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

animalia maris are well balanced phrases that, with variation, cover animals
of the air (volucres), land (feras), and sea (animalia maris). They come from
far-flung and exotic habitats. Just like the phrases for the animals, those
Tacitus uses for their location – diversis e terris and Oceano abusque – feature
parallelism with variation: in each case, the preposition (e, abusque) that
governs the ablative comes second (a phenomenon called ‘anastrophe’);
many words in this sentence are highly literary or poetic, and abusque (from
ab + usque) especially. As Woodman points out, Oceanoque abusque ‘is a most
unusual phrase. The distance from which the creatures have been brought
is underlined by the uncommon preposition abusque, which itself is further
emphasized by being placed after its noun. And when Tacitus elsewhere
refers to Oceanus in his own person (as opposed to in reported speech), he
means a specific sea such as the English Channel or the North Sea; only here
does he use Oceanus without qualification, evidently referring to the sea or
great river which, according to ancient legend, encircled the world but about
which even Herodotus expressed some scepticism on several occasions.’ 141
For the idea that all the animals are called to the cosmopolis by the blessed
world-ruler’s magnetism, cf. Calpurnius Siculus 7, on Nero’s showpiece. The
shepherd Corydon reports that ‘he saw every kind of beast’ (57: vidi genus
omne ferarum) during games in the amphitheatre sponsored by the emperor.
completa et contra scorta visebantur nudis corporibus. iam gestus
motusque obsceni; et postquam tenebrae incedebant, quantum iuxta
nemoris et circumiecta tecta consonare cantu et luminibus clarescere.
crepido, stressed further by its position, is a rare
word (a more prosaic synonym would be ripa) and reinforces the sense of
exoticism and flamboyance of the previous sentence. One could take it as a
locative or, more likely, as dative with adstabant.
lupanar, -aris n. is, as
Lewis & Short coyly put it in their entry, ‘a house of ill-repute’ – or, to
use the vernacular, a brothel. The disgraceful incongruity of noble women
(inlustribus feminis) manning brothels sums up the total disintegration of
Roman morals. The piety, chastity and virtue of the noble Roman family
woman (matrona) or maiden (virgo) was an essential part of idealised
141 Woodman (1998) 175.