TACITUS 



5676 



TACOMA 



and Sir John Macdonald again formed a Min- 

 istry with the former as Premier, but in both 

 ministries Macdonald was the real head of the 

 government. Tache was knighted in 1858. 



TACITUS, tas'itus, PUBLIUS CORNELIUS 

 (about 55-120), a Roman historian, one of the 

 greatest of all ages. Of his life nothing is 

 known except what may be learned from his 

 occasional references to himself and from a se- 

 ries of letters written to him by his intimate 

 friend, the younger Pliny. These ' sources tell 

 us only that he held various public offices, un- 

 der Vespasian, Titus, Domitian and Nerva, that 

 he won a reputation as an orator and lawyer, 

 and that he married the daughter of Gnaeus 

 Julius Agricola. His alliance with this distin- 

 guished soldier and statesman probably had an 

 influence in procuring his various promotions in 

 office. 



Of the writings of Tacitus there remain . the 

 discussion of eloquence, Dialogue on Orators, 

 his first work, published early in life, and by 



some critics believed not to be genuine because 

 it contains few of the distinctive mannerisms 

 of Tacitus; the Agricola, a biography of his 

 father-in-law, universally acknowledged to be a 

 masterpiece; the Germania, a description of 

 the institutions and customs of the various Ger- 

 man tribes, written, it has been thought, to 

 serve a political purpose by calling the atten- 

 tion of the Romans to the possible danger from 

 these neighbors; the Histories, of which there 

 remain only the first four books and a part of 

 the fifth, giving an account of the years 69-70 ; 

 and the Annals, which originally consisted of 

 sixteen books, giving the history of Rome and 

 its provinces from the death of Augustus to 

 that of Nero, but of which books seven to ten 

 inclusive, with parts of others, are lost. 



Consult Dimsdale's A History of Latin Litera- 

 ture. Translations of the Dialogues, Agricola and 

 Germania may be had in the Loeb Classical Li- 

 brary. 



TACKING. See SAILBOAT AND SAILING. 



THE/ STORY OFA TACOMA 



.ACOMA, tako'ma, WASH., the county 

 seat of Pierce County, is a seaport on Com- 

 mencement Bay, an inlet of Puget Sound, and 

 the center of an important lumber industry. It 

 is in the west-central part of the state, twenty- 

 eight miles south of Seattle and 140 miles north 

 of Portland, Ore. The Puyallus River flows 

 through the city and empties into the bay, 

 which expands into an excellent harbor. Ta- 

 coma is the western headquarters and terminus 

 of the Northern Pacific Railway. Railroads 

 entering the city are the Chicago, Milwaukee 

 & Saint Paul, the Great Northern, the Oregon 

 and Washington Railroad & Navigation Com- 

 pany and the Tacoma Eastern. The city is 

 growing very rapidly. In 1910 it had a popu- 

 lation of 83,743; this had increased to 112,770 

 in 1916 (Federal estimate). 



Tacoma occupies an uneven, picturesque site 

 of about forty square miles. The land rises 

 from the level of the river to a height of sev- 



eral hundred feet, and the greater part of the 

 city is built upon a plateau about 200 feet 

 above the bay. On the west are the Olympic 

 Mountains and on the east the Cascades, both 

 of which are ranges of snowy peaks and pine- 

 covered slopes. Tacoma is the gateway to 

 Mount Rainier National Park, to the southeast, 

 a region yearly attracting thousands of visitors 

 (see RAINIER, MOUNT). The largest parks of 

 the city are Point Defiance (640 acres), Wright 

 (28 acres) and McKinley (31 acres). The Fed- 

 eral building, courthouse, city hall, Carnegie 

 Library and the Chamber of Commerce are 

 important buildings. The State Historical So- 

 ciety and Terry Museum of Art occupy rooms 

 in the public library. Tacoma has the Whit- 

 worth College (Presbyterian), the University 

 of Puget Sound (Methodist Episcopal), the 

 Annie Wright Seminary (Protestant Episcopal), 

 the Pacific Lutheran University and an Indian 

 school. The city contains a number of hos- 



