This collection is designed to reflect the main trends in scholarship on the Roman historian of the early empire, Tacitus, particularly as they have developed over the last century. Covering the whole of Tacitus' works, it begins with a comprehensive introduction which sets the selected scholarship and Roman author in context.

Throughout his narrative of Julio-Claudian Rome in the Annals, Tacitus includes numerous references to the gods, fate, fortune, astrology, omens, temples, priests, the emperor cult, and other religious material. Though scholars have long considered Tacitus' discussion of religion of minor importance, this volume demonstrates the significance of such references to an understanding of the work as a whole by analyzing them using cultural memory theory, which views religious ritual as a key component in any society's efforts to create a lived version of the past that helps define cultural identity in the present. Tacitus, who was not only an historian, but also a member of Rome's quindecimviral priesthood, shows a marked interest in even the most detailed rituals of Roman religious life, yet his portrayal of religious material also suggests that the system is under threat with the advent of the principate. Some traditional rituals are forgotten as the shape of the Roman state changes while, simultaneously, a new form of cultic commemoration develops as deceased emperors are deified and the living emperor and his family members are treated in increasingly worshipful ways by his subjects. This study traces the deployment of religious material throughout Tacitus' narrative in order to show how he views the development of this cultic "amnesia" over time, from the reign of the cryptic, autocratic, and oddly mystical Tiberius, through Claudius' failed attempts at reviving tradition, to the final sacrilegious disasters of the impious Nero. As the first book-length treatment of religion in the Annals, it reveals how these references are a key vehicle for his assessment of the principate as a system of government, the activities of individual emperors, and their impact on Roman society and cultural identity.

This book considers the Roman historian Tacitus’ (c. 55 – c. 120 C.E.) use of the language and narrative techniques of the epic poets, in particular Virgil and Lucan, for his presentation of the Roman civil wars of 68–70 C.E. in the Histories.

The essays in this volume have been selected and arranged to provide students with an introduction to the historiographial study of the Roman historian Livy. All classics in their own right, the eighteen articles included here work together to present a picture of this creative and acutely observant historian writing during the Augustan principate. The editors have provided an introductory guide to previous Livian scholarship, which contextualizes each essay; each is also followed by an addendum providing further context and selected suggestions for further reading.

Literary Territories argues that the literature of Late Antiquity shared a defining aesthetic sensibility which treated the classical "inhabited world," the oikoumene, as a literary metaphor for the collection and organization of knowledge.

Cameos showcase Tiberius in private and Augustus in court, with Pompey the Great on campaign and Phaedrus himself struggling against prejudice and persecution, and tales feature all sorts - a toadying slave, wicked servant, vain musician, effeminate soldier, sexy poet, and rogue quack. These forgotten tales tell short and clear Roman parables of power and powerlessness. Humorous and acute, they explain, and protest at, the Caesars, and they sit perfectly among Aesop's sadistic lions, murderous wolves, and apes in purple."--Jacket.

The Roman historian Sallust emerges from recent scholarship as one of the most innovative and original writers of the ancient world. His works describe the political and moral crises of Rome's civil wars in the first century BCE and raise questions about the possibilities for narrating the past that matter profoundly to historians today. This volume provides a substantial introduction to scholarship on Sallust, bringing together some of the best and most important studies from the last decades and setting them within the context of a rich and continuing scholarly tradition that includes influential works by Eduard Schwartz (1897) and Kurt Latte (1935). Each contribution presents a distinctive vision of the historian and together they reveal different aspects of his complexity and surprising modernity. Substantial attention is given to all three of Sallust's works: the monographs on the Catilinarian conspiracy and the war with Jugurtha, as well as the fragmentary Histories. Translations of important contributions by German and Italian scholars as well as a survey of the early modern reception of Sallust offer unprecedented access to the scope of Sallust studies. This volume will be an important resource for students of ancient history and Latin literature at all levels and also introduce a wider scholarly audience to Sallust's importance and interest.

Tacitus’ narrative of 69 CE, the year of the four emperors, is famous for its description of a series of coups that sees one man after another crowned. Many scholars seem to read Tacitus as though he wrote only about the constricted world of imperial Rome and the machinations of emperors, courtiers, and victims of the principate; even recent work on the Histories either passes over or lightly touches upon civil unrest and revolts in the provinces. In Provincial Soldiers and Imperial Instability in the Histories of Tacitus, Jonathan Master looks beyond imperial politics and finds threats to the Empire’s stability among unassimilated foreign subjects who were made to fight in the Roman army. Master draws on scholarship in political theory, Latin historiography, Roman history, and ethnic identity to demonstrate how Tacitus presented to his contemporary audience in Trajanic Rome the dangerous consequences of the city’s failure to reward and incorporate its provincial subjects. Master argues that Tacitus’ presentation of the Vitellian and Flavian armies, and especially the Batavian auxiliary soldiers, reflects a central lesson of the Histories: the Empire’s exploitation of provincial manpower (increasingly the majority of all soldiers under Roman banners) while offering little in return, set the stage for civil wars and ultimately the separatist Batavian revolt.

e emperor Nero is etched into the Western imagination as one of ancient Rome's most infamous villains, and Tacitus' Annals have played a central role in shaping the mainstream historiographical understanding of this flamboyant autocrat. This section of the text plunges us straight into the moral cesspool that Rome had apparently become in the later years of Nero's reign, chronicling the emperor's fledgling stage career including his plans for a grand tour of Greece; his participation in a city-wide orgy climaxing in his publicly consummated 'marriage' to his toy boy Pythagoras; the great fire of AD 64, during which large parts of central Rome went up in flames; and the rising of Nero's 'grotesque' new palace, the so-called 'Golden House', from the ashes of the city. This building project stoked the rumours that the emperor himself was behind the conflagration, and Tacitus goes on to present us with Nero's gruesome efforts to quell these mutterings by scapegoating and executing members of an unpopular new cult then starting to spread through the Roman empire: Christianity. All this contrasts starkly with four chapters focusing on one of Nero's most principled opponents, the Stoic senator Thrasea Paetus, an audacious figure of moral fibre, who courageously refuses to bend to the forces of imperial corruption and hypocrisy. This course book offers a portion of the original Latin text, study aids with vocabulary, and a commentary. Designed to stretch and stimulate readers, Owen's and Gildenhard's incisive commentary will be of particular interest to students of Latin at both A2 and undergraduate level. It extends beyond detailed linguistic analysis and historical background to encourage critical engagement with Tacitus' prose and discussion of the most recent scholarly thought.

"Over the past thirty years the study of classical historiography has undergone great changes. While not abandoning traditional questions about sources and reliability, newer scholarship, influenced and informed by the current debates in the academy at large about the nature and purpose of all historiography, has sought to understand the ancient historians on their own terms and has more closely engaged with the ways in which the Greeks and Romans constructed their pasts, with the various roles that history played in these societies, with the relationship of history as a literary composition to other genres, and with the importance of the historian himself in giving form and meaning to his history. The essays in the present volume, six of which are translated into English for the first time, address these and other issues. Topics treated include the relationship of history and myth, the importance of oral tradition in the formation of both Greek andRoman historical traditions, the role of memory (both individual and societal) in shaping notions of the past and determining what is thought worthy of record, the influence of other genres such as poetry and oratory on historiography, and ancient notions of falsehood and historical truth. An introduction places the essays in the larger context of earlier and more recent trends in the study of Greek and Roman historiography"--Publisher's description, p. [4] of cover.