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

The subject of patefecit and extruxit is Nero. patefecit takes three accusative
objects, in a climactic tricolon: campum Martis, monumenta Agrippae, and
hortos suos. (First we hit a public area of the city, then the building of one of
Nero’s ancestors, finally his own gardens.) solacium (also in the accusative)
stands in apposition to all three.
Tacitus changes the tone, marked by the sed, from Nero’s
selfishness and failure to stop the fire to his more noble efforts at relief. His
account is balanced, especially when compared to other historians of the
event, presenting Nero’s suspected arson in the same breath as his great
energy in trying to help. What an actor! How to tell what’s real in Nero’s
world?
Tacitus conveys the misery of the citizens
with the powerful and strengthened adjective exturbato (‘frightened out
of their mind’) and the fact that they are homeless refugees (profugo) in
their own city. Given Tacitus’ investment in aligning the fire of Rome
with the sack of Troy (following in the footsteps of Nero, as the end of
this paragraph makes clear), the term profugus may also gesture to Virgil’s
Aeneid and the most famous profugus in Roman history, Aeneas. See Aeneid
1.2, where Aeneas is introduced as fato profugus (‘exiled by fate’).
The ‘Plain of Mars’ had once been the mustering and
training ground for soldiers just outside the boundaries of the old city
walls. By this period, it was intensively developed, especially with imperial
buildings such as the Pantheon and sporting facilities. It is usually referred
to as the Campus Martius (see Map of Rome).
Agrippa, Augustus’ right-hand man, had
orchestrated much of the building on the Campus Martius, including the
Porticus Vipsania, the Pantheon and the so-called Baths of Agrippa.
This simple phrase suggests both the number of
the impoverished Romans (multitudinem) and their ruin (inopem).
The emphatic position of the verb subvecta suggests
Nero’s speedy measures.
The port of Ostia was located on the coast at the ‘gateway’ (‘ostium’)
to the Tiber south west of Rome (see Map of Italy).