It is fitting to end our discussion with Tacitus, who both displays the connection between rhetoric and liberty in Roman political thought and at the same time highlights the tensions and conflicts this connection entailed. If, as we saw in Chapter 1 and throughout this book, rhetoric and liberty may go hand in hand, guiding decisions, cultivating judgment, and fostering community, rhetoric might undermine liberty and political community. Similarly, the practice of rhetoric, though it might be a manifestation of liberty and foster judgment, might also be a manifestation of license and smother judgment. Tacitus echoes the arguments and criticisms of Plato, and prefigures the concerns of Hobbes. In Tacitus' writings, we see not only the case for rhetoric and liberty, but also their critique.

Despite the apparent dangers of rhetoric – its potentially harmful relationship to political community, its incompatibility with peace, and its connection to misunderstood liberty – I suggested that Tacitus should not be identified with Maternus, per se. If Tacitus serves to highlight the relationship between rhetoric and liberty in part through his seeming opposition to Cicero, he also provides us with warnings about the problems entailed in the absence of rhetoric. A kind of peace may have characterized the principate, but it was a peace brought about by the rule of one. For rhetoric not to have a place in the community, we would need an ideal society – just as we would need a perfectly healthy population for medicine to have no place.