The Tacitus On Line project was born from the need to have the most important commentaries on the works of the Latin historian Tacitus (approximately 58-120 AD), collected in such a way as to open up the possibility of research into their content.
The Middle Ages had forgotten Tacitus and it was not until the 15th century that he was truly rediscovered and disseminated by scholars. This rediscovery first gave rise to comments aimed at establishing the text, then to comments which, gradually, were enriched and included historical, religious, political approaches, etc. A major step was represented by the works of the humanist Just Lipsius (1547-1606)who, through several successive editions of Tacitus’ works, developed a very rich commentary, which in turn influenced humanist thought, particularly in the political domain.
The Tacitus On Line project began by offering the commentaries of Juste Lipsius for reading and study to Annales of Tacitus, by offering analyzes which, based on a typology, reveal the nature of their content. It then extended to the comments made by Lipsius’ predecessors, as they were selected in an edition of 1608 (Paris, Pierre Chevallier), widely distributed in Europe, digitized by the Municipal Library of Lyon. This enrichment is still in progress. An extension will then concern comments to Stories.
The project will also include bibliographic resources on Tacitus, Justus Lipsus and other commentators.
Intended to enable further research on humanist commentaries and their relationship to the ancient text, the site is also an experimental laboratory, to test tools that could be applied to other objects of study, other editions or commentaries. It also represents an opportunity for the training of Latin students, who learn to encode and work on non-classical texts.
Welcome
About
The edition
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Encoding manual
The Lab’
