Agricola (book)

The Agricola (Latin: De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae, lit. On the life and character of Julius Agricola) is a book by the Roman writer, Tacitus, written c. AD 98. The work recounts the life of his father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola, an eminent Roman general and Governor of Britain from AD 77/78 – 83/84.[1] It also covers the geography and ethnography of ancient Britain.[2]

The text survived in a single codex ascertained by Poggio Bracciolini to be in a German monastery (Hersfeld Abbey).[3] It was eventually secured by the humanist Niccolò de' Niccoli.[3] In modern times, two manuscripts of the Agricola are preserved in the Library of the Vatican.[4] In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, two more manuscripts are said by Duane Reed Stuart to have been brought to light, with one being held by the Chapter Library of the Cathedral at Toledo in Spain and the other being found in 1902 in the private library of Count Balleani of Jesi, in Italy.[4]

  1. ^ Birley, Anthony R. (20 December 2012). "Iulius (RE 49) Agricola, Gnaeus". The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-954556-8.
  2. ^ Tacitus. Agricola. Translated by Harold Mattingly and revised with an introduction and notes by J.B. Rives. London: Penguin Group, 2009.[page needed]
  3. ^ a b Schaps, David (1979). "The Found and Lost Manuscripts of Tacitus' Agricola". Classical Philology. 74 (1): 28–42. doi:10.1086/366466. JSTOR 268260. S2CID 162329462.
  4. ^ a b Tacitus. Agricola. Translated by Duane Reed Stuart. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1909.[page needed]