"Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor"
About this Quote
Nostalgia isn’t just a feeling here; it’s a political diagnosis. Tacitus is pointing at a reflex that keeps repeating in public life: the past gets a reputational glow-up precisely because it’s safely out of reach, while the present stays easy to blame because it’s unfinished, messy, and personally disappointing. “Old things” don’t have to answer follow-up questions. They can be edited into a moral fable.
Coming from Tacitus, that’s not neutral observation. He’s a Roman writing under the Empire, after the Republic’s collapse has become a settled fact and after a run of emperors who taught elites the cost of speaking too plainly. In that atmosphere, praising yesterday becomes a coded way of criticizing today. You can’t always attack current power directly, but you can sigh theatrically about “the good old days” and let your audience supply the target. The line works like a pressure valve: it registers dissent without naming names.
The subtext also cuts the other way. Tacitus isn’t necessarily endorsing the worship of antiquity; he’s exposing how selective it is. Romans famously mythologized earlier austerity and virtue, even though earlier Rome also had its corruption, cruelty, and chaos. Calling the pattern out is a warning to readers: be suspicious of easy comparisons, especially when they flatter your tribe’s self-image.
It lands because it’s compact and quietly cruel. It indicts a human habit, but it also explains how regimes survive: when everyone is busy idealizing ghosts, the living get a free pass.
Coming from Tacitus, that’s not neutral observation. He’s a Roman writing under the Empire, after the Republic’s collapse has become a settled fact and after a run of emperors who taught elites the cost of speaking too plainly. In that atmosphere, praising yesterday becomes a coded way of criticizing today. You can’t always attack current power directly, but you can sigh theatrically about “the good old days” and let your audience supply the target. The line works like a pressure valve: it registers dissent without naming names.
The subtext also cuts the other way. Tacitus isn’t necessarily endorsing the worship of antiquity; he’s exposing how selective it is. Romans famously mythologized earlier austerity and virtue, even though earlier Rome also had its corruption, cruelty, and chaos. Calling the pattern out is a warning to readers: be suspicious of easy comparisons, especially when they flatter your tribe’s self-image.
It lands because it’s compact and quietly cruel. It indicts a human habit, but it also explains how regimes survive: when everyone is busy idealizing ghosts, the living get a free pass.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nostalgia |
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