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

Tacitus endows
Nero’s formulations with unintended irony: the great fire of Rome is only
a paragraph away.
The Capitoline Hill was the
religious and ceremonial heart of the city and the empire. The temple of
Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus, with the associated cults of Juno
and Minerva, was the focus of Rome’s official religion. There is something
perverse about Nero’s visit to the Capitol: in the ‘old days’, generals on
the way to wars would have gone to pray to Jupiter, and it was also on the
route of the triumphal procession for victorious generals; but now Nero
goes there to pray for the help of the mighty Jupiter Optimus Maximus for
his theatrical trip to the East.
The preposition super here as a causal sense: ‘on
account of.’
36.2 illic veneratus deos, cum Vestae quoque templum inisset, repente
recordatione numquam timore vacuus, deseruit inceptum, cunctas sibi
curas amore patriae leviores dictitans.
veneratus ..., cum ... inisset, tremens ... seu numine exterrente ...
The main verb of
the sentence comes at last after the long build up of participles and
subordinate clauses. The syntax conveys a sense of Nero’s mounting
anxiety until the breaking point, represented by the two-word clause
deseruit inceptum.
There were temples to many deities on the Capitoline, not
just Jupiter.
The temple of Vesta was in the Roman Forum just
below the Capitoline Hill. Vesta was the goddess of the hearth and the
Roman family: Nero is creating the image of a father leaving his family on
his travels.
Nero’s fear manifests itself in physical
symptoms. The sudden onset of Nero’s panic is made clear by repente, and
the extent of it by cunctos and the vivid verb tremens.