[Sidenote: Works of Tacitus. The Dialogus.] The works of Tacitus in the order of composition are the _Dialogue on Orators_ (_Dialogus de Oratoribus_), the dramatic date of which is 75 A. D., while the date of composition is uncertain; the _Germania_, published in 98 A. D.; the _Agricola_, written early in the reign of Trajan, probably in 98 A. D.; the _Histories_, written under Trajan, and apparently not completed much before 110 A. D.; and the _Annals_, published between 115 and 117 A. D. The _Dialogue on Orators_ is an inquiry into the causes of the decay of oratory. In form it is an imitation of Cicero’s famous dialogue _De Oratore_, and the style also imitates that of Cicero. In this respect the dialogue is so unlike the later works of Tacitus that his authorship has been denied by many scholars. It must, however, be remembered that this is his earliest work, and that the Ciceronian style was taught in the school of Quintilian and no doubt in other schools at Rome, so that an imitation of Cicero was a natural beginning for a young author. Moreover, there are in the dialogue traces of the later style of Tacitus, which is distinguished for its epigrammatic utterances and its frequent use of innuendo. The work may therefore be unhesitatingly ascribed to Tacitus. It is an interesting and attractive dialogue, in which the quiet life of the poet is contrasted with the more active career of the orator before the real subject—the reasons for the decay of oratory—is discussed. The conclusion is reached that oratory has declined partly on account of the faulty rhetorical education in vogue, but still more because the orator no longer has under the imperial government the influence and power that belonged to his predecessors in the days of the republic. [Sidenote: The Agricola.] The _Agricola_ (_De Vita et Moribus Iulii Agricolæ_) is a biography and panegyric of Gnæus Julius Agricola, Tacitus’s father-in-law. In the introduction Tacitus gives his reasons for having written nothing during the reign of Domitian. The passage deserves to be quoted, not only as a specimen of Tacitus’s style, but because it places in a clear light his view of the imperial government in the first century. Throughout the _Histories_ and the _Annals_ his attitude is the same, and his genius has imposed his view upon all later times. Under Domitian two eminent Stoics, Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Priscus, had been put to death and their works publicly burned. Tacitus mentions this and then expresses himself as follows: