There is reason to dwell a little on these words of the Roman historian Tacitus, not least because of the theme in this issue of Axess: the importance of good role models – but also their opposite: the cautionary examples.

Today, many people probably believe that it is an unpleasant elitism at the root of Tacitus' opinion. Does it not suggest that one course of action is better and more desirable than another? And does he thus not condemn, indirectly, all those who for various reasons do not want or have the potential to act in an exemplary way?

And does Tacitus not lay out a black-and-white view of people and the world, when he implies that it is possible to distinguish exemplary decisions from reprehensible ones? Is not the intellectual historian’s task to highlight the nuances and grey areas: for example, to show that the bad leaders’ and regimes' opponents were not themselves thoroughly upright? Does Tacitus&rsquo...