This essay, laid-back (as Nero) for West Coast Ramus, is prequel to ‘Lucan/The Word at War’ (in The Imperial Muse: To Juvenal through Ovid, 122–64). It was written in Bristol and unwritten in Cambridge, from 1975-//-89: I’m younger than that now …

1. ‘If I Could Tell You’, Auden, W.H., Selected Poems (London 1968) 44Google Scholar. The ‘Sections’ of this essay are the parts of the (all too uncivil) oration it disguises (For Tacitus’ oratory cf. Syme, R., Tacitus [Oxford 1958] 322fGoogle Scholar., Zaffagno, E, Initiative Semantiche di Tacito Annalista [Genoa 1981] 65ffGoogle Scholar.). The ‘bumper’ notes are to remind that most of a narration’s work is done between thelines‖

2. Veyne, P., Writing History (Manchester 1984) 83Google Scholar. For what have been called ‘the basic works’ in the re-rhetoricization of historiography, see Cameron, A. (ed.) History as Text (London 1989)Google Scholar Introduction 1 n.1. My own favourite remains White, H., ‘The Fictions of Factual Representation’ in Fletcher, A. (ed.), The Literature of Fact (New York 1976) 21ffGoogle Scholar.

3. Henderson, olim.

4. Cf. Hodge, R. and Kress, G., Social Semiotics (Cambridge 1988) 147ffGoogle Scholar, on ‘the’ (tribal) ‘word’ as ‘the accepted truth, the official version of reality … a statement which has the absolute modal power it has because it is deprived of its transformational history, of the process by which it came into existence, and the different versions which have been trimmed and reworked into their place in the “word”.’ In the sense in which history-writing can symbolically/semiotically bind together a complex society(‘s ideology), can stand-in as marking the regret for ‘lost’ integrity, it functions as ‘the word’; but it is easy to see that this medium for the ‘social definition of the real’ must precisely track down its own precarious formation, attack its own vicissitudes and viciousnesses: already in their first chapter Annals indissolubly associate the fraud and deception suavely tooled into the control of society through violence done to language with the falsification and disfigurement of its historiography. ‘Tacitus’ is not silent on the doublebind knotted in his writing, though as with other declamatory writers, most obviously Juvenal, readers are ill-advised to search his work for the editorial comment, the emotional outburst, the forced interpretation which betrays the historian’s true-sincere-inner-underlying-deep ‘View’, so do not expect to catch him with his rhetorical trousers down, his work is ironized beyond anything so crude. (Luce, T.J., ‘Tacitus’ Conception of Historical Change: The Problem of Discovering the Historian’s Opinions’ in Moxon, I.S., Smart, J.D. and Woodman, A.J. [edd.], Past Perspectives. Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writing [Cambridge 1986] 143ffGoogle Scholar., carefully works some way toward this view).

5. Classen, C.J., ‘Tacitus — Historian Between Republic and Principate’, Mnemosyne 41 (1988) 116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. So 1.4 nihil usquam prisci et integri moris proclaims the destruction of the traditional coding that powered meaning through ‘moral’ norming.

7. See the ‘debate’ in Mitchell, W.J.T. (ed.), The Politics of Interpretation (Chicago 1982/3)Google Scholar, esp. E.W. Said, ‘Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies and Community’, 7ff. The important negative side of (esp. prestige) language — the barriers to versions of reality it is mobilized to occlude and disallow and the selective denial of the wielding of the power dispensed with it — is one of Tacituś’ main subjects (cf. Pêcheux, M., Language, Semantics and Ideology [London 1982]CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 9ff.). Cf. Plass, P., Wit and the Writing of History. The Rhetoric of Historiography in Imperial Rome (Madison 1988) 12Google Scholar, who connects the language of politics with the ‘politics of language’.

8. Hodge and Kress (above n.4) 151: ‘Doublethink is the general condition of knowing that a statement is both true and not true, both true to experience and true to “the word”, to the social definition of reality.’ Tacitus, like Orwell, so frames his represented world with pejoration that the fragmentation of any ‘socially validated truth’ is very soon realised for any reader.

9. Goodyear, F.R.D., The Annals of Tacitus. Volume 1 (Annals 1.1 -54) (Cambridge 1972) 91Google Scholar on Ann. 1.1.1, Urbem Romam.

10. ‘Bad’ then, as of, say, Stevie Wonder. (As we could put it: polukaisariē ouk agathon … (‘ “Caesar” in the plural, not a good idea’, Plut. Ant. 81.)

11. Plass (above n.7) reached me when I could only insert a few late references to his work into my notes: his project has to be the most important, revolutionary, formulation of the logic of early Imperial Discourse at Rome.

12. This is the title awarded Tacitus by Syme (above n.1) passim, e.g. 503: ‘Contemporary events ought to have pulled a man back to the theme and the manner of the consular historian.’ For elitist ‘anti-language’ cf. Hodge and Kress (above n.4) 86ff. (Syme [above n.1] 340ff. is the canonical description of Tacitean ‘Style’.)

13. This by way of a counterblast to such anaemia as Goodyear (above n.9) 89, ‘The city of Rome is given pride of place … This probably reflects only tradition and nostalgia.’ That ‘only’ … (See Zaffagno [above n.1] 54ff.) Syme (above n.1, 564f.) easily clears Tacitus of simpering, easy, nostalgia (cf. 3.55 for an editorial).

14. For example, the Histories had started from 1st. Jan 69 c.e. and not from the decease of (non-deified) Nero. Only 4.1, C. Asinio C. Antistio coss nanus Tiberio annus points us half-way to what might have been (Syme [above n.1] 90 and n.2).

15. The annalistic form was traditionally associated with the republican past, and Tacitus wanted to evoke that past, if only to deny its application to the present … In rejecting traditional annalistic history, Tacitus rejects also an interpretation of history’ (J. Ginsberg, , Tradition and Theme in the Annals of Tacitus [New York 1981] 100Google Scholar). ‘The quality that sets him apart from other Roman historians is his ability, while living within, and actively serving, the Principate, to look at the history of the past hundred years with the eye of a Republican writer’ (R.H. Martin, , Tacitus [London 1981] 234Google Scholar). Tacitus is, however, not just out to ‘deny’ — his work unpicks the story it painstakingly assembles and definitively weaves together, the story of a take-over and hi-jacking of a language and a culture. And Tacitus remains the ‘Republican writer’, uellet nollet, precisely because he memorialises what ‘succeeded’ the Republic.

16. In what ranks among the most important recent initiatives, Woodman, A.J., Rhetoric in Classical Historiography. Four Studies (Beckenham, Kent 1988) 191Google Scholar n.1, should not, for a moment, allow himself to belittle the ‘hexad’ hypothesis as ‘speculation’. Syme (above n.1), 263ff. and Appendix 35 ‘The Total of Books’, produced argumentation. Woodman’s studies of Tacitean inuentio are marshalled in support of a reading in terms of ‘literary entertainment’ within the framework of ‘rhetorical epideixis’. All he discovers about the latitude of imaginative resourcefulness allowed to and expected of ancient historians is fair comment on Tacitus’ means — and a useful rebuke to the grip upon Tacitean scholarship of a dull (pre-re-rhetoricized) piety toward historical veracity — but in my view the end in sight, the point of the enterprise, is lost — at any rate, deferred. In particular, readers of Imperial History, history written under autocracy about autocracy, must realise that they have themselves a role in the poetics of suspicion: they should be too sophisticated to chase a hint and too alert to be content with any ‘narrative’ presentation — and they should be sufficiently politically enthusiastic to jump to conclusions, to follow their imagination with their author beyond what can be documented. For example, Goodyear (above n.9, 127f.) simply missed his author when he wrote, against Syme and other contemporaries, ‘Here, as elsewhere in T., “veiled contemporary allusions” exist only as figments of modern scholarship.’ The phrase he highlighted would serve as a fine gloss on ‘Writing’ in general and on Tacitean history in particular, for the writer who thematizes the specific materialities of the process of ‘legitimation’ that has fashioned his own cosmos cannot extricate a word of his text from the question of its own partialities and commitments. To accept a linguistic usage without protest or demur is to assimilate it as normal and to subscribe to its legitimacy — and so its legitimation. An author’s historical record is an active participation in the meaningfulness of the present and shaping of the future. It documents the committed existence of a point of view and may at any time provoke or incite others to join it. (Cf. Martin, R.H., ‘Tacitus and his Predecessors’ in Dorey, T.A. [ed.] Tacitus [London 1969] 141Google Scholar: ‘For him writing was not a substitute for politics … but an extension of it.’) There can be no greater initial error than to receive Tacitus as if he were a 1st Century writer: the world he signifies is that of Trajan and, doubtless, Hadrian. A world that writes itself by writing of a past from which the present is allegedly ‘hygienically sealed’ by (double) assassination and dynastic fall. If the end of the Flavians was inaugurated in ‘amnesty’, this only put what preceded into an ‘oblivion’ that left it free to ‘veil contemporary allusion’. ‘To write a “history of the present” is … to call the present into question by problematizing its self-evident truths, by “reversing” its accepted modes of analysis and by constructing a counter-history which mocks and rocks the complacencies of the status quo’ (Bannet, E. T.Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent. Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan [London 1989] 100Google Scholar, discussing Foucault). In any case, the Imperial History that can be written must be contentious, fall short of absolute authority. If only to demonstrate that authority can never be absolute, that debate must persist. What is in the public domain can only be the tip of an iceberg. Be it Palatium, Kremlin, White-hall or -House, the key manoeuvres ‘behind the scenes’ which award the decisive meanings to public dealings are not such that they can be ‘discovered’. Any surmise, any version must be on the level of gossip, rumour, scandal — of, precisely, the ‘an-ec-dote’: not an account at all, in reality, but a(nother) manoeuvre. If Imperial History is necessarily Secret History in essence (Dio 53.19.1; cf. Fornara, C.W., The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome [Berkeley/Los Angeles 1983] 89Google Scholar, for 27 b.c.e. as watershed), then an account of it must tell of our and its exclusion from its ‘recovery’ as the condition of its possibility. But meantime it must lure us into joining in with the ‘speculation’ on pain of acknowledging our (insufferable) naiveté We must ‘know’ before we start that politics consists largely in the contestation of any fundamental positivity within history, the thrust that constitutes a politics of the past is based on a revisionist denial that History can have a mode of self-entire reality. A fortiori, the same goes for history(-writing). Only a(n encomiastic) Imperial History working in the interests of absolutism can (wish to) suppose anything else … Republicans or Democrats, so to say, we are all pledged to resist any such dereliction of civic difference. On the other hand, while consultation and debate must remain our model for the practice of History, Tacitus is with us to rub our noses in the insufferably gauche innocence with which we affect to perceive our freedom to think free of dominatio. As F.M. Ahl has (per impossibile) ‘shown’ in several recent studies, even the official self-image(s) of rhetoric (education, duty, entertainment, culture … ) take(s) the political turn as, nevertheless, axiomatic. (See esp. ‘The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome’, AJP 105 [1984] 174fGoogle Scholar., and ‘The Rider and his Horse: Politics and Power in Roman Poetry from Horace to Statius’, ANRW 2.32.1 [1984] 40ff.)Google Scholar It would be a strangely alienated, over-restricted sense of ‘politics’ and so a very particular brand of politics, the not-at-all-strange politics of the disavowal of power, which could detach the post-classical declamatio and recitatio from the production of Imperial subjects.

17. Of Books 11–16, only 14 begins with a consular year: and that is to become but the opportunity to ring 14 between matricide and the uxoricide it spawns (with rebellion in the Amazonian Fens to fill the sandwich; cf. Roberts, M., ‘The Revolt of Boudicca [Tacitus, Anncds 14.29–39] and the Assertion of Libertas in Neronian Rome’, AJP 109 [1988] 118ff)Google Scholar. Annalistic form becomes the ground against which Tacitus can pattern all manner of Imperial-Historical figures. (E.g. Germanicus leads off in all the years he is alive. In Book 12, Agrippina dominates the starts of each of the six years: Classen [above n.5] 105. See Ginsburg [above n.15] passim) On the other hand the text shuns the new contraption of Imperial Virtues-speak, except for send-up and stigma (Syme [above n.1] Appendix 66).

18. To take one example of a Tacitean shock of defamiliarization, cf. 1.8, legata non ultra ciuilem modum nisi quod… (With a following list of vast sums of ‘largesse royal as royal can be’ to swell the rest of the damning itemization into a self-ruining sentence). See Plass (above n.7) 58ff. on the Tacitean para prosdokian.

19. See Vielberg, M., Pflichten, Werte, Ideale. Eine Untersuchung zu den Wertvorstellungen des Tacitus, Hermes Einzelschr. 52 (1987) 79ffGoogle Scholar., for thorough investigation of adulatio in Tacitus. But this is the condition that his text contests, the condition of its own possibility: to mean the word adulatio in the world of Imperial History …

20. Fastiditus, a hapax in Annals, helps draw our eyes to the phrase.

21. In 1.4, imminentis dominos plays a scary version with the same counters, ‘the slave-drivers hulking over us’ are ‘our next ruler(s)’. On dominatio, a term noone can domesticate even for 2nd century c.e. ‘moderates’, cf. Benario, H.W., An Introduction to Tacitus (Georgia 1975) 134ffGoogle Scholar.; Zaffagno (above n.1) 37ff.

22. See Wordsworth, A., ‘Derrida and Foucaulf. Writing the History of Historicity’ in Attridge, D., Bennington, G. and Young, R. (edd.), Post-Structuralism and the Question of History (Cambridge 1987) 116ffGoogle Scholar. Just one example here: 1.7, senatus milesque et populus to swear the oath, for ‘SPQR’ (cf. populus et senatus et miles to witness Messalina’s ‘bigamy’, 11.30). The permanent intrusion of the military is, we could say, the legacy of the Histories.

23. This could be what is at stake, namely the entire point and experience of reading Tacitus, in the contestation of such scholastic-seeming arcana as ‘the theory of hexads’. The view that this ‘has not appreciably advanced our knowledge of Tacitus’ and (so) ‘may well be discarded. Vile damnum’ with Goodyear, F.R.D.Tacitus (Oxford 1970) 18Google Scholar, amounts in this sense to a failure to read Tacitus — a safe pedantry a Tacitean senator could be proud of. Unless we credit the historian with a project in which ‘knowledge’ is problematized and at risk in the representation, we can learn nothing from his writing. The hold that Syme has held over his readers arises precisely from his ‘collegial’ engagement with the historian in the struggle to analyse the workings of power, its power to control meaning: the reason why Tacitus’ texts are alive is that the analysis of politics is itself caught up in politics, for the politics of rhetoric and the rhetoric of politics fight it out, through to the death. Only a reader who chooses/is obliged not to know that ‘Cold War’ is the condition of our existence can write as if they or we can ‘know’ what, if anything, can take its place (beyond more exercises in semantic trading with and neologist invention deriving from dominatio, that is … ). The ‘general reader’ of Tacitus in the West has always acknowledged the political dynamism of these writings as their raison d’être. They drive us to ‘know’ our supine seruitium. (What, then, are [we to think of] the politics of our scholar rhetoric?)

24. This from the ‘Advertisement’ for a start: ‘The history of ancient nations, the private life of their citizens, the thoughts and beliefs of their writers have been subjected to a profounder analysis.’ Exactly the programme of language as mastery, in the language of mastery. The World of Words.

25. The two ‘deaths’ are carefully contrapuntal, as the classic study by Klingner, F., ‘Beobachtungen über Sprache und Stil des Tacitus am Anfang des 13. Annalenbuches’, Hermes 83 (1955) 187ffGoogle Scholar., demonstrates: esp. ignaro Nerone ∼ inuito principe, mors paratur ∼ ad mortem agitur, per dolum Agrippinae ∼ iurgiis aduersus Agrippinam, swift toxin in the limelight inter epulas ∼ drawn-out unspecific presumed extinction aspera custodia et necessitate extrema, a contrast with Nero ∼ a strong tally between their vices, the long-dismissed cipher ∼ the keyfigure in the struggle with Messalina … (cf. Martin [above n.15] 228). For Tacitean techniques of ‘Spannung’ to rip apart settled confirmation of expectations, monological reception, authoritative finality, see Vielberg (above n.19) 25ff. and Plass (above n.7) 26ff.

26. Itself a show-piece out to show in a sop return to Republican names a political return. (Exposed by Tacitus’ sardonic ‘note’ on poverty-stricken Messalla’s ‘honouring’ with an annual stipend as reward for his pedigree alone — ‘so he could avoid harming people to get by’, 13.34.)

27. Cf. Keitel, E., ‘Tacitus on the Deaths of Tiberius and Claudius’, Hermes 109 (1981) 214Google Scholar.

28. Gide, quoted by Kellman, S.G., The Self-Begetting Novel (London 1980) 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. This is itself one of the severe tests set for Latinity by the Imperial take-over of the language: excessus, diuus, Augustus are all key terms in the legitimization of the dynastic system —models of nomenclature as veil, power passing itself off in euphemism. (For excessus as imperial propaganda, cf. Goodyear [above n.9] on 1.5).

30. Set aside ‘for his old age’ in Hist. 1.1. But does anyone live that long? Is(n’t) this a literary promise in the long line from (e.g.) Prop. 2.10’s nondum?

31. Cf. sed praefulgebant Cassius atque Brutus eo ipso quod effigies eorum non uisebantur (‘Still. Brutus and Cassius put the rest in the shade — precisely because their busts were the ones that mere eyes couldn’t see’, 3.76). The conceited ‘conceit’ of this proposition figures the perspective of the whole work.

32. So Plass (above n.7) 23.

33. See. Mehlman, J., Revolution and Repetition. Marx/Hugo/Balzac (Berkeley/Los Angeles 1977)Google Scholarpassim. Cf. E.W. Said, ‘On Repetition’ in Fletcher (above n.2) 158: ‘Probably repetition is bound to move from immediate regrouping of experience to a more and more mediated reshaping and re-disposition of it, in which the disparity between one version and its repetition increases, since repetition cannot long escape the ironies it bears within it.’

34. See Plass (above n.7)passim and esp. 15ff., ‘Ludibrium and Political Wit’, for his exploration of all this. His insistence (16) that ludibrium fuses together physical abuse/verbal quip/mockery/absurdity/scandalous outrage is the single most important recent insight into Tacitean poetics. Cf. ib. 121f. for the futility of Tacitus’ world of ‘in-difference’. The stagey outbursts of the speeches we sample at Neronian Rome are the apogee of Imperial Discourse, they infect both cubiculum and forum.

35. Caligula is Agrippina’s paruulus (Aeneas) when we come in (1.40).

36. The opening of Sallust’s Histories is drafted in to re-double the intertextuality, a principio … urbis (‘from the beginning of the city’, 1.8). See Zaffagno (above n.1) 44ff.

37. Satirized in its revisionary repetition as (faint) praise at 1.9, principis nomine. Cf. 1.37, nomine principis (For forged letters … ), etc.

38. As in Nerua Caesar res olim dissociabilis miscuerit, principatum ac libertatem (‘Nerva mixed those original anti-bodies, tyranny and freedom’, Agr. 3, a classic Tacitean oxymoron, but in encomiastic vein, to mark Nerva a ‘success’ where Tiberius and Galba failed; cf. Shotter, D.C.A., ‘Principatus ac Libertas’, Anc. Soc. 9 [1978] 235ffGoogle Scholar.). Classicists have traditionally written libertas down — at best it had only spelled the privileges of aristocratic despotism. (Read: oligarchic despotism — for ‘aristocracy’ is another of those labels whose use feeds on complicity … ) In this regard, Tacitus marks the invention of libertas senatoria (13.49), a ‘concept’ that ‘begins to be formed only when it is threatened by a despotic emperor’ (Martin [above n.15] 187; cf. 260 n.37). But ask (rhetorically) what culture has ever been exempt from such a restriction on the meaning of ‘freedom’ … And, at the same time, see ‘Freedom’ as affectivity, the indispensable cry of the ‘outsider’ which — like Truth — corrosively belittles any and all of its claimed instantiations, never securely hitched onto any dispensation or ‘movement’ but always the principle of movement. To take an example, 1.75, a ‘passage … perhaps more revealing than’ its author ‘intended it to be’. ‘After mentioning Tiberius’ attendance at judicial sittings of the senate, Tacitus adds that he “sat in” on the praetor’s court, where his presence frequently acted as a safeguard against the attempts of the powerful to influence the verdict. According to Tacitus this “aided truth and justice, but destroyed freedom”. “Freedom” to pervert the course of justice! But, of course, that had been the practice and prerogative of the republican aristocrat’ (Martin ib. 119f.; cf.Syme [above n.1] 561,‘force and content had changed’ … ). Consider, rather, how the practice of various freedoms in history fights to clarify the utter incompatibility of despotism with ‘the course of justice’. It is the tyrant’s claim — his platform — to ‘save’justice from ‘freedom to pervert’ its course. Oligarchic ‘justice’ has to be first base — and which of us has learned to get further? (So Martin in Dorey [above n. 16] 141, ‘Tacitus extended to the utmost such libertas as was still available to him’. Cf. Roberts [above n.17] 127ff.) The contradictions of life at the interface of power reach only so far: all those outside the ring are only potentially visible to Imperial history. In the displayed sententia, dum ueritati consulitur, libertas corrumpebatur (‘Truth got help, Freedom harm’, 1.75), the verbal/conceptual tension between consul-o and libertas gives the reader pause to explore this political minefield. (For studies of libertas/seruitium, cf. esp. Vielberg [above n.19] 100ff. and 113ff).

39. The narrative opening at Romae mere in seruitium consules… (‘Now for Rome rushing Head of State-first into slavery’, 1.7) offers a pair of traditional, alliterative and mock-etymological opposites as model for the polarity between consulate and zero degree liberty. (For Romalruo, cf. MacLeod, C.W., ‘Horace and the Sibyl (Epode 16.2)’, CQ 29 [1979] 220f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar) At once, the consules lead the oath of allegiance, nam Tiberius cuncta per consules incipiebat tamquam uetere re publico el ambiguus imperandi (‘Tiberius was getting the consuls to get the whole show on the road, as if in a Republican time-warp, as if he might or might not be sure about the Empire’). But at this very moment he called the senate’s tune — with a ‘tribunician’ edictum to summon the ‘debate’, a very modest little number: uerba edictifuere pauca et sensu permodesto (‘The words of the proclamation were few and their meanings extremely polite’) — while taking care first to take High Command of the armies, with watchword (signum), bodyguard, and correspondence, ut imperator… tamquam adepto principatu… nusquam cunctabundus nisi cum in senatu loqueretur (‘as Emperor … as if the throne was his … hesitation reserved for senatorial debate, for words’). Midst all the sarcasm, we may miss the contradiction within the ‘words’ of the edict: de honoribus parentis consulturum, neque abscedere a corpore idque unum ex publicis muneribus usurpare (‘I shall consult you about giving my father his due. I don’t release his body. That’s the only state business I monopolize’). It is true that ‘on the very rare occasions when there was need’ (n.b. the impersonal construction to disavow any potential for difference) ‘for a meeting during the absence of both consuls and praetors, the tribunes would act … ’ by convoking the senate. And it became ‘true’ through uncontested practice that ‘tribunicia potestas, bestowed upon emperors and a few others, conferred the same right of summons, but would seem to have been invoked seldom’. But it is to accept Imperial History in despite of its Consular Muse to paraphrase Tacitus as saying ‘It was a mark of Tiberius’ caution that he chose to convene the senate by this means on Augustus’ death in 14’ (Talbert, R.J.A., The Senate of Imperial Rome [Princeton, N.J. 1984] 186fGoogle Scholar.). There was nothing normal, there was no codification of the moves that constituted ‘succession’ in 14 c.e. Tiberius was making (up) the precedents as he went: inventing Tradition, like any holder of power, however ‘conservative’ they may call or regard themselves. (‘Certain machinery clearly had to be kept in motion, and Tiberius was clearly the man to do it’ comments Miller, N.P., Tacitus: Annals Book 1 [London 1959]Google Scholar, on 1.7.5: echoing Imperial History’s appeal to transparent normalisation — the tyrant’s ‘What else?’ — Goodyear [above n.9, esp. 171 nn. and 173] keeps reminding himself and us of this — to little effect.) Imperial Biography, eager to proceed toward agency, is no doubt bound to sink into smoothing away the political frame of events, e.g. ‘By the time the first Princeps died in A.D. 14, it had been established that the provinces … ’ (Griffin, M.T., Nero. The End of a Dynasty [London 1984] 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar;cf. ib. 24, ‘the right to stand for office before the legal age, an exemption by now traditional for princes of the ruling house’ [on 23 c.e.] … ). For instance, when Nero transumed Claudius, it was the second such occasion and last, for the Annals, of five possible ascensions: ‘When did formulae become “established”?’ is one question, then — on the path to asking: ‘For whom?’. ‘It was more than a century before the senatorial class as a whole became reconciled to loss of power … The history of the emperors from Augustus to Nero (and even later) is rather the propaganda of the victims that the victors’: sic, Warmington, B.H., Nero: Reality and Legend (London 1969) 1Google Scholar. (But which ‘century’? Did it end with Tacitus? Did it include him?) Keitel, E., ‘Principate and Civil War in the Annals of Tacitus’, AJP 105 (1984) 325Google Scholar, shows us the way: Tacitus ‘points to the essential instability of such a regime which is constantly in danger of perishing by the same violent means through which it rose to power’. (We could compare the force of Juv. 4, where, ludibriously enough, a freak intervention from a cerdo produced the assassination of Domitian which the Lamiae of the ‘nobility’ could never find among the Crispinuses of the consilium.)

40. So Plass (above n.7) 144 n.29 (refs.); see ib. 145 n.33 for refs. to Tacitus’ explicit ‘corrections’ that replace one word by another; ib. 50ff. for the range of ‘unmasking’ rhetorical structures which destroy any steadiness in the reader’s trajectory.

41. See Keitel (above n.39) 312f. for the seamlessness through time of bribery, violence and deceit in the pursuit of power as the thrust of 1.1 -10.

42. Cf. Hodge and Kress (above n.4) 204ff., ‘Transformations of Love and Power: The Social Meaning of Narrative’. Between them, the antithetical discussion of genealogical narrative by Tobin, P.D., Time and the Novel The Genealogical Imperative (Princeton, N.J. 1978)Google Scholar, and Beizer, J.L., Family Plots. Balzac’s Narrative Generations (New Haven, Conn. 1986)Google Scholar, tear the domain ‘in pieces’.

43. A few examples below: but this is the definitive characteristic of the work as a whole.

44. 14.39, ‘Polyclitus’, ‘Fame at last’, in Britain: ‘He made the aliens grin — in them libertas still blazed away, they hadn’t yet made the acquaintance of freedperson power. What in fact really fazed them was this: a general, an army, could murder a major war, then kowtow to lumps of slavery’ (seruitiis. The wor[l]d confector here obliges a reader to take notice).

45. 12.53, Pallas — on the unsuccessful proposal of a Cornelius Scipio, of all the degenerates (as we must read between the annalistic lines) … The incoming consul and future die-hard Barea Soranus (or, v.v., [P. Clodius] Soranus Barea: just in time to die in our text, 16.33) has just voted him the mockery of ‘praetorian insignia’, signs of vacuity that evacuate sense from Roman Order, and the largest golden handshake from the senate on record — for bringing to imperial attention the issue of female cohabitation with slaves. The ‘servile’ Pallas (named for the Arcadian Prince) is pre-cast as lover of the empress (Weaver, P.R.C., Familia Caesaris [Cambridge 1972] 165)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Livia was doubly sealed off for Myth from her Origin — adopted from the gens Claudia by the gens Livia and in the outcome re-adopted by the gens lulia and re-codified as Augusta (1.8,5.1,6.51).

47. Hear history in the names: Bruto el Cassio caesis nulla iam publico arma … Caesar, 1.2, with ‘Brutus’ as the terminus of the Res publico at both ends (L Brutus, 1.1) and the rippling assimilation of Cassio/caesis/Caesar.

48. 1.3: imperatoriis nominibus auxit sets the verb’s concreteness in hollow tension with the noun. In the ‘adjective’ is named the noun which of all imperial nouns centres Imperial History, as it sardonically cheapens from a founding act of nomination to a counter-balance with ‘twin consulates’ in the semiotics of succession.

49. Something of the same effect in Phaedrus’ anecdote about Princeps Tibicen (5.7): an anecdote I can’t spoil about the popularity of imperial anecdotes — the slave-name, the stage-name, the imperial name jumbled into one carnival celebration of the role-playing that moderates ‘One/Many’ relations: derision at the throne palmed off — for all to see — as solidary scapegoating of the outcast, the Acteur-roi. The alibi: humour.

50. Inspected in detail at 3.56 — ‘a uocabulum for the Highest on High to obviate the nomen “king” or “dictator” but outshine other shares in power by some appellatio’ …

51. Julia¹, Julia² (4.71), Iuniae Lepida-Caluina-Silana, Agrippina Maior, Drusilla and Julia¹ (14.63), Domitia Lepida and Domitia, Messalina, Julia⁴ (13.32) etc. etc. (These are all before Nero’s reign.)

52. Leeman, A.D., ‘Structure and Meaning in the Prologues of Tacitus’, YCS 23 (1973) 191Google Scholar.

53. Maius-tas : minuisset. For a review of the Neronian record see Baldwin, B., ‘Executions, Trials, and Punishments in the Reign of Nero’, PP22 (1967) 425ffGoogle Scholar.

54. This is why we should as the citizens we are reject the dispassion of premature claims to judge this issue — e.g. ‘We cannot avoid the conclusion that in his account of the two maiestas cases in A.D. 14 Tacitus has so shaped and coloured the description by his own view of later events as to lose all claim to historical objectivity’ (Walker, B., The Annals of Tacitus. A Study in the Writing of History [Manchester 1952] 91Google Scholar: he is [ib. 195f.] awarded a ‘second truth’, ‘departures from the truth of fact… made not perversely, through malice or carelessness, indeed not consciously at all’). Better to see Tacitus ‘as a reinterpretation of the past, coloured and animated by a great artist’s experience of the present’ (ib. 257). Or rather, Tacitus introduces a debate that touches the basis of our liberties, implicating us in the difficulties of ciuitas: is a head-count of victims, is the geniality of the tyrant, is ‘the truth of fact’ (not) a plausible — pragmatic — challenge to your convictions and to your oratorical powers? The defence of Freedom ( — Of What, of what exactly? Of a slogan? Of naiveté? Of subjectivity? — ) is just this, the uphill struggle with our own ‘objectivity’? What are the politics of interpretation that argues ‘Again and again emperors refuse to admit an unambiguous application of maiestas law’ (Wallace- Hadrill, A, ‘Ciuilis Princeps. Between Citizen and King’, JRS 72 [1982] 38Google Scholar: the key contribution on the subject)? Should we, does Tacitus, admit maiestas as ‘law’? Is arbitrary — so constitutively ambiguous — violence publicly negotiated as the power to name ‘treason’ not definitive of despotism? (What state could reliquish such power over meaning? Can we conceive it?) Just as the law is the place where the exercise of interpretation is contested and vindicated, where language should be pressed into service of a rational deliberateness,-so it is necessarily the site for the escape, release and dance of language which will not be repressed, where language is on trial, and intent, or meaning, skews under the intense scrutiny of a court, plunges into unfathomable dissemination: here, the Almighty Emperor’s say-so is the bottom line of a verdict applied to reported witticisms, jokes, chance remarks, malevolent excerpts, language on the loose, off the record, fictional or forged, all of it re-cited, perhaps for the first time, any of it, maybe, inconsiderable, or posing as such, or unforgivable — unforgivable, that is, by the court, and so suitable for imperial mercy or loftiness, unless that is anticipated … (Keitel [above n.39] 32If. shows how delation primes Roman ‘stasis’). The Law in Tacitus is a mockery of law and so a mockery, or pathology, of language because it is the central institution for the formalization in public, from day to day, of the boundaries of ‘normality’. (E.g. 4.28, another ‘Euthyphro’ indicts a father — traditional indictment of patriarchal order. By 15.57, Lucan is incriminating his mother in the plot, while others point to their best friends; cf. Keitel ib. 323ff.) Plass (above n.7, 65ff.) eloquently reviews the workings of imperial caprice upon judicial rules and procedures.

55. It will return in displaced and inverted form as the tristi adrogantia of the freedman Pallas, whose pretentious mock-retirement from office leads him to an Imperial joke à la Crispus in 1.6, as ‘he pledges himself for life to the Official Secrets Act, his accounts (rationes) with the Republic officially declared — by himself — to balance’. Adroganti makes a schizoid rejoinder to ad rogum (cf. the preceding exchange interrogate… respondit). The self-estranging language makes of moderatio a bracketed citation and remisit a doubly-bracketed citation, driving wedges between word and sense. (As if a despot’s ‘control’ could really qualify as ‘restraint’, let alone ‘moderateness’, or ‘modesty’, and as if an emperor ever actually relaxes his hold on his subjects — when he has just obliged a senator to reply [spontaneously] that he had spoken his proposal spontaneously … We learn here to doublethink adrogantia saeuitiaque for Tiberius’ modestia; cf. 1 10–11, etc. Goodyear [above n.9, 149f.] furnishes a most effective note on this; cf. Vielberg [above n. 19] 134ff. Classen [above n.5,95f.] shows how different moderatio becomes in the apologetic/encomiastic frame of Agr). For this and other Tacitean oxymora see Plass (above n.7) 45ff.

56. The Tacitean -que in remisit Caesar … populumque edicto monuit… challenges readers to align the coordinated acts — if they can … The edict does instantiate moderatio, as ‘control’, but it undoes remisit as token politesse.

57. Miller (above n.39) ad loc.

58. Goodyear (above n.9) on 1.10, the second barrel of the note on 1.8 die funeris, where another ‘new paragraph’ is marked to coincide with the conclusion of a chronotope. The note at ib. 169f. expertly sums up the problems of and the ‘run’ through 1.11–12 and the farcical coloration of 1.1–14 is well summarised at ib. 27f.

59. N.P. Miller, ‘Style and Content in Tacitus’ in Dorey (above n.16) 106, on these final, self-reflexive, words of the Contras. Cf. Wankenne, J., ‘Le Portrait d’Auguste d’après Tacite (Annates 1.9–10)’, LEC 45 (1977) 33ffGoogle Scholar.

60. Cf. Goodyear (above n.9) 170 n.2.

61. Varie here, as before in 1.4, uarüs rumoribus differebant and esp. 1.9 (above) is a fine modifier of the context, pressuring the reader to inspect a differentiated performance as such, but refusing to specify, evaluate or limit the differentiation. We are, like the narrator, on our own.

62. Swelling from genuflection in 1.11, ad genua ipsius manus tendere, to prostration in 1.12, ad infimas obtestationes procumbente. By 1.13 the attempt to supplicate Tiberius, cum deprecandi causa … Tiberii genua aduolueretur, proved near-fatal. (The rugby-tackled Emperor took a dive.)

63. ‘Not so much a debate as a ceremony’ (Syme, R., ‘History or Biography: The Case of Tiberius Caesar’, Historia 23 [1974] 486Google Scholar): noone knows their lines, everyone fluffs, dries, freezes, blurts, blows it — they are willing but haven’t seen the script. The ritualization of the senate is the first political scenario to involve us. Already, speaking out is incorporated within the game of servile adulation, e.g. 1.8 (cf. Plass [above n.7] 118f.). ‘Once rediscovered, Tacitus compelled the attention of many of the best scholars and thinkers’ (an interesting opposition, this, in a very particular order … ?) ‘of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He interested them not only because of his style and theme, but also because his views (real or supposed) seemed applicable to contemporary politics and statecraft. This latter interest faded long ago, but a basic dilemma remains in studying Tacitus, a consummate stylist and rhetorician who is also a major historian. To what extent is his content separable from his style?’ (Goodyear, F.R.D., ‘History and Biography’ in Kenney, E.J. and Clausen, W.V. [edd.] The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, II: Latin Literature [Cambridge 1982] 643Google Scholar). The formalism touted here marks a staggering dereliction.

64. Walker (above n.54) 10.

65. Cf. Agrippina’s last chance, ‘the only antidote to the plot on her was if it wasn’t understood … ’, 14.6.

66. Martin (above n.15, 163) has to be wrong to suggest that ‘we should not look for — for we shall not find — a hexadic structure or a Tiberian pattern in the Neronian books of the Annals’. These books see to it that we must look and that we cannot fail to ‘find’ both of these. To find their difference through the similarity of their repetition.

67. See 14.48 as the return of 1.72 with Ginsburg, J., ‘Speech and Allusion in Tacitus, Annals 3.49–51 and 14.48–49’, AJP 107 (1986) 533ff.Google Scholar; cf. Bradley, K. R., ‘Tum primum reuocata ea lex’, AJP 94 (1973) 172ffGoogle Scholar.

68. See Goodyear (above n.9) 125f. for the main parallels (cf. Walker [above n.54] 70 and n.1), the main theories and bibliography (esp. Martin, R.H., ‘Tacitus and the Death of Augustus’, CQ 5 [1955] 123ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.).

69. Cf. Goodyear (above n.9) 126 n.2.

70. Livia noverca to Lucius and Gaius Caesares, 1.3; to Agrippa Postumus, 1.10; to Agrippina, 1 33. For nouercalibus odiis cf. 1.6, 12.2 (Walker [above n.54] 70).

71. See Livy 1.41; Charlesworth, M.P., ‘Livia and Tanaquil’, CR 41 (1927) 55fGoogle Scholar.

72. The son born after his father’s death becomes the ‘first-killed’ after his grandfather’s death: the name Postumus makes him conceptually pre-destined primum facinus noui principatus, 1.6, and pre-destined to suffer repetition (2.39f. for the False Agrippa Postumus — seen to by Crispus again, with Allen, W. Jr., ‘The Death of Agrippa Postumus’, TAPA 78 [1947] 131 ffGoogle Scholar.). Nero and his avatar Postumus alike cannot simply die.

73. E.g. 4.8ff., the murder of Tiberius’ son Drusus by Sejanus, rector iuueni, 1.24, would foreshadow Seneca’s and Burrus’ share in murdering Britannicus. (They are Nero’s rectores imperatoriae iuuentutis, 13.2.)

74. A reminder that the simplicity/complexity of Tacitus’ patterning of ‘Succession’ is lost with the starts of Gaius and Claudius. For the contrast of Claudius’ and Tiberius’ deaths , cf. Keitel (above n.27) 206f.

75. I here paraphrase Plin. Nat. Hist. 7.45f.

76. ‘The people looked to the house of Germanicus for deliverance, and they found Nero’ (Walker [above n.54] 128). For Gaius cf. 6.46, for Nero cf. 11.12 etc. etc. For Agrippina as the sole daughter/sister/wife/mother of Emperors, cf. 12.42: she was born in Tiberius’ first year; Nero was born in Gaius’ … The pendant to Book 4, the notice of Agrippina’s marriage (4.75), clips the Annals tightly together. (So now Shotter, D.C.A., Tacitus Annals 4 [Warminster 1989]Google Scholarad loc.) The assimilation of Agrippina Maior, and her husband Germanicus, to their prequel Agrippina Augusta is a political objective of Nero’s mother, even at the physiognomic level (Wood, S. ‘Memoriae Agrippinae: Agrippina the Elder in Julio-Claudian Art and Propaganda’, AJA 92 [1988] 409ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.).

77. So e.g. Goodyear (above n.9) 36. For Nouerca, cf. Watson, P., ‘A Fistful of Leeches or Stepmotherly Ingenuity’ in Hardie, P. and Whitby, M. (edd.), Homo Viator. Classical Essays for John Bramble (Bristol 1987)Google Scholar esp. 70 (and n.8) on a ‘real’ (sc. endoxal, demonized, framed) case. (A collection in Gray-Fow, M.J.G., ‘The Wicked Stepmother in Roman Literature and History: An Evaluation’, Latomus 47 [1988] 741Google Scholar ff.)

78. So Martin (above n.15) 188.

79. See Goodyear (above n.9) on 1.4.

80. For acute exploration of the bodily language of deadly intimacy in Tacitus see Betensky, A., ‘Neronian Style, Tacitean Content: The Use of Ambiguous Confrontations in the Annals’, Latomus 37 (1978) 419ffGoogle Scholar.

81. The elimination of Germanicus’ son Drusus by Macro just before the death of Agrippina is another ‘variation’, 6.23, 25.

82. Dunkle, J.R., ‘The Rhetorical Tyrant in Roman Historiography: Sallust, Livy and Tacitus’, CW 65 (1971) 12ffGoogle Scholar.

83. Agrippinilla is the classic anti-pathetic victim.

84. See Walker (above n.54) 204ff.

85. Walker (above n.54) 17ff.

86. E.g. Germanicus in 2.69ff., Drusus in 4.8ff., Claudius in 12.66ff., Britannicus in 13.15, cf. Agrippina 14.9 …

87. Incolumis is the constant formula for the Annals’ programme: 3.56, 4.7, 5.3, 6.51 etc. etc. Book 14 is strung between 14.1 incolumi Agrippina and 64 Agrippinae nomen … qua incolumi … (The model without the term at 1.53.)

88. See A.J. Woodman, ‘Self-Imitation and the Substance of History: Tacitus, Annab 1.61–5 and Histories 2.70, 5.14–15’ in West, D. and Woodman, T. (edd.) Creative Imitation and Latin Literature (Cambridge 1979) 143ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ginsburg (above n.67, 525ff.), demonstrates in detail how productive intertextuality between parallel scenes can stake out interpretative differentiation.

89. Martin (above n.15) 162, for the differences between the two phrases.

90. The staging of the whole sequence has determined and mocked its ‘precurse-r’ as we have seen; the terminology here — caelestes … decernuntur, 1.10, testamentum … honoribus, 1.8, priuignis … filius, 1.3, etc. The repression of the ‘magnificence of Livia’ in the funeral pageant is re-marked sardonically by this second act of repression.

91. This is also the sense of the ‘formulaic’ presentation of Nero’s acknowledgement as the new emperor, a rapid-fire, automatic, course round the imperial bodyguard, the praetorian camp, the senate and the provinces (12.69. Note esp. the sardonic brevity of inlatusque castris Nero et congruentia tempori praefatus …, the routine of ‘donative > salutation’, the implicit comments in ‘the acta followed the sententia of the soldiers’. Praefatus again at 13.4: Nero will never be allowed by Tacitus to speak publicly in oratio recta, the private debate with Seneca being the exception that proves the rule, 14.53ff).

92. See esp. Gilmartin, K., ‘Tacitean Evidence for Tacitean Style’, CJ 69 (1973–4) 219ffGoogle Scholar. To look very swiftly as just Book 1, after the falsification in history and in writing of 1.1–2; the falsification in dynasty and cloak-and-dagger skills of 1.3; the debates on Augustus (1.4); the rumours left open in 1.5 (once with a witty pun: utcumque se ea res habuit … neque satis compertum est … [‘Or whatever it was really happened … and it has not proved possible to ascertain’], leading to namque … ‘For Livia had barred the doors and blocked the roads … ’ so that when the faked [?] ‘cheerful bulletins’ give way to the ‘The King is Dead/Long live the King’ news flash [fama eadem], you find that you never find out just what happened and that it didn’t matter either: in any event, word came … ); silent pretence and denial of military report from Tiberius, over against Tacitus’ disbelief in Augustus’ bloodguilt (neque … credibile erat. propius uero … ), and Crispus’ finding Lies and Truth equally dangerous for himself, so telling the boss (Livia) to keep Official Secret mum and stop her son spoiling things by making himself accountable to the senate (1.6: His quip, that ‘Imperial History runs its accounts with complete efficiency’, ‘its rationale is the irrational reflexivity of being One’s own accountant’, makes the word ratio the key to a world, beyond the in-difference of Lies and Truth); Tiberius’ fake doubt and hesitation vs. Germanicus’ ‘apparent … fame’ (fama … uideretur, 1.7), senatorial lackeys’ waste of breath, the funeral-scene’s derisive thoughts (1.8), the anonymous synkrisis of the ++ and −−−−−− of Augustus (1.9–10), Tiberius more Tiberian than Tiberius when he’s trying to hide his drift, his senators covering up too (incertum metu an per inuidiam, 1.11); guesses about what to say to beat suspicion’s double-binds compounded by a discrepancy in our sources lead to something that is ‘sure’ (constat), that someone tripped up Tiberius ‘by chance or else tackled by the suppliant’, the margin of error all but fatal (1.12–13); adulation to Livia and words out-stripped by anxieties lead to Tiberius’ oath of moderation jammed against the final abolition of popular elections as the occasion for ironic extra-‘moderation’ from him (1.14–15); during the mutinies and ‘military’ adventures, Germanicus was supposedly (credebatur) Republican and, vs. Tiberius, ‘unobscure’ (1.33), Tiberius was accused of fooling at shamming reluctance with the senate but he stalled everybody with masterfool inactivity (1.46–47); he was thought to be putting on the verbals when he praised Germanicus’ success (1.52, crederetur), and when it was all over, he kept saying ‘Nothing is certain for us’ (cuncta mortalium incerta), but all the same noone believed him because he brought back ‘Treason’ trials … (1.72); Tiberius said no — he always kept things divine and human, everything, up his sleeve, Sibylline riddles no exception (!), and where Drusus’ father was said to have told him to lay off the amphitheatre, people read Tiberius’ standoffishness there uarie — Theory A, Theory B, and a non crediderim for Theory C (1.76); more silence from Tiberius, as (if) one of his simulacra libertatis (1.77: arising from ‘debate’ on a [proto-Neronian] outbreak of theatri licentia …), and some parting Tiberian enigmas to puzzle over at book-end: causae uariae are recorded — boredom or grudging stinginess? In either case, leading to contradiction and so unreadable: ‘he handed over provinces to folks he didn’t mean to give leave from the city’ (1.80: oxymoronic senselessness arising untraceably from unplumbable brooding), then fruitless discussion of the consular elections, where the great Tacitus gives up, loudly: uix quicquam firmare ausim, ‘Not a squawk out of me … , such irreconcilable evidence in the sources, and from the Horse’s very own orations’ before more ‘pretty/empty talk — or is it all a trap? —whatever it was, the more it was clothed with Freedom, the more it was going to go “to pieces” of the opposite … seruitium’ (1.81). It isn’t, I would scarcely venture to suppose, hard to spot the firmness of Tacitean bucking of easy reads through his fissured Rome. (Cued in topographically with the Tiberian tide, neque discerni poterant incerta ab solidis, breuia a profundis [‘Firm/infirm indistinguishable, superficial profundity or deep shoals?’, 1.70] and with his flooding namesake Tiber, continuis imbribus auctus [‘swollen with non-stop downpour’: vs. the Emperor nee patrum cognitionibus satiatum (‘not full of senatorial inquiries’, 1.75) and perinde diuina humanaque obtegens (‘veiling this world as any next’, 1.76)]: the river of Rome, Rome as river, assails the city and its population on the way in and on the way back, relabentem secuta est aedificiorum et hominum strages … [‘Even when he’s backing off, just when you think you’ve survived his assaults, the worst is over, His Majesty wipes you out in an indiscriminate mess of carnage’ 1.76] … An arch annalistic topos, then. For pioneering study of Neronian symbolic landscape see the classic essay of Segal, C., ‘Tacitus and Poetic History: The End of Annals 13’, Ramus 2 [1973] 107ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar).

93. For the fiction of youth as symbolic entrée into the cognition of a new social convolution, cf. Moretti, F., The Way of the World The Bildungsroman in European Culture (London 1987)Google Scholar esp. 3ff. Hodge and Kress (above n.4, 240ff.) discuss ‘Entering Semiosis: Training for Culture’ powerfully.

94. 6.22 promises to tell us later of the prophecy of Nero’s coming reign …

95. The prodigies at 14.12, featuring a woman delivered of a viper and a woman killed, like Semele, by lightning in her husband’s arms, are already ‘mythic’ intensifiers. Such things as Chaldean oracles (14.9) allow Tacitus to pile on the agony and colour Nero with exotic fancy, but also they ridicule readers looking for simple stories, simple story-tellings. As they pile up through the Nero Books, they reach the absurdist climax at 16.13, where a Thucydideanplague scenario is said to hit the elite ‘less lamentably, provided you can see it this way: they were dying as we all must, getting in first before Imperial sadism could get ’em’. Cf. Plass (above n.7) 74f.

96. 11.11–12, fauor plebis … uulgabaturque … inclinatio poputi.

97. These episodes, like many of the ‘court intrigue’ sequences, are very closely dove-tailed (sperni quoque adoptionem, 12.41, cues adoptio, 25). They can stand as an instance of Tacitus’ care to focus attention on Imperial History, beyond the amount of space and the hyperbolic rhetoric they attract, through cumulative resonance. This is where the Annals capsize their language, categories, properties, form. (They are entirely oriented round dynastic perversions of traditional status symbols and ritual, the abuse of the state language, collapse of uirtus into a world of mothers and boys subverting and subverted by their presence — as, for example, when ‘Agrippina complained to husband that the decisions of SPQR were being abrogated within his home’ … All the while, as here, Tacitus’ Latin twists itself into an ugly crush of perverted officialese jammed up against incompatible domestic, now dynastic, discourse.) Both episodes follow new years’ consuls, begin with ‘Domitius/Nero’ in a passive construction of haste (festinatur, 25 ∼ maturata, 41), show Claudius worked upon (stimulabat Claudium … his euictus ∼ Caesar… cessit) with the argument of the national interest (consuleret rei publicae … partem curarum capessituro ∼ capessendae rei publicae habilis uideretur) to grant new status to Nero (in familiam Claudiam et nomen Neronis transiret ∼ consulatum Nero iniret atque interim designatus … atque princeps iuuentutis appellaretur), whose precocious age is spelled out (triennio maiorem natu ∼ uicesimo aetatis anno); the senate grovels (quaesitiore in Domitium adulatione ∼ adulationibus senatus), tout le monde sees what it means for Britannicus (nemo adeo expers miserkordiae fuit quern non Britannici fortuna maerore adficeret ∼ spectaret populus hunc … ilium … ac perinde fortunam utriusque praesumeret … qui … sortem Britannci miserabantur), as the victim’s retinue and staff are stripped away (desolatus paulatim etiam seruilibus ministerüs ∼ simul qui centurionum tribunorumque sortem Britannki miserabantur remoti … etiam libertorum si quis incorrupta fide depellitur) and he is stitched up with ‘protection’ from Stepmother (perintempestiua nouercae officia ∼ datosque a nouerca custodiae eius imponit), who herself climbs through a pun to higher honours (augetur et Agrippina cognomento Augustae ∼ suum quoque fastigium Agrippina extollere altius: carpento Capitolium ingredi, qui honos … uenerationem augebat feminae), and flexes her muscles (sed Agrippina quo uim suam … ostentaret ∼ nondum tamen summa moliri Agrippina audebat ni … ). Similar linguistic and conceptual motifs trace back to 12.8–9, then 11.11 … The Aeneid takes similar pains with its monumental construction.

98. The telling provincial detail casually dropped in abounds in the Annals — e.g. 12.61, tax-remission for Cos, the island of Aesculapius, and of Dr. Xenophon, who in 12.61 will stick his swift-poisoned-feather down the imperial throat that has just lauded his island. McCulloch, H. Jr., ‘Literary Augury at the End of Annals 13’, Phoenix 34 (1980) 237fCrossRefGoogle Scholar. (cf. Koestermann, E., Cornelius Tacitus. Annalen Band 3. Buch 11–13 [Heidelberg 1967Google Scholar] on 13.57) shows how Tacitus weaves Agrippina’s connections with Cologne through the whole fabric.

99. Cf. 15.45 for all these motives.

100. But we are to read all this as naked; compare apertius quam ut fallerent with the snuffing of Agrippa Postumus, hushed up enough to elude our inspection to set the Tiberian tone (Kehoe, D., ‘Tacitus and Sallustius Crispus’, CJ 80 [1985] 245fGoogle Scholar.).

101. E.g. 11.2, adeo ignaro Caesare ut …, 11.13 (cf. 11.32, gnara Claudia cuncta). Mother will be ignara by 13.11, the consuls won’t dare act if Nero is ignarus at 13.26, Seneca claims nothing is ignarum to Nero, 15.61 … Claudius dies ignorant of his death, unlike Tiberius, gnarum hoc principi, 6.46 (Keitel [above n.27] 211f.).

102. Cf. 3.37, Drusus uoluptatibus avocatus (‘bewitched/diverted by pleasure on pleasure’) …

103. Contrast 1.14, ne lictorem quidem ei decerni passus est (‘Tiberius allowed Livia not a single Lictor’).

104. For die funeris cf. 1.8.

105. Cf. the derision at 1.8. The tristitiae imitamenta of 13.4 recall Tiberius’ doloris imitamenta at Germanicus’ funeral.

106. Consulturum after consilium noisily mocks its own substitution for the imper(ator)ial orders it euphemizes.

107. With nee defuit fides cf. 1.11, plus in oratione tali dignitatis quam fidei erat etc. When Nero’s praefatio opened de auctoritate patrum et consensu militum, we were cued to Tiberius’ senatorial debate and to the mutinies that sat-in on Book 1.

108. Tacitus’ only other use of this word at 14.3 will trap mother for death.

109. See Kenney, E.J., ‘Incertum an et ante gnarum’, Farrago (Michaelmas 1, 1979) 5ffGoogle Scholar.: ‘Was he perhaps in the habit of exhorting his imperial pupil to grasp the nettle?’

110. ‘ “Child” carries by far the most stereotypical connotations. A child can be, in various idealized mental models, the loved result of labour, an object of education and enculturation, a developing and malleable thing, a caused thing. It contains and summarizes, in miniature, its parents. A child is ignorant, untutored, as yet lacking sufficient experience to understand its existence. It is wise because its insight is not yet clouded by socialization. It is innocent, sweet, winsome. It is both childish and childlike in its emotional patterns: unserious, playful, frisky, joyful, mischievous, mirthful. It connotes naturalness and rebirth. It has rights by inheritance. It inherits beliefs, and hence “children” can mean “lesser cohorts” as in “children of the devil”. Many of these connotations combine to connote submissiveness.’ (Turner, M., Death is the Mother of Beauty. Mind Metaphor, Criticism [Chicago 1987] 57Google Scholar.)

111. The motif of the ‘weight’ of Empire, moles, recalls the Virgilian tantae molis of 1.4, 11.

112. Not a failing of Nero, 13.2.

113. Nero has just declared himself innocent of arma ciuilia, 13.4!

114. Cf. the matching passage at 1.46, and 2.43 …

115. The specious fun of rhetorical interlocking puts it that ‘He asked the senate for those statues for others, he refused the senate’s offers of statues for himself; the senate also offered … but Nero “retained” … — and he wouldn’t “receive” … , one against a senator … ’. For the same style cf. 1.14–15, where Tiberius ‘did not allow Livia X and prohibited her Y, but he claimed for Germanicus proconsular imperium and despatch-riders were sent off, no need for any claiming for Drusus because he was consul designate (designatus consul) already, — and on the spot, so no despatches needed. After Augustus, he named twelve candidates for praetorship and swore no more, the comitia were transferred (translata), he kept to a modest four commended candidates … and soon the Games named after Augustus were tranferred (translata) to … the praetor.’ The praetor peregrinus, that is, ‘the one in charge of justice between citizens and aliens from foreign parts’ (link to: ‘Such was the state of things in the city [under the praetor urbanus?] when in foreign parts there was big trouble … ’ and off to Pannonia, though always under the watchful eye of Tiberius, through whose eyes we must [try to] look, so through the darkest of shades). This is exactly how Tacitean narrative works — with the post-Ovidian delight in the ingenuity and at times blatancy of the manufactured ‘link’ — even as it keeps up the integrity of its annalistic, so paradigmatic and anti-syntagmatic, regime of writing Rome.

116. Nero, then, (re-)fabricates a second, Domitian, nature for himself (cf. Griffin [above n. 39] 22 for his gentilician pieties).

117. This is a stage further on in the refinement of insults to the republic from 1.72.

118. These notes will later bear fruit: the consular colleague here will die with a back-reference to the shared consulate, in a family suicide-pact through Nero’s hatred/fear, 16.10; the restored senator here, rescued by Senecan eloquence de dementia, will be killed as cos. des. in the aftermath of the Pisonian plot, 15.60: sequitur caedes Annaei Senecae … (Not a non-sequitur, this!)

119. The Emperor Otho, the ephemeral return of Nero, is in the Annals a supplier of women. Senecio is significantly-named (as adulescentulus opposed by the seniores amici Senec(t)a puns, as in 13.6, 13.42, 14.54, 14.65, 15.63 are part of the ubiquitous insistence on Nero as Babyface). He is to die memorably as a Pisonian conspirator, 15.70. ‘It’s a funny old world’ …

120. Redoubled by Poppaea in 13.46. By 14.4, Nero favours sollertia and uses blandimentum on his mother (cf. matrem elicit, ib.).

121. Acte sets up Poppaea to set up Agrippina, e.g. infracta paulatim potentia matris, 13.12 ∼ infringi potentiam matris, 14.1.

122. Prototype for Britannicus, in fact: uenenum inter epulas datum est apertius quam ut fallerent (‘Poison at the party, no finesse, just detection’, 13.1).

123. Cf. 12.41 for the educatores as Britannicus’ jailers.

124. See esp. Henne, N., H., and Delvaux, P.P., Pirlot, J.M., Havelange, M., ‘Lecture plurielle de Tacite Annates, 13.16’, LEC 50 (1982) 141ffGoogle Scholar., 237ff., for a cornucopia of persuasive ideas. On 13.15 <> 12.66, cf. Townend, G.B., ‘The Sources of the Greek in Suetonius’, Hermes 78 (1960) 109ffGoogle Scholar.

125. 13.16 consists of a deformed string of unpredictable phrases with thirteen passive verbs and only the poison and Nero for active agents, peruasit, ait, deeds + imperial words …

126. For Tacitus’ use of thé pregnancy of ‘silence’ see now Plass (above n.7) 144f. n.30.

127. Recall 12.65, 68 and look back to 11.32, where Britannicus and Octavia are on a mission in complexum patris, to save their mother.

128. The Claudia familia has been a ‘theme’ from the beginning; cf. 1.4 on its uetere atque insita … superbia.

129. ‘Source-critical’ moments in Tacitus are modal signals to the reader (= ‘Don’t be so passive!’) and rhetorical devices of praeteritio; cf. 4.10 (eunuch-buggery etc.), 14.2 (incest), 14.9 (necroscopophily).

130. Acerba funera here grimly chimes with non praematura … mors just before.

131. Auxilium here is an ironic twin for Agrippina’s loss in 13.16 of her supremum auxilium. The calculus of auxilium, remedium, subsidium, praesidium stamps Dynastic narrative passim, e.g. 14.2, 6, 7, 54. Cf. the suicidal cry of Acerronia, ‘I’m Agrippina, help the Queen Mother’ (subueniretur, 14.5), with Seneca’s request to retire (mihi subueniendum, 14.54), with Nero’s praise of his helper Anicetus (solum … subuenisse). 11.32, Messalina’s ‘I must go get his filthy eyes on me, that old stand-by’ (subsidium), is another classic.

132. The sequence from 4.7ff. where Sejanus eliminated Drusus, with choice of poison, stuprum (Sejanus’ with Lygdus), insincerity at the funeral, the parade of the legendary Julian and Claudian antiquity and the Emperor’s turn to the state (sotacia e complexu rei publicae petiuisse, 4.8 ∼ reliquas spes in re publico sitas, 13.17. No praegustator, back then … ).

133. By 16.6 Nero is amori uxoris obnoxius — that is why post finem ludicri Poppaea mortem obiit, ‘after the funshow was over, ob. Poppaea’ (kicked in the pregnancy by her broody and devoted ‘Periander’ husband … , cf. Mayer, R., ‘What Caused Poppaea’s Death?’, Historia 31 (1982) 248Google Scholar: answer, Mytho-logic).

134. In the private ‘debate’ pupil Nero pretends to disagree, but as he claims to need his teacher, his rhetoric shows he has learned all there is to learn from Seneca (14.53–56. The only direct speech we have of Nero, the one Seneca did not write — but still the product, as it says, of his teaching!).

135. Half-way house at 13.20, Nero trepidus et interficiendae matris auidus non prius differri potuit quam …

136. Sosibius Britannici educator models this, ‘helping Britannicus with teaching and Claudius with advice’, helping Messalina to Asiaticus’ horti (where, funnily enough, she is to die, 11.37), helping Asiaticus die (‘Sosi-bios’ is another of those wor[l]ds), and helping himself to sestertium decies (11.1–4).

137. By 13.27, he is solemnly pronounced ‘freeborn’, the Emperor expert already at rewriting stemmatics. In 13.24, Nero briefly keeps the army from spoiling contact with theatrali licentiae (reversed in 13.25!); 13.28 theatre-fans are arrested; 13.31 takes us to the amphitheatre; 13.54 tells of envoy savages ‘invading’ the senatorial seats on a visit to Pompey’s (Republican) theatre …

138. ‘An actor living in his own unreal world’ (Scott, R.D., ‘The Death of Nero’s Mother’, Latomus 33 (1974) 106ffGoogle Scholar: matricide spells madness. Nb.: ‘his own unreal world’, the world we live in). For the theatrical body-language and role-playing of Neronian Rome see Betensky (above n.80) passim, and on ‘Acting and Nero’s Conception of the Principate’ see Manning, C.E., G&R 22 (1975) 164ffGoogle Scholar. Plass (above n.7) 11: ‘Real make-believe … could lend events a fictional quality.’

139. Like ‘Alexander’ who ‘was abnormally attached to his mother and never wanted to see her again’. (A prime Tacitism in Heller, J., Picture This [London 1988] 284Google Scholar.)

140. When a ‘Mnester’ kills himself at Agrippina’s cremation, we must ‘recall’ memorable Messalina’s actor-‘Suitor’ of the same name, 11.36 (where reminisceretur and perhaps cunctationem attulit make him a wor[l]d).

141. ‘What might be Tacitus’ funniest joke’ (Baldwin, B., ‘Tacitean Humour’, WS 90 [1977] 138Google Scholar).

142. Another (anti-)Tiberian touch; cf. 4.62f. (collapse of amphitheatre) + 64 (Fire in Rome).

143. A ‘success-ion-ful’ (‘epic’?) joke about the in-difference of Imperial History, this — I wonder what it is — where is the joke? The Plot considered (15.50) ‘staging’ the killing, literally, during a performance from ilk scaenicus (15.59), or in his burning house (get it?), but was actually set for the ludi Cereris (15.53).

144. The momentary ‘skulking’ in Campania, 14.13, is supposed to recall Tiberius (4.57 etc.).

145. Last words in Dio 63.29.2. Suet, actually has Nero deliver half a dozen takes after this.

146. The logic which obliges Despotism to express itself in an ever-staling fashion-parade of displays of transgressive behaviour fights a constant winning/losing battle with the Roman ideology of the Princeps Ciuilis and its rhetoric of ‘refusal’. Imperial Bio-, so Hagio-, graphy feeds on readerly desire for the satisfactions of imagining the ingenuity of the transgressions. See Edwards, Catharine, Transgression and Control Studies in Ancient Roman Immorality (Diss. Cambridge 1989)Google Scholar.

147. Garnsey, P. and Sailer, R., The Early Principate. Augustus to Trajan (Oxford 1982) 36fGoogle Scholar.

148. Syme (above n.1) 556. That ‘could’ — is, or was, it in praebuit, could it be in a politics of interpretation?

149. Dio’s joke for here is ‘I didn’t know he had a big nose’. The commentaries tell us Halm made up for Tacitus, for Nero: ‘Why, Nero, you weren’t afraid of a bloke with a conk?’ Jokes on the physiognomy of Tyranny always escape us, a little, we never can bound them, that’s their ‘point’, their escape from intentionality. It’s only that the Tyrant doesn’t need to control his mots — that’s what these anecdotes keep telling us.

150. The polar presentation of material, sometimes/often/usually (?) skewed one way (cf. Sullivan, D., ‘Innuendo and the “Weighted Alternative” in Tacitus’, CJ 71 [1976] 312ffGoogle Scholar.; Whitehead, D., ‘Tacitus and the Loaded Alternative’, Latomus 38 [1979] 474ffGoogle Scholar.; Vielberg [above n.19] esp. 48ff.), together with tension between ‘appearance and reality’ markers (cf. Walker [above n.54] 241 f.; Köhnken, A, ‘Das Problem der Ironie bei Tacitus’, MH 30 [1973] 32ffGoogle Scholar), is the characteristic Tacitean device to suspend — partially cancel out — narrative authority: the debate on Augustus, 1.9–10, and its wider contestation with the various strands of Tacitus’ proem, have already been noticed above. (When e.g. Martin [above n.15, 111] supposes that ‘the device is transparent; without committing himself to an unequivocal judgement on Augustus, Tacitus is able to convey to the reader a critical assessment of the dead emperor, in which the ostensibly balanced evidence nevertheless comes down clearly on the side of condemnation’, he takes the same tame reading-strategy as those who read Juvenal looking to find what there is to credit, accept and learn from his texts, when those put in question throughout their own sincerity, verisimilitude and referentiality. You can learn with these declamatory writers, they don’t invite you to share their viewpoint, they tempt you to, they force you to confront your values: they open up ‘the debate’.) The Germanicus and Drusus mutinies in Book 1 polarise those fratres egregie Concordes in moves which jeopardize Germanicus’ ‘popularity’ with the reader, ushering in the instructive ‘discrepancy’ between the narrator’s account and his editorial evaluation of the performance which is the very stuff from which our reading is to be constructed, in the gap left by the persona for us to fill our way. (Cf. Goodyear [above n.9, 33] on the inconsistency of ‘The Tacitean Germanicus’, for whom see Ross, D.O. Jr., YCS 23 [1973] 209fGoogle Scholar., following up Shotter, D.A., ‘Tacitus, Tiberius and Germanicus’, Historia 17 [1968] 194ffGoogle Scholar. Cf. Rutland, L.W., ‘The Tacitean Germanicus. Suggestions for a Re-evaluation’, RhM 190 [1987] 153ffGoogle Scholar.) Treason-Trials are the most notorious site of ‘discrepancies’ (Syme [above n.1] 420f., Walker [above n.54] 82ff. But when e.g. Martin [above n.15, 118] supposes that we can see past Tacitus’ bias and with his material ‘come to a more balanced judgement on Tiberius’, we should not blink the ironies that necessarily undercut such a ‘judgement’: a debate would be a more appropriate ambition.). Seneca is also a problem for Tacitus (left a problem, according to e.g. Martin ib. 208). Boudicca and other demonized ‘Noble Savages’ like any adoxography, are bound to ‘discrepancy’ (cf. Roberts [above n.15] 129). So too Corbulo: for example, he is the good general ‘Metellus’ who licks his dissipated troops into shape for action — with ferocious Siberian sadism (13.35, as the cue ut in aliis exercitibus indicates, a deformation of the often-recycled topos at Sail. Bell Jug. 45. Cf. Martin ib. 181; Gilmartin, K., ‘Corbulo’s Campaigns in the East. An Analysis of Tacitus’ Account’, Historia 22 [1973] 583ffGoogle Scholar, esp. 592f. In the prequel to this recurrence of the topos Corbulo’s New Model Army is at once ordered to retreat with a ‘rueful’ beatos quondam duces Romanos [‘I wish this was early Livy’, 11.20], and its commander put on a par with, and so dulled by, a Lucky Strike silver prospector in his infra dig. Dick Whittington story … ). Seneca is another ‘non-liquet’ (cf. Dyson, S.L., ‘The Portrait of Seneca in Tacitus’, Arethusa 3 [1970] 78fGoogle Scholar.; Syme [n.1 above, 552 n.1] rightly proposes we pronounce the stereotype-confounding portrayal ‘a masterpiece, indicating an advance in technique and in historical imagination’). The vignette of Petronius is given a thought-provokingly mixed set of tones (16.18; cf. Martin ib. 185f.). And, the ultimate question, can you find your view of Thrasea Paetus (Walker ib. 229f., ‘the subject of some of Tacitus’ most taunting criticisms’, vs. Syme ib. 561 n.8 …)? Walker ib. and Ryberg, IS., ‘Tacitus’ Art of Innuendo’, TAPA 73 (1942) 383ffGoogle Scholar, are the best repertories of Tacitean devices for distancing/discrediting his narrative and narration; cf. Develin, R., ‘Tacitus and Techniques of Insidious Suggestion’, Antichthon 17 (1983) 64ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.; Lucas, JLes Obsessions de Tacite (Leyden 1974) 103Google Scholar on Tacitean doubt.

151. This is the force of the editorial complaints at the lack of ‘suitable’ materials for his ‘tedious’ work (4.32, cf. 6.7, 16.16, with Syme [above n.1] 320: historians complain, like farmers … ). Tiberius is a Roman ‘Hannibal’ who circles but never enters Rome, a quasi-Poliorketes (4.58, adsidens): but his mutinous army is like a Sacked City which turns on itself in a new mutation of Civil War (‘From the same bunks … ’, 1.49. See 1.4If., analogized with Caesar’s and Augustus’ Civil War scenes in 1.42; cf. Woodman [above n.16] 188f. on 4.62ff.), and his orgy victims are outraged uelut in captos (6.1). Claudius force-marches a squad to swat an ‘Asiaticus bis cos.’ and owner of Lucullan pleasure-gardens, on the beach at Baiae, for imperial ‘clemency’ (11.If.). Nero holds a ‘triumph’ over Mother (publici seruitii uictor etc., 14.13), launches stormtroops at Vestinus’ dining-hall, uelut arcem eius (15.69 — by then all the Roman military can show us is how stiff their upper lips are, e.g. nee ceteri centuriones in perpetiendis supplicüs degenerauere, 15.68) and recounts the crushing of the Pisonian plot quasi bello gesta (15.72.) … 1st century ‘Trajans’ only made war at home, on their own civilians (Keitel [above n.39] passim).

152. See esp. Vessey, D.W.T., ‘Thoughts on Tacitus’ Portrayal of Claudius’, AJP 92 [1971] 385ffGoogle Scholar. and Dickison, S.K., ‘Claudius: Saturnalicius Princeps’, Latomus 36 (1977) 634ffGoogle Scholar. for the comic/satiric turn to Claudius’ reign.

153. The classic paper by Segal (above n.92) is still the model reading here (cf. Dickison, S.K. and Plympton, M., ‘The Prodigy of the Fig-Tree: Tacitus’ Annates 13.58’, RSC 25 [1977] 183ffGoogle Scholar. and McCulloch [above n.98] 237ff. for further ideas on the node that Segal disentangles). Keitel, E., ‘The Role of Parthia and Armenia in Tacitus Annals 11 and 12’, AJP 99 [1978] 462ffGoogle Scholar, brilliantly shows how campaigns at the world margins cue in dynastic power-politics, both at a general thematic and atmospheric level and also with precise and specific analogies to the latest or next barbarism at the heart of Rome. The most obvious example, Boudicca in Book 14, has already been noticed above.

154. So McCulloch, H.Y.Narrative Cause in the Annals of Tacitus, Beitr. z. kl. Phil. 160 (1984)Google Scholarpassim; cf. Syme (above n.1) 316; Shatzman, I., ‘Tacitean Rumours’, Latomus 33 (1974) 549ffGoogle Scholar.

155. So Martin (above n.15) 173.

156. This is the start of an answer to those who find the ‘Mutinies’ overblown considering their ‘historical’ unimportance (e.g. Goodyear [above n.9] 30 n.1): for the potential of their violent instability cf. Keitel (above n.39) 318 n.27.

157. The Annals began with the proposal to call Livia parens or mater patriae (1.14: there’s an imperial coinage!) and the Emperor Iuliae filius (cf. Goodyear [above n.9] 190 and n.1.). They see the Armenian Queen Erato (feminae imperio, 2.4), the British Cartimandua (Brits fight for shame ne feminae imperio subderentur, 12.40) and Boudicca (14.29ff.), come to Rome as one Agrippina (femina ingens animi etc., 1.69) returns with interest as another (feminam signis Romanis praesidere, 12.37; uersa ex eo ciuitas et cuncta feminae oboediebant … adductum et quasi uirile seruitium, 12.7), so that the apparent Emperor looks like one who a femina regeretur (13.6). Cf. Rutland, L.W., ‘Women as Makers of Kings in Tacitus’ Annals’, CW 72 (1978) 15ffGoogle Scholar. When Epicharis’ — another Wor(l)d here — torturers overwork ne a femina spemerentur we have a Tacitean inversion of inversions — she outshines ingenui et uiri et equites Romani senatoresque intacti tormentis who betray their dearest pignora to a man (15.57). The Annals began with the Emperor ‘stealing a wife from (a) Nero’ (!) ‘and asking the priests if it would be proper for him to marry her pregnant’ (1.10: per ludibrium here alerts us to irony/shock/Sunday tabloid drool). This is followed by the terrible punhouse of: grauis in rem publicam mater, grauis domui Caesarum nouerca, which make the Tarantula Queen ‘pregnant’ (so putatively doing her duty by producing sons for the state) and ‘bearing down heavy as the burden of her pregnancy upon the future of Rome’ the absurd oxymoron of a ‘pregnant stepmother’ (whose role is to deliver — harm to the home she is foisted upon). Our next Empress, with full ceremonial observance of the customary forms, ‘marries’ a cos. des. uelut suscipiendorum liberorum (etc. etc. 11.27: licentia coniugali is Tacitus’ splendid linguistic outrage to cap this.) She goes on to stage the Bacchae at Rome (11.31), her very own vintage (Messalina’s ‘harvesthome’, she is her own wor(l)d with a cast of ‘friends’: but it isn’t ‘her’ play at all, her successor is the Semele who played Clytemnestra and threatened to play Agave … ), one egregious pal survives her fall because he is a pathic (uitüs protectus, 11.36); then uncle/niece marriage is solemnly legitimized in the name of the Invention of Tradition (12.6) and the Emperor goes Greek with a vengeance, solemn ‘bride’ given to a slaveboy (13.57: sequitur clades … , the Fire of Rome, 15.38 …) — and, near the end, himself taking a eunuch’s hand, in Greece (Sporus, Suet. Ner. 28). Gender and kin transgressions are the mytho-logical core of the politics of Tyranny: cf. Hodge and Kress (above n.4) 215f. ‘So ended the house of Agamemnon: with a total of four murders, one insanity, and no surviving heirs, no more promising than the house of Thebes … ’. (Rome’s score is average, then?)

158. All those parades of concern with the technicalities of Roman Law and administration, the ‘digressions’ on Roman customs, localities, festivals, the lists- of officials and their careers, campaigns against the ring of tribes, records of offences to world-order (monstra etc.), all this traditional material feeds back Roman identity into the form of the Annates, then on round the loop and back into reinforcement of Roman identity, its categories, its cultural formation. In this sense the procession of retrospective reviews by the author-function and his cast of characters compounds the metonymic force of the text vis-à-vis the culture: Roman history remains, the Annals posit and propose, the traditional censor-like monitoring of the world before the annalistic bench: Imperial History, not Tacitus, is the parody Looking Glass world. Cf. Plass (above n.7) 18, q.v.: ‘Tacitus’ unusual language gradually builds up a distinct world of its own like a prism made of many faces set at different angles to the external world and reflecting it with varying degrees of distortion or precision. This counterworld … ’.

159. Hodge and Kress (above n.4) 146.

160. Goodyear in Kenney and Clausen (above n.63) 654.

161. Syme’s great Tacitus (above n.1) swamps his civic involvement too much for my liking, but cf. ‘Power is the essential subject of political history’ (375), ‘The prime quality of Cornelius Tacitus is distrust’ (398; see ‘The Sceptical Historian’, 397ff.). One the other hand, see 548ff., ‘It early became evident that one man held all the power and authority … ’. Anyhow, Syme’s caustic writing always plays for the Consular Muse, impelling readers to contest and debate every last presumption (try ‘The Senator as Historian’ in Ten Studies in Tacitus [Oxford 1970] 9, ‘On the face of things, Tacitus might be claimed a Republican — if it were clear what substance could be given to that term under the Caesars. One layer deeper, and he is revealed, like so many others, as an opportunist, advocating the middle path in politics and hoping …’ with ‘The Political Opinions of Tacitus’, ib. 129, ‘The republic was now a distant memory, purified, exalted, and harmless. Nobody could fail to pay homage to the glorious past of Rome. But that allegiance was not political, only moral and social.’ ‘Only’ … ).

162. Cf. Dyson (above n.150) 78f., for the symbolic … failure.

163. Seneca sprayed his attendants with (blooded) bath-water, 15.64. Octavia’s remarkable veins refused to work, 14.64.

164. A.k.a. ‘Nero’ as on his post-Pisonian coins (Huss, W. ‘Die Propaganda Neros’, L’Ant. Class. 47 [1978] 142Google Scholar n.100). On ‘La “Passion” de Thraséa’ cf. Saumagne, C., REL 33 (1955) 24Google Scholar Iff.

165. This is the kind of ‘exemplarity’ the Consular Muse offers: a rejoinder to anyone who agrees that ‘Since the execution of Cicero, no man had been free to speak against the dynast with power of life and death, except to the extent that he permitted it’ (Wallace-Hadrill [above n.54] 38). The political martyr refutes any prescription or proscription of freedom.