Just over two thousand years ago, a man named Gnaeus Julius Agricola governed Roman Britain with a rare combination of firmness and justice. He was not a ruthless general, not a politician thirsty for power, not an opportunist who changed flags with the shifting winds.
He was, simply, an upright man in an age of compromises. His life was told by his son-in-law, Publius Cornelius Tacitus, one of the greatest historians of antiquity, who in a pamphlet of extraordinary modernity—the De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae (On the Life and Character of Julius Agricola)—did not merely compose a funeral eulogy, but handed down to posterity a manifesto of moral resistance against tyranny.
And today, in a time that seems to have lost the sense of measure, coherence, and civil courage, the figure of Agricola speaks to us again with a surprisingly clear voice.
Tacitus wrote the Agricola in 98 AD, a few years after his father-in-law’s death, under the reign of Emperor Domitian, one of the most feared tyrants in Roman history.
The text is simultaneously a biography, an eulogy, and an act of accusation. On one hand, it celebrates the virtues of a man who knew how to reconcile military discipline with clemency, the administration of justice with respect for the vanquished, conquest with integration.
On the other, it denounces the climate of terror established by Domitian, which forced senators to silence, intellectuals to bow, generals to hide their successes so as not to arouse envy.
Agricola, although recalled to his homeland and kept on the margins by the suspicious emperor, never lost his dignity. He did not rebel, did not conspire, did not humble himself. He lived as a free man inside a glass prison.
And this, today, is precisely the point that most calls to us. In a society that rewards appearance over being, visibility over substance, loyalty to the current leader over inner coherence, the figure of Agricola reminds us that there is another way.
That of those who do their duty without flaunting it, who build without destroying, who lead without trampling. Companies, politics, institutions are full of managers and administrators who have forgotten Tacitus’s lesson: power is not an end in itself, but a means to serve.
Agricola, in Britain, did not merely defeat rebellious tribes. He built roads, temples, baths. He taught the sons of local chiefs the Roman language and culture. He brought peace through integration, not through extermination. A model that many today would define as “weak” or “compromising,” but which facts proved extraordinarily effective.
Tacitus, in portraying his father-in-law, also offers us a bitter reflection on the relationship between intellectuals and power. Under Domitian, he writes, “eloquence itself was banned.” Rhetoricians, philosophers, historians were persecuted or forced into self-censorship. Today, without needing an emperor to sign edicts, we witness a more subtle but no less dangerous form of homogenization: social media reward easy indignation and punish complexity; traditional media seek consensus more than truth; many intellectuals transform into partisan commentators, forgetting their task of questioning the present.
Tacitus’s voice, who wrote the Agricola “with a now-free hand” after the tyrant’s death, reminds us that freedom of thought must be defended even when it comes at a high price. And that sometimes the most revolutionary act is simply to tell the truth.
Another aspect of the Agricola that echoes in our daily lives is the theme of the conflict between duty and prudence, between courageous action and survival.
Agricola could have challenged Domitian, marched on Rome, attempted a coup. He did not. But not out of cowardice. He chose to withdraw, not to fuel a civil war, to protect his family and his soldiers. Tacitus justifies him, and indeed makes him an example of “silent virtue.”
How many times, in our professional and personal lives, do we face similar choices: denounce an abuse risking your job, or remain silent so as not to lose the client; defend a collaborator unjustly attacked, or let him go so as not to alienate the superior.
There is no universal answer. But the Agricola teaches us that even silence can be dignified if it is the fruit of a conscious choice, not of resignation.
In the most celebrated part of the work, Tacitus imagines a speech by Calgacus, chief of the Caledonians, who says: “They plunder, slaughter, seize: with false names they call empire what is only desolation.”
It is one of the most powerful denunciations ever written against colonialism.
These words sound like an indictment against every form of oppression. Not only the Roman one, but also that of great economic powers, of multinational corporations that devastate the environment, of migration policies that repel the desperate, of ideologies that justify injustice in the name of presumed superior values.
Tacitus was not a pacifist, not a revolutionary. But he had the courage to put in the mouth of Rome’s enemy the words that no Roman dared to utter. A rare exercise of empathy, which invites us to look at the world also with the eyes of those who suffer.
But perhaps the deepest message of the Agricola is another: the greatness of a man is not measured by the offices he held or the monuments he left, but by the coherence between what he thought, said, and did. Agricola died in disgrace, far from power, without having obtained the honors he deserved. Yet Tacitus celebrates him as a model, while Domitian, the omnipotent emperor, is remembered only as a paranoid tyrant. History, the biographer tells us, is the ultimate tribunal. And history’s judgment does not reward the powerful, but the just.
Today, in the culture of the like, the follower, the immediate prize, we struggle to think in terms of long duration. We are obsessed with short-term results, visibility, consensus. The Agricola reminds us that what truly matters is character. And character is not built in a day, nor measured with an algorithm. It is forged in difficult choices, in the refusal of compromise when it is too costly, in the ability to remain oneself even when no one is watching.
Tacitus, finally, closes the work with a wish that seems written for our time: “Let there be emperors who do not love virtues: we will continue to honor them.” Words that sound like an act of civil resistance. There is no need to tear down statues or shout slogans. It is enough to continue living according to what one believes. It is enough not to bow to the logic of the strongest. It is enough to do one’s duty, even when no one sees it. It is enough, like Agricola, to govern one’s inner Britain with justice, temperance, and courage. And let time, in the end, do justice.
Perhaps this is the greatest gift Tacitus has given us: not a manual of political strategy or etiquette for officials, but a mirror.
Looking into it, we can ask ourselves: Are we closer to Agricola or to Domitian? And the answer, whatever it is, is not written in marble.
It can change every day, every choice. It is up to us.
RVSCB
