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

industry were not meant to offend, but to act out one version of the ideal
princeps. In part, as Champlin goes on to show, Nero succeeded – which
accounts for his enormous popularity with certain segments of the
population long after his death. One group he did not manage to win over
were certain authors of the Trajanic age (Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius), who are
largely responsible for fixing Nero’s image in historiography – and thus
for posterity (including us...). They are all scathing about Nero’s stageperformances
and investment in spectacles as a way of defining his public
image. In his Panegyricus, a speech of praise composed for the emperor
Trajan, Pliny the Younger notes the contrast between Nero’s and Trajan’s
style of imperial leadership as follows (46.4–5):
Idem ergo populus ille, aliquando scaenici imperatoris spectator et plausor,
nunc in pantomimis quoque aversatur et damnat effeminatas artes, et
indecora saeculo studia. ex quo manifestum est principum disciplinam
capere etiam vulgus, cum rem si ab uno fiat severissimam fecerint omnes.
[And so the same populace which once watched and applauded the
performances of an actor-emperor (sc. Nero) has now even turned against
the pantomimes and damns their effeminate art as a pursuit unworthy of
our age. This shows that even the vulgar crowd can take a lesson from its
rulers, since a reform so sweeping, if once started by an individual, can
spread to all.]
The first figure we encounter in the set text is not the emperor Nero but
a senator by the name of Thrasea Paetus (or Paetus Thrasea). He had an
illustrious political career, rising to the rank of consul in AD 56 (early
in Nero’s reign), even though he frequently embarked on a course of
collision with the emperor. Within the literary world of the Annals, he
is a character of structural significance. His appearances (and absences)
are always well-timed and strategic: ‘Though he [sc. Thrasea Paetus] had
been suffect consul in A.D. 56, he does not appear on the pages of Tacitus
till two years later. Indeed Tacitus carefully controls his appearances to
produce a consistent pattern of one who continuously sought, not always
without success, to uphold libertas senatoria.’ 61 One striking example of
61 Martin (1969) 139. See also Syme (1958) II 557.