Tacitus, Annals, 15.20­-23, 33­-45. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, and Commentary, 2013a

thinly masked by rhetorical generalities and must accordingly have been
perceived by his audience as an attack on their own practice of adulatio.’ 85
Thrasea is again elliptical: to complete the first phrase,
one needs to supply accusatio from the previous sentence. The mood is
subjunctive. The present subjunctive can be used in the third person to give
orders (‘jussive subjunctive’), here translating as ‘let it [sc. an accusation]
be decreed.’
The syntax
here is rather unusual: the genitive of the gerund (ostentandi), which takes
potentiam suam as accusative object, lacks a noun on which it depends and
one might have expected an infinitive instead. This is, however, not the only
place in the Annals where this construction occurs: Tacitus also uses it at 15.5
(vitandi) and 13.26 (retinendi). As Miller points out, ‘it is extremely unlikely
that in all three instances the same odd construction has been caused by the
same accident of textual transmission. It is more probably an example of
Tacitean experimentation with language’ – in this case the blurring between
the use of the gerund and the infinitive. 86 The potentia refers specifically to
the last thing Thrasea had mentioned, i.e. the power of provincials to charge
Roman officials with maladministration. He argues that the provincials
should still be able to bring cases against corrupt governors; what must be
stopped (as he goes on to argue) are the false or corrupt votes of thanks.
The verb ostento (another frequentative) carries the idea of parading or
showing off and suggests that Thrasea considers the powers he would
like the provincials to retain rather inconsequential. There is a mocking
tone to his concession: the ‘potentia’ of the provincials does not amount to
much. (For Tacitus on real power vs pomp and show, see 15.31: ... inania
tramittuntur.)
Thrasea falls back into asyndetic mode – here reinforced
by the anaphora of quam: quam malitia, quam crudelitas – to proclaim his
counterintuitive conviction that contrived praise is as much in need
of policing as (perinde ... quam = as much as) malitia (‘wickedness’) and
crudelitas (‘cruelty’). The elegant simplicity of quam malitia, quam crudelitas
85 Rudich (1993) 77.
86 Miller (1973) 52.