Feb. 15, 2002
Ken Wolfe
Tacitus: Moralizing History
Emperors Years Died How? People Connected with their Reign
Julio-Claudians:
Augustus 31 BC-14 AD naturally Livia, Agrippa, Tiberius
Tiberius 14-37 killed? Livia, Germanicus, Sejanus
Gaius (Caligula) 37-41 killed
Claudius 41-54 poisoned Messalina, Agrippina
Nero 54-68 suicide Agrippina, Seneca, Burrus
Civil Wars:
Galba, Otho, Vitellius 68-69
Flavians: Adoptive Emperors:
Vespasian 69-79 Nerva 96-98
Titus 79-81 Trajan 98-117
Domitian 81-96 Hadrian 117-138
Outline
I. The Man and his Works
II. The Historian
III. The Moralist
Passages
1. It seems to me a historian's foremost duty to ensure that merit is recorded, and to confront evil deeds and words with the fear of posterity's denunciations. But this was a tainted, meanly obsequious age. The greatest figures had to protect their positions by subserviency; and, in addition to them, all ex-consuls, most ex-praetors, even many junior senators competed with each other's offensively sycophantic proposals. There is a tradition that whenever Tiberius left the senate-house he exclaimed in Greek, 'Men fit to be slaves!' Even he, freedom's enemy, became impatient of such abject servility. (p. 150)
2. I shall write without indignation or partisanship (sine ira et studio): in my case the customary incentives to these are lacking. (p. 32)
3. There was no flattery of the emperor in this. Indeed everyone knew that Tiberius could scarcely conceal his delight at the death of Germanicus. (p. 120)
4. After Agrippa had died, first Lucius Caesar and Gaius Caesar met with premature natural deaths--unless their stepmother Livia had a secret hand in them. Lucius died on his way to the armies in Spain, Gaius while returning from Armenia incapacitated by a wound. (p. 32-33)
5. It would be nearer the truth to suppose that Tiberius because he was afraid, and Livia through stepmotherly malevolence, loathed and distrusted the young Agrippa Postumus and got rid of him at the first opportunity. (p. 35)
6. A few days later his [Drusus'] mother Vipsania died. Of Agrippa's children, she alone died peacefully. The rest were either killed in battle or allegedly [more literally, as it was believed] poisoned or starved to death. (p. 129)
7. When Rome was first a city, its rulers were kings. Then Lucius Junius Brutus created the consulate and free Republican institutions in general. (p. 31)
8. But then he regained his secluded sea-cliffs. For his criminal lusts shamed him. Their uncontrollable activity was worthy of an oriental tyrant. Free-born children were his victims. He was fascinated by beauty, youthful innocence, and aristocratic birth. New names for types of perversion were invented. Slaves were charged to locate and procure his requirements. They rewarded compliance, overbore reluctance with menaces, and--if resisted by parents or relations--kidnapped their victims, and violated them of their own account. It was like the sack of a captured city. (p. 200)
9. Nero was already corrupted by every lust, natural and unnatural [should read licit and illicit]. But he now refuted any surmises that no further degradation was possible for him. For a few days later he went through a formal wedding ceremony with one of the perverted gang called Pythagoras. The emperor, in the presence of witnesses, put on the bridal veil. Dowry, marriage bed, wedding torches, all were there. Indeed everything was public which even in a natural union [should read in the case of a woman] is veiled by night. (p. 362)
10. Nevertheless leading citizens competed with complimentary proposals-thanksgivings
at every shrine; annual games at Minerva's Festival (during which the discovery of the plot had been staged); the erection in the senate-house of gold statues of Minerva and (beside her) the emperor; the inclusion of Agrippina's birthday among ill-omened dates. (p. 318)
11. Falanius was charged, first, with admitting among the worshippers of Augustus, in the cult maintained by households on the analogy of priestly orders, an actor in musical comedies named Cassius who was a male prostitute…When Tiberius heard of these accusations, he wrote to the consuls saying that Augustus had not been voted divine honours in order to ruin Roman citizens. The actor, he observed, together with others, had regularly taken part in the Games which his mother the Augusta had instituted in Augustus' honour… (p. 74)
12. But neither human resources, nor imperial munificence, nor appeasement of the gods, eliminated sinister suspicions that the fire had been instigated. To suppress this rumour, Nero fabricated scapegoats--and punished with every refinement the notoriously depraved Christians (as they were popularly called). Their originator, Christ, had been executed in Tiberius' reign by the governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilatus. But in spite of this temporary setback the deadly superstition had broken out afresh, not only in Judaea (where the mischief had started) but even in Rome. All degraded and shameful practices collect and flourish in the capital. (p. 365)
13. I am descended from mighty men! But now I am not fighting for my kingdom and wealth. I am fighting as an ordinary person for my lost freedom, my bruised body, and my outraged daughters. Nowadays Roman rapacity does not even spare our bodies. Old people are killed, virgins raped. But the gods will grant us the vengeance we deserve! The Roman division which dared to fight is annihilated. The others cower in their camps, or watch for a chance to escape. They will never face even the din and roar of all our thousands, much less the shock of our onslaught. Consider how many of you are fighting--and why. Then you will win this battle, or perish. This is what I, a woman, do!--let the men live in slavery if they will. (p. 330)
14. Nero now remembered the information of Volusius Proculus and consequent arrest of Epicharis. Thinking no female body could stand the pain, he ordered her to be tortured. But lashes did not weaken her denials, nor did branding--nor the fury of the torturers at being defied by a woman. So the first day's examination was frustrated. Next day her racked limbs could not support her, so she was taken for further torments in a chair. But on the way she tore off her breast-band, fastened it in a noose to the chair's canopy, and placed her neck inside it. Then, straining with all her weight, she throttled the little life that was still in her. (p. 373)
15. I find that this Marcus Lepidus played a wise and noble part in events. He often palliated the brutalities caused by other people's sycophancy. And he had a sense of proportion--for he enjoyed unbroken influence and favour with Tiberius. This compels me to doubt whether, like other things, the friendships and enmities of rulers depends on destiny and the luck of a man's birth. Instead, may not our own decisions play some part, enabling us to steer a way, safe from intrigues and hazards, between perilous insubordination and degrading servility? (p. 167)
16. Tacitus I consider the first writer in the world without a single exception. His book is a compound of history and morality of which we have no other example.
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