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

‘Imperial history’ has its natural centre of gravity in the reigning princeps.
But by opting for an annalistic approach, Tacitus ensures that a pattern
of ‘republican history’ remains in place. The very simplicity of associating
each year with the name of the consuls in office (whether initially elected or
suffect) generates a sense of order and continuity in time more fundamental
than the changing dynasties that rule at Rome. Just thinking about the
names of the consuls – and in what other years they or their fathers held
the consulship (a natural thing to do, from a Roman reader’s point of view)
– creates chronological vectors. In this case, the web of associations called
into being by the laconic dating device Memmio Regulo et Verginio Rufo
consulibus spans all three ‘dynasties’, from the Julio-Claudian through the
Flavian and beyond, to Tacitus’ present. There is, then, an ideology built
into the annalistic approach to Roman history: emperors come and go; but
each year, consuls still enter into their office and maintain (a semblance
of) republican continuity. This way of thinking about time existed outside
Tacitus’ narrative as well, of course. But through strategic arrangement of
his material, our author activates the pattern as a meaningful foil for his
imperial history: here it is his obituary of Memmius Regulus pater at 14.47,
at the end of his account of 61, which obliquely sets up his son’s entry
into the consulship in 63, especially when paired with the references to
Nero’s gymnasium (see above). Without this obituary, readers would have
had much greater difficulties in associating the son with his father (and
his consulship in 31) or in thinking ahead to the death of Verginius Rufus
during his third consulship (and the figure who would take his place and
deliver the funeral oration). And far less melodrama to savour.
The advanced position
of natam, right after the annalistic formula, reinforces the sense of a new
beginning also for the imperial household – which Tacitus crushes a few
lines later (see below, 23.3: quartum intra mensem defuncta infante). The
undramatic record of who held the consulship stands in stark contrast to
the triumphs and tragedies of the imperial household. The switch from
the names of the two highest magistrates of the Roman state, subordinate
in power only to the princeps himself, to the birth of a baby girl destined
to pass away after a few months creates a tension between the republican
frame or matrix of Tacitus’ narrative and its principal subject matter. The
names of the imperial couple Poppaea and Nero in the first sentence about
AD 63 instantly counterbalance those of Memmius Regulus and Verginius