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

conveys a sense of function, purpose, or result (OLD G). These are men
‘raised by their excessive wealth so as to inflict harm on their inferiors.’
The construction hints at Tacitus’ pessimistic view of human nature.
For those of you who have read Cicero, in Verrem 2.1.53–69, at AS-level,
provincial exploitation during the late republic will be a familiar topic.
Tacitus mentions it at the very beginning of the Annals, where he surveys
different social groups and their reasons for welcoming, or at least
accepting, the new world order of the Augustan principate (1.2.2):
neque provinciae illum rerum statum abnuebant, suspecto senatus
populique imperio ob certamina potentium et avaritiam magistratuum,
invalido legum auxilio, quae vi ambitu, postremo pecunia turbabantur.
[Neither were the provinces ill-disposed towards that state of affairs,
given that they had become disillusioned by the regime of the senate and
the people on account of the warring among the powerful and the greed
of the magistrates and because of the ineffective protection afforded by
the laws: they tended to be rendered invalid by sheer force, political
manipulation, and, ultimately, bribery.]
Our passage suggests that the principate did by no means bring an end
to provincial exploitation, even though the type of suffering inflicted on
subject peoples changed: under imperial rule, the provinces were at least
no longer ransacked by civil-war parties (cf. certamina potentium) fighting
it out on their territory, with at times terrible costs to the indigenous
population. Greed of magistrates, however, seems to have remained a
constant. 73
una vox eius usque ad contumeliam senatus penetraverat, quod
dictitasset in sua potestate situm [sc. esse] an pro consulibus qui Cretam
In contrast to what precedes it, the syntax
of this sentence is reasonably straightforward, if intricate:
– we have a main clause (verb: penetraverat)
– this leads up to the subordinate quod-clause (verb: dictitasset; for the
subjunctive, see below)
– dictitasset in turn introduces an indirect statement, with situm (sc. esse)
as infinitive and an implied id as subject accusative, which takes the
an-clause as predicate (’... that it resided in his power whether...’)
– within the an-sentence, finally, we have a relative clause (qui Cretam
obtinuissent), with pro consulibus as antecedent.
73 See further Brunt (1961), with discussion of our passage at 215–17.