Tacitus, Annals, 15.20–23, 33–45

Mathew Owen and Ingo Gildenhard Tacitus, Annals, 15.20-23, 33-45 Latin text, study aids with vocabulary, and commentary TACITUS, ANNALS, 15.20–23, 33–45 Tacitus, Annals, 15.20–23, 33–45 Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, and Commentary Mathew Owen and Ingo Gildenhard http://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2013 Mathew Owen and Ingo Gildenhard This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence (CC-BY 3.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Owen, Mathew and Gildenhard, Ingo. Tacitus, Annals, 15.20–23, 33–45. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2013. DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0035 Further details about CC-BY licences are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available on our website at: http://www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781783740000 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-001-7 ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-000-0 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-002-4 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-003-1 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-004-8 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0035 Cover image: Bust of Nero, the Capitoline Museum, Rome (2009) © Joe Geranio (CC-BY-SA-3.0), Wikimedia.org. All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) Certified. Printed in the United Kingdom and United States by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK). Contents 1. Preface and acknowledgements 1 2. Introduction 5 2.1 Tacitus: life and career 8 2.2 Tacitus’ times: the political system of the principate 10 2.3 Tacitus’ oeuvre: opera minora and maiora 15 2.4 Tacitus’ style (as an instrument of thought) 26 2.5 Tacitus’ Nero-narrative: Rocky-Horror-Picture Show and Broadway on the Tiber 28 2.6 Thrasea Paetus and the so-called ‘Stoic opposition’ 32 3. Latin text with study questions and vocabulary aid 39 4. Commentary 75 Section 1: Annals 15.20–23 77 (i) 20.1–22.1: The Meeting of the Senate 78 (ii) 22.2: Review of striking prodigies that occurred in AD 62 110 (iii) 23.1–4: Start of Tacitus’ account of AD 63: the birth and death of Nero’s daughter by Sabina Poppaea, Claudia Augusta 119 Section 2: Annals 15.33–45 (AD 64) 137 (i) 33.1–34.1: Nero’s coming-out party as stage performer 138 (ii) 34.2–35.3: A look at the kind of creatures that populate Nero’s court – and the killing of an alleged rival 149 (iii) 36: Nero considers, but then reconsiders, going on tour to Egypt 158 (iv) 37: To show his love for Rome, Nero celebrates a huge public orgy that segues into a mock-wedding with his freedman Pythagoras 169 (v) 38–41: The fire of Rome 181 (vi) 42–43: Reconstructing the Capital: Nero’s New Palace 218 (vii) 44: Appeasing the Gods, and Christians as Scapegoats 233 (viii) 45: Raising of Funds for Buildings 245 5. Bibliography 253 6. Visual aids 263 6.1 Map of Italy 265 6.2 Map of Rome 266 6.3 Family Tree of Nero and Junius Silanus 267 6.4 Inside the Domus Aurea 268 1. Preface and acknowledgements The selective sampling of Latin authors that the study of set texts at A-level involves poses four principal challenges to the commentators. As we see it, our task is to: (i) facilitate the reading or translation of the assigned passage; (ii) explicate its style and subject matter; (iii) encourage appreciation of the extract on the syllabus as part of wider wholes – such as a work (in our case the Annals), an oeuvre (here that of Tacitus), historical settings (Neronian and Trajanic Rome), or a configuration of power (the principate); and (iv) stimulate comparative thinking about the world we encounter in the assigned piece of Latin literature and our own. The features of this textbook try to go some way towards meeting this multiple challenge: To speed up comprehension of the Latin, we have given a fairly extensive running vocabulary for each chapter of the text, printed on the facing page. We have not indicated whether or not any particular word is included in any ‘need to know’ list; and we are sure that most students will not require as much help as we give. Still, it seemed prudent to err on the side of caution. We have not provided ‘plug in’ formulas in the vocabulary list: but we have tried to explain all difficult grammar and syntax in the commentary. In addition, the questions on the grammar and the syntax that follow each chapter of the Latin text are designed, not least, to flag up unusual or difficult constructions for special attention. Apart from explicating grammar and syntax, the commentary also includes stylistic and thematic observations, with a special emphasis on how form reinforces, indeed generates, meaning. We would like to encourage students to read beyond the set text and have accordingly cited parallel passages from elsewhere in the Annals or from alternative sources, either in Latin and English or, when the source is in Greek, in English only. Unless otherwise indicated, we give the text and translation (more or less modified) according to the editions in the Loeb Classical Library. Our introduction places Tacitus and the set text within wider historical parameters, drawing on recent – and, frequently, revisionist – scholarship on imperial Rome: it is meant to provoke, as well 4 Tacitus, Annals, 15.20–23, 33–45 as to inform. Finally, for each chapter of the Latin text we have included a ‘Stylistic Appreciation’ assignment and a ‘Discussion Point’: here we flag up issues and questions, often with a contemporary angle, that lend themselves to open-ended debate, in the classroom and beyond. * * * We would like to thank the team at Open Book Publishers, and in particular Alessandra Tosi, for accepting this volume for publication, speeding it through production – and choosing the perfect reader for the original manuscript: connoisseurs of John Henderson’s peerless critical insight will again find much to enjoy in the following pages (acknowledged and unacknowledged), and we are tremendously grateful for his continuing patronage of, and input into, this series. 2. Introduction DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0035.01 At the outset of his Annals, which was his last work, published around AD 118, Tacitus states that he wrote sine ira et studio (‘without anger or zeal’), that is, in an objective and dispassionate frame of mind devoted to an uninflected portrayal of historical truth. The announcement is part of his self-fashioning as a muckraker above partisan emotions who chronicles the sad story of early imperial Rome: the decline and fall of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (AD 14–68) in the Annals and the civil war chaos of the year of the four emperors (AD 69) followed by the rise and fall of the Flavian dynasty (AD 69–96) in the (earlier) Histories. But his narrative is far from a blow- by-blow account of Roman imperial history, and Tacitus is an author as committed as they come – a literary artist of unsparing originality who fashions his absorbing subject matter into a dark, defiant, and deadpan sensationalist vision of ‘a world in pieces’, which he articulates, indeed enacts, in his idiosyncratic Latinity.1 To read this Latin and to come to terms with its author is not easy: ‘No one else ever wrote Latin like Tacitus, who deserves his reputation as the most difficult of Latin authors.’2 This introduction is designed to help you get some purchase on Tacitus and his texts.3 We will begin with some basic facts, not least to establish Tacitus as a successful ‘careerist’ within the political system of the principate who rose to the top of imperial government and stayed there even through upheavals at the centre of power and dynastic changes (1). A few comments on the configuration of power in imperial Rome follow, with a focus on how emperors stabilized and sustained their rule (2). In our survey of Tacitus’ oeuvre, brief remarks on his so-called opera minora (his ‘smaller’ – a better label would be ‘early’ – works) precede more extensive consideration of his two great works of historiography: the Histories and, 1 Henderson (1998). 2 Woodman (2004) xxi. 3 We are not trying to compete with general introductions to Tacitus and his works, of which there are plenty. We particularly recommend Ash (2006) and the two recent companions to Tacitus edited by Woodman (2009a) and Pagán (2012). See also, more generally, the companions to (Greek and) Roman historiography edited by Marincola (2007) and Feldherr (2009). 8 Tacitus, Annals, 15.20–23, 33–45 in particular, the Annals. Here issues of genre – of the interrelation of content and form – will be to the fore (3). We then look at some of the more distinctive features of Tacitus’ prose style, with the aim of illustrating how he deploys language as an instrument of thought (4). The final two sections are dedicated to the two principal figures of the set text: the emperor Nero (and his propensity for murder and spectacle) (5); and the senator Thrasea Paetus, who belonged to the so-called ‘Stoic opposition’ (6). None of the sections offers anything close to an exhaustive discussion of the respective topic: all we can hope to provide are some pointers on how to think with (and against) Tacitus and the material you will encounter in the set text.

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