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

offering up scapegoats to cover his own perceived responsibility for the
fire. The legal term reos (‘defendants’) is an ironical comment on Nero’s
perversion of justice. Remember Tacitus’ preoccupation with pretence,
hypocrisy and reality here as Nero happily massacres innocent people as
a diversion. Or is this still sensible ‘damage-limitation’ within an effective
crisis management?
The superlative quaesitissimis makes clear
the savage ingenuity Nero applied to the task. Although Tacitus shares his
compatriots’ suspicion of the Christians, he shows palpable sympathy for
the victims of Nero’s cruelty throughout this section.
The antecedent
of quos is reos, the subject of the relative clause is vulgus. Nero picked on
a group already unpopular with the people (cf. invisos). The -iani suffix in
the term Christiani is ‘somewhat contemptuous’, 187 suggesting the mob’s
feeling towards this new, little-known sect. The strongly moralising
flagitia (‘outrages’) denotes the abhorrence felt towards the Christians:
‘their crimes were those (like incest and infant cannibalism, cf. Tert.
Apol. 7) which a lurid imgination attributed to an apparently peculiar and
secretive group, and of which members of that group were automatically
presumed to be guilty (cf. flagitia cohaerentia nomini Pliny, Epp. 10.96.2).’ 188
Miller’s references are to Pliny the Younger, Epistle 10.96.2 (cited in the next
note) and the Apologeticum of Tertullian, a Christian living around AD 200.
In this work, Tertullian offers a defence of Christians against charges of (i)
taking part in crimes like ritual incest, infanticide, and cannibalism of the
babies killed; (ii) high treason and contempt for the Roman state religion.
There is some dispute as to whether Tacitus wrote Christianos or
Chrestianos and, if (as seems now consensus) the latter, whether he meant to
refer to Christians or, as some have argued, Jewish followers of an agitator
called Chrestus, who is mentioned by Suetonius, Claudius 25.4, 189 and whose
Greek name, or title, ‘Useful, Good Guy’, would make a usefully sardonic
point here, unlike ‘The Anointed One’; all the same, as Lichtenberg puts
187 Miller (1973) xxviii.
188 Miller (1973) xxviii.
189 For a discussion of the paleographical evidence see e.g. http://www.textexcavation.com/
documents/zaratacituschrestianos.pdf