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

interfered. Moreover, he identifies Thrasea’s desire for glory as the primary
motivating factor behind his intervention. This entails a tension between
a principled commitment to republican norms (such as a libertas) and the
self-seeking desire to inscribe oneself in the memory of the Roman people
(gloria) – at whatever cost. 63
It is worth linking this discussion to Tacitus’ biography – and authorial
preferences. The type of the ‘principled troublemaker’ or, to use a more
positive label, ‘martyr of republican libertas’ is a recurrent figure in Tacitus’
oeuvre, with Thrasea Paetus, who was invited to commit suicide under
Nero, and his son-in-law Helvidius Priscus, who met the same fate under
Vespasian, leading the way. Their seemingly upright conduct and apparent
adherence to a set of old-fashioned norms and values, their courage, and
defiance to death, make for excellent foils for bad emperors. 64 But Tacitus’
own position vis-à-vis this kind of senatorial peer was decidedly ambivalent
– and unsurprisingly so. Both he himself and his father-in-law Agricola had
stellar careers under ‘bad’ emperors. It is therefore not without interest that
Tacitus in the Agricola explicitly contrasts the futile, self-serving desire for
immortality through heroic suicide that motivated the martyrs with the
commitment to civic duties and service to the res publica that underwrote
the public career of his father-in-law (Agricola 42.3–4):
proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris: Domitiani vero natura
praeceps in iram, et quo obscurior, eo inrevocabilior, moderatione tamen
prudentiaque Agricolae leniebatur, quia non contumacia neque inani
iactatione libertatis famam fatumque provocabat. sciant, quibus moris
est inlicita mirari, posse etiam sub malis principibus magnos viros esse,
obsequiumque ac modestiam, si industria ac vigor adsint, eo laudis excedere,
quo plerique per abrupta sed in nullum rei publicae usum ambitiosa morte
inclaruerunt.
[It is characteristic of human nature to hate whom you have harmed: but the
natural disposition of Domitian, quick to anger, and the more inscrutable
the more implacable, was nonetheless mollified by the moderation and
circumspection of Agricola, because he was not trying to call forth fame and
death with obstinacy and empty boasts of freedom. Let those, whose habit
it is to admire what is forbidden, know that even under bad emperors there
can be great men; and that obedience and unassuming conduct, as long as
63 Sailor (2008) 20: ‘One telling feature of Tacitus’ treatment of Thrasea and Helvidius, then,
is an understated but perceptible emphasis on their strong interest in glory.’
64 See Sailor (2008) 17: ‘what gave these men their glamour was their apparent solidarity
with the cause of senatorial dignity and significance: to show adherence to a set of values
shared by their peers, they had held their own lives cheap.’