We approach Tacitus with respect. We rise from reading his Annals, his History, and his Germany with reverence. We know that we have been in the society of a gentleman who had a high standard of morality and honor. We feel that our guide was a serious student, a solid thinker, and a man of the world; that he expressed his opinions and delivered his judgments with a remarkable freedom from prejudice. He draws us to him with sympathy. He sounds the same mournful note which we detect in Thucydides. Tacitus deplores the folly and dissoluteness of the rulers of his nation; he bewails the misfortunes of his country. The merits we ascribe to Thucydides, diligence, accuracy, love of truth, impartiality, are his. The desire to quote from Tacitus is irresistible. "The more I meditate," he writes, "on the events of ancient and modern times, the more I am struck with the capricious uncertainty which mocks the calculations of men in all their transactions." Again: "Possibly there is in all things a kind of cycle, and there may be moral revolutions just as there are changes of seasons." "Commonplaces!" sneer the scientific historians. True enough, but they might not have been commonplaces if Tacitus had not uttered them, and his works had not been read and re-read until they have become a common possession of historical students. From a thinker who deemed the time "out of joint," as Tacitus obviously did, and who, had he not possessed great strength of mind and character, might have lapsed into a gloomy pessimism, what noble words are these: "This I regard as history's highest function: to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds." The modesty of the Roman is fascinating. "Much of what I have related," he says, "and shall have to relate, may perhaps, I am aware, seem petty trifles to record.... My labors are circumscribed and unproductive of renown to the author." How agreeable to place in contrast with this the prophecy of his friend, the younger Pliny, in a letter to the historian: "I augur--nor does my augury deceive me--that your histories will be immortal: hence all the more do I desire to find a place in them."