Milton and Tacitus

ABSTRACT The political and historical literature of the seventeenth century was greatly influenced by the study of Tacitus. Milton, though not the Tacitean that some professed to be, drew frequently on this material. In the antiepiscopal and antimonarchical tracts, he presents the Stuart government as trying to establish a repressive and enervating tyranny in England, and consistently draws parallels (not all from Tacitus) with the process by which Roman liberty was extinguished under the empire. In the First Defence, he objects to Salmasius’ interpretation of Tacitus, calling Tacitus much more the republican than the friend of kings. The recovery of Tacitus had increased knowledge of Roman Britain, and, like other English Renaissance historians, Milton uses him in his History of Britain. Milton also appears to have been influenced by the much discussed Tacitean style. His adaptations of passages from Tacitus in the History seem at times to imitate directly the wit and concision of the Latin, and it is likely that some of these features are carried over into the style of the epics.