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

After dilaceration, Tacitus lists
two further alternatives: crucifixion and burning. The verb continues to
be interirent. The text of this passage is uncertain throughout and one
manuscript reading is flammati (instead of flammandi). But the correlation
of two perfect participles (contecti, adfixi) with a gerundive is typical of
Tacitean variatio, and syntactically anticipates what follows. There is clearly
an extra element to this humiliation, as the Christians were mockingly
subjected to the same punishment as their founder, though Tacitus does not
dwell on this. That some were nailed to the cross ‘proves that the Christians
executed in the Vatican Gardens certainly had no Roman civil rights’ since
Roman citizens were protected from suffering the mors turpissima crucis
(‘the most humiliating death on the cross’), an atrocious penalty reserved
for slaves and other subject people without citizenship. 197 Those sentenced
to be burned alive were dressed in the so-called tunica molesta, a shirt
impregnated with inflammable material (such as pitch).
The phrase
in usum nocturni luminis (‘for the purpose of nightly illumination’) brings
home the appalling use of these human beings as torches: the horribly
practical in usum (‘for the purpose/use of’) conveys Nero’s callousness.
Miller draws attention to the Virgilian echo in nocturni luminis. 198 See Aeneid
7.13 (when Aeneas and his crew pass by the island of Circe – she who turns
human beings into various forms of wildlife): urit odoratam nocturna in
lumina cedrum (‘she burns fragrant cedar-wood to illuminate the night’).
habitu aurigae permixtus plebi vel curriculo insistens. unde quamquam
adversus sontes et novissima exempla meritos miseratio oriebatur,
tamquam non utilitate publica sed in saevitiam unius absumerentur.
Tacitus here steps back in time (note
the pluperfect obtulerat) to supply information about the setting, in which the
appalling executions took place. The sentence unfolds with deliberate relish:
we have the chiastic design of hortos suos – ei spectaculo, the delayed subject
Nero, and the placement of the emperor’s name right next to spectaculo, which
generates the mocking rhyme -lo -ro. At this stage in the Annals, the gardens
197 Lichtenberger (1996) 2171.
198 Miller (1973) 97.