Chris Weimer

taceo, tacere, tacui, tacitus - to be silent

Yes, I find it ironic that Tacitus, with a name meaning suggesting silence, was known for his rhetorical skills.

But I don't see the relevance to Plato.

Diogenes the Cynic

Like Chris said, Tacitus means "silent." Tranquillus means "quiet, calm, tranquil."
I can't tell you why k_smith123 thinks the names are "correct," but the reference to Cratylus is a Socratic dialogue in which Socrates argues for the assertion that all things are correctly named. The dialogue is right here. It's short. Maybe someone else will find it more enlightening re: Suetonius and Tacitus than I am able to.

Chris Weimer

I never got half of Socrates. I suspect that portion was Plato instead.

Diogenes the Cynic

I think it had to be to some degree. It wasn't like Plato had a tape recorder or anything. I also think that "Socrates" was a bit of a sophist at times.

John A. Broussard

Aristophanes pictured him as being a sophist. Sometimes I wonder if Aristophanes wasn't closer to the mark than Plato was.

copernicus

All of this still comes back to the fact that, even if the passage is completely authentic, Tacitus was only relaying information that could have been gotten from contemporary Christians. Tacitus was a friend of Pliny the Younger, who had Christians in his custody and had written the emperor asking how to deal with them. Many Christians take the passage as some kind of evidence for the historicity of Christ, but it was written decades after the alleged events, and it was not the focus of what Tacitus was writing about, i.e. Nero's slimy behavior. There is little reason to believe that Tacitus did special research on Pontius Pilate to verify that he actually executed Jesus.

Roger Pearse

Leaving aside the raw meaning of the Latin words, Tertullian in the Apologeticum 16:3 makes a pun on Tacitus' name: Tacitus... 'most loquacious'.

Latin text of the Oehler/Glover edition

Thelwall's English translation

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

I think it's probably less confusing for everyone if such speculation about his sources, with a view to ignoring his testimony, is not referred to as a 'fact'. We don't actually have any idea what his source is.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

GakuseiDon

Then contemporary Christians had knowledge about events that occurred in the time of Nero. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, doesn't this imply a continuity of beliefs of the Christians at that time?

Vorkosigan

I think Copernicus isn't saying that he did "in fact" source the story from Christians, but that it is a fact that such a possibility exists.

Vorkosigan