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

first phrase, the second is slightly, climactically longer in terms of syllables:
3 + 2 + 3 + 2 vs. 3 + 3 + 5. Alliteration (vidisse – vultus) adds further stylistic
colour to the first phrase and homoioteleuton (-tas, -as) to the second. Such
rhetorical balance is very un-Tacitean, but remember that here we are
hearing Nero’s words – Tacitus imbues the speech with the sort of oratorical
patterning that, for him, suggests hypocrisy. The change of tense of the
infinitives is significant: the perfect vidisse tells us that the people’s faces
struck him in the past, but the present audire implies that the complaints of
the people are still ringing in his ears, even though they are private. That
Nero is partial to what people say ‘off-record’ as it were could be open to a
sinister interpretation: he has spies everywhere.
itineris is a partitive genitive dependent on
tantum. Any absence of the emperor from Rome was a potential source of
disquiet for the urban populace, and Nero’s trip to Alexandria would have
taken several months.
cuius, the genitive singular
of the relative pronoun, refers to Nero and depends on egressus (accusative
plural). The (implied) subject is the citizens. Nero, putting words into the
mouths of his subjects, claims they cannot bear any absence of his: if they
cannot even (ne ... quidem) endure his short (modicos) absences from the city,
how are they to cope with a long one? Tacitus mischievously has Nero out
himself here as someone with a tendency towards immoderate actions –
recall 15.23 where he portrayed the emperor as immodicus in both joy and
grief.
suetus is the perfect
participle of suesco (‘accustomed’), here construed with the infinitive
(refoveri). fortuita is an adjective used as a noun: it is a neuter accusative
plural (‘the contingencies of life’) governed by the preposition adversum.
Nero imagines the people consoled in the face of adversity by his presence.
The vivid verb refoveri (literally, ‘to be warmed up again’ = ‘to be revived’)
gives a sense of Nero’s warming glow for his people, and this is caused not
even by his actions but merely by being seen (aspectu). (It is tempting to
take refoveri as a proleptic reference to the fire – Nero sure knows how to
make the city glow...)