In the second year of Trajan's principate, Tacitus was one of the consuls. The office indeed was only the shadow of a once mighty name, and the duties of it were merely nominal. Yet it was still an honourable distinction and a permanent advance in social rank. The only recorded act of Tacitus in his consulship was his delivery of the funeral oration over the body of Virginius Rufus, one of "the noblest Romans of them all" in that degenerate age. "Ever benign to this octogenarian hero,"—who, besides the usual perils of his calling, had thrice escaped from the fury of mutinous legionaries,—"Fortune," says Pliny, "reserved her last favour to him, that of being commemorated by the greatest of living orators."
In 99 A.D., Tacitus, now proconsul, was joined with Pliny, then consul-elect, in managing the impeachment of Marius Priseus for high crimes and misdemeanours committed by him while governor of the province of Africa. In spite of powerful advocacy and interest, the culprit was condemned. The prosecutors—the injured Africans—gained their suit, but apparently little else; for Marius, after paying heavy law expenses, and doubtless also as heavy bribes to some of the jury, lived very comfortably in exile upon the residue of his ill-got gains. He was infamous enough to be specially mentioned by the contemporary satirist:—
(For who, that holds the plunder, heeds the pain?)
Marius to wine devotes his morning hours,
And laughs in exile at the offended powers;
