Regime Agnosticism: Tacitus on the Nature of Republics and the Growth of Savagery

Abstract

Does regime type matter for politics? How should republicans in particular think about regime type, especially given the legacy of the Roman mixed regime? While we might normally think of regime type as being determinative of politics, I argue that this is less true than it appears at first glance. Through a reading of the Roman historian Tacitus, I show that republicanism is best understood as a politics of virtue and vice rather than a prescribed set of constitutional arrangements. While Tacitus has not been read in this way before, attending to his use of rhetorical strategies allows us to see that he offers an oblique criticism of the Roman principate grounded in the emperors’ character, not any inherent problem with the rule of one. Using Stoic themes, he condemns the emperors as vicious, cruel, and a corrupting influence on Roman political life. Since his criticism is non-institutional, I read Tacitus as a regime agnostic republican. I call this interpretation “regime agnostic” because on this view behaviors and choices are the basic elements of politics, and certain choices – virtues – are the constitutive element of specifically republican politics. Tacitus is therefore a much more interesting political thinker than he has been given credit for. Contemporary republicans, especially the “neo-Romans,” read him as a forerunner to their own project of reimagining the mixed regime. Yet Tacitus’s regime agnostic republicanism raises pointed questions about the neo-Roman understanding of republicanism. Beyond the historical issues, it is too legalistic and so it misunderstands the nature of liberty and domination. Tacitus helps us to cut through these overly formal and structural definitions of liberty and domination to see them for what they are – behaviors. I argue that this raises a continuity between ancient republicanism and a certain strand of liberal thought, though Tacitus does more than merely anticipate this. He offers theoretical resources for understanding the efficacy of individual action (and the importance of theorizing this), the nature of cruelty as a political problem, the need for virtue in both liberal and democratic societies, and the stakes of these concepts for liberal aspirations.