a realist interpretation of Tacitus’s analysis of political failure. Tacitus described the early Roman Empire as a balance between the conflicting and irreconcilable values and interests of the emperor, the army, and the senate. For him Stoic-republican morality in itself—without the intervention of a political standard demanding political agency in every circumstance—cannot provide an all-purpose guide to action. He provides a fine-grained analysis of types of political failure, such as failing to act, or to realize one’s limited scope for maneuver, or the inevitability of failure given particular political circumstances. Tacitus also describes Thrasea, a moderate member of the senatorial opposition to Nero, as an exceptionally laudable figure. His preference for moderate politics places Tacitus on the side of contemporary status-quo oriented, liberal, realists (e.g., Bernard Williams), rather than on the side of radical realists (e.g., Raymond Geuss, Enzo Rossi), but the central lesson of his understanding of Roman politics is not so much that political order is fragile as that the cost of political failure can indeed be unbearably high.

摘要

本文对塔西佗对政治失败的分析提供了现实主义的解释。塔西佗将早期的罗马帝国描述为皇帝、军队和元老院之间相互冲突和不可调和的价值观和利益之间的平衡。对他来说，斯多葛共和主义道德本身——如果没有政治标准的干预，在任何情况下都需要政治机构——不能提供万能的行动指南。他对各种类型的政治失败进行了细致的分析，例如未能采取行动，或未能意识到自己有限的回旋余地，或在特定政治环境下失败的必然性。塔西佗还把反对尼禄的参议院温和派成员 Thrasea 描述为一个非常值得称赞的人物。