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

These figures help to explain the high level of anxiety (and the investment
in religious supplications) as the date of birth was approaching – as well as
the tangible sense of relief thereafter; but they also help to underscore the
emotional excess of the emperor: in light of the rather high likelihood that
the child would not survive, the degree to which Nero was buoyed with
joy and struck down by grief generates the impression of an emotionally
unbalanced individual.
Thraseam prohibitum immoto animo praenuntiam imminentis caedis
reconciliatum se Thraseae apud Senecam iactaverit ac Senecam Caesari
The passage functions as a node that brings together various narrative
threads. Tacitus here connects the last major event he recounted in his
coverage of 62 (the speech of Thrasea on provincial government) with the
first major event in his account of 63, i.e. the birth and death of Nero’s
baby daughter. At the same time, he takes the opportunity to recall via
the figure of Seneca the early years of Nero’s reign and to drop a hint
about Seneca’s and Thrasea’s dire future. More precisely, the phrasing
here stands in intratextual dialogue with the very end of the surviving
portion of the Annals: at 16.21–35, Tacitus recounts the death of Thrasea
Paetus and Barea Soranus (a respected elderly statesman), as the climax
of Nero’s killing spree – murdering them was to kill virtus personified:
trucidatis tot insignibus viris ad postremum Nero virtutem ipsam exscindere
concupivit interfecto Thrasea Paeto et Barea Sorano (21; ‘After the slaughter
of so many of the noble, Nero in the end conceived the ambition to shred
Virtue herself by killing Thrasea Paetus and Barea Soranus’). The last
image where the text breaks off is of Thrasea dying slowly in excruciating
pain after opening his veins by order of the princeps (16.35). Thrasea’s
death was preceded by the death of Seneca in the wake of the Pisonian
conspiracy, narrated as the climactic bookend sequence at 15.60–64, which
followed a similarly gruesome pattern.
adnotatum est ... Thraseam prohibitum immoto animo praenuntiam
adnotatum est introduces an
indirect statement with Thraseam as subject accusative and excepisse as
infinitive. contumeliam – which is modified by the attribute praenuntiam