[Sidenote: Style of Tacitus.] His style is impregnated with the words and phrases of the classical writers, especially of Virgil, and with the rhetorical teaching of the Silver Age, and yet it is thoroughly individual. It is concise, sharp, and cutting, but often grandly poetic in its eloquence; it is apparently straightforward, yet somehow often reveals a half-hidden meaning; it is carefully elaborated, yet it affects the reader with rugged earnestness. Such a style is almost inimitable, whether by writers of Latin or by translators. It has been compared to that of Carlyle, and the comparison is worth mentioning, though it should not be pushed too far. Few prose works contain more epigrammatic sentences than those of Tacitus. Examples are: “Traitors are hated, even by those whom they advance”;[107] “None grieve more ostentatiously than those who are most delighted in their hearts”;[108] “Princes are mortal, the state eternal”;[109] “When the state was most corrupt the laws were most numerous”;[110] “New men rather than new measures”;[111] “Vices will exist as long as men”;[112] “Fame does not always err; sometimes it chooses.”[113] Endowed, as he was, with striking stylistic ability, writing, in fact, in a style which could not fail to arouse the interest and hold the attention of his readers, it is no wonder that Tacitus succeeded in imposing upon the world his views of history, which can be only partially corrected by the careful study and interpretation of fragmentary records.