He found warrant for it, no doubt, in the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies of his age, to which I have already referred: the defeatist philosophies which, starting from the assumption that the good man cannot conquer or control a wicked world, taught him how to preserve himself unspotted from its wickedness. This false antithesis between the individual man’s character and his social environment justifies, in a sense, Tacitus’ method of exhibiting the actions of an historical figure as flowing simply from his own personal character, and making no allowance either for the way in which a man’s
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