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

disaster. In fact, much of the Rome Tacitus knew was of Nero’s creation; but
Tacitus, as John Henderson reminds us, here also stands in dialogue with
his historiographical predecessors: as he will go on to rub in (below), many
readers would have been familiar with the historian Livy’s (59 BC – AD 17)
account of the rebuilding of Rome after near-total destruction by the Gauls,
a nostalgic evocation of the citizens’ higgledy-piggledy but faultlessly
communitarian reconstruction work that draws to a close his first pentade
and Rome down to Camillus, the ‘august’ saviour (and precursor for
Augustus). Tacitus’ phrase here virtually signals the intertextual reference. 164
pueritiae, quique sibi quique aliis consulebat, dum trahunt invalidos aut
With ad hoc, Tacitus moves from the physical destruction to the human cost.
More
pronounced variatio from Tacitus: first a noun/genitive combination
(lamenta paventium feminarum – ‘lamentations of frightened women’), then
an ablative of quality (fessa aetate – ‘[those] of feeble age’), and finally a
genitive of quality (rudis pueritiae – ‘[those] of tender childhood’). This
syntactical variety helps to create interest, but also conveys a sense of the
confusion and panic. Tacitus here focuses on the physically weaker and
more vulnerable inhabitants (women, the old, children) in just the same
way as he might describe the victims of a military attack on the city. This
is pathos writ large.
The anaphora quique ... quique... and
polar contrast sibi ... aliis (‘themselves... others’) underlines how all groups,
selfish and altruistic, were contributing to the mayhem.
trahunt and opperiuntur form
another polar contrast.
mora (an instrumental ablative) and the circumstantial
participle festinans form yet another polar contrast, further enhanced by the
anaphora of pars and the asyndeton. The overall picture is one of panic.
164 See further Kraus (1994). Cicero, at de Lege Agraria 2.96, also mentions that Rome’s roads
‘are none of the best’ and its side-streets ‘of the narrowest’.