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

auctores prodidere), sed omnibus quae huic urbi per violentiam ignium
acciderunt gravior atque atrocior.
This very simple phrase, after the ornate language and
structures of the previous passage, comes as a crashing shock, enacting the
eruption of the fire. The inversion of verb (sequitur) and subject (clades) and
the use of historic present make the opening highly dramatic. sequitur is also a
quintessentially annalistic term, which should not obfuscate the fact that Tacitus,
under the veneer of reporting events in chronological sequence, has engineered
a highly effective juxtaposition. The sense of sequitur here is both temporal
and causal: the fire ‘follows’ the abominations, but also ‘follows from’ them.
The word clades points backwards as well as forwards, summing up Nero’s
perversion of Rome as a preliminary step towards the full-scale destruction of
the city. As Syme puts it: ‘another spectacle follows abruptly, the conflagration
of the city.’ Tacitus, of course, delays specifying what the clades comprised,
slipping in an almost en passant reference to fire in the relative clause. We do
not actually learn when precisely the fire broke out (19 July AD 64) until 41.2.
Another classic example of Tacitean
‘alternative motivation’, not explicitly favouring one version or the other
(incertum), but giving clear weight to the less reputable option (dolo principis)
by placing it in the emphatic second position. We still haven’t heard what
the matter at issue actually is.
Tacitus likes to record instances
where the sources differ for a variety of reasons: (a) it shows him to be
a diligent and analytic historian who takes several conflicting accounts
into consideration; (b) it allows him to include colourful and dramatic yet
perhaps also dubious elements under the protection of referencing other
historians; and (c) it obliges us to pitch into the story and figure out what
we think must have been going down.
In the light of the seemingly unanimous condemnatory tradition set out
above, one also wonders which authors Tacitus refers to when reporting
that opinion on Nero’s guilt was divided in the sources he consulted. This
question has yet to find a satisfying answer. What is at any rate noticeable
is how guarded Tacitus is in formulating the options: he does not commit
himself explicitly either way.