Notes

All dates are ad unless stated otherwise. Where citations from Tacitus are given without the work being identified, the references are to the Histories.

BOOK 1

1.     This second consulship is in 69. His first consulship had been in 33 under Tiberius, who allegedly predicted Galba’s principate (Tacitus, Annals 6.20).

2.     Augustus (then Octavian) defeated Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium in 31 BC, which ended a long series of civil wars and left the way open for Augustus to become emperor.

3.     Vespasian (69–79), Titus (79–81) and Domitian (81–96) constitute the dynasty of emperors known as the Flavians. Tacitus was in fact hostile to Domitian, as the opening and closing chapters of his first work, the Agricola, show.

4.     Tacitus famously never produced this work, turning instead to Augustus’ successors, the Julio-Claudian emperors (14–68).

5.     Galba on 15 January 69, Otho on the morning of (probably) 16 April 69, Vitellius on 20 December 69 and Domitian on 18 September 96.

6.     Tacitus probably means Vitellius vs. Otho (69); Vespasian vs. Vitellius (69); and Saturninus vs. Domitian (January 89). The fighting in the civil war between Galba and Otho (69) was restricted to Rome.

7.     Tacitus means the Batavian revolt, led by Julius Civilis and narrated at 4.12–37, 54–79 and 5.14–26.

8.     This reference is to the advance into Scotland during Domitian’s principate led by Tacitus’ father-in-law Agricola, followed by a degree of disengagement. It is exuberant rather than exact.

9.     Tacitus is thinking above all of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. Pliny the Younger wrote two letters to Tacitus offering raw material describing these events (Epistles 6.16, 20), but the relevant section of the Histories has not survived.

10.   See 3.71–2.

11.   This probably indicates the final years (93–6) of Domitian’s principate.

12.   Nero committed suicide on 9 or 11 June 68.

13.   As Nymphidius Sabinus was the son of Martianus, a gladiator, and Nymphidia, a freedwoman (Plutarch, Galba 9.2), he was not an obvious imperial candidate, although in a bid to raise his status, he claimed that the emperor Caligula was his real father (Tacitus, Annals 15.72). He had been commander of the praetorian guard in Rome since 65. After deserting Nero and persuading the praetorians to declare for Galba, Nymphidius was replaced as praetorian prefect by Galba’s associate Cornelius Laco. This prompted him to attempt his own imperial coup.

14.   The epigram also features at Plutarch, Galba 18.2, Suetonius, Galba 16.1 and Cassius Dio 64.3.3.

15.   See 1.48 for the consul’s obituary.

16.   See 1.46 for the death of this equestrian.

17.   Galba had marched from his province in Spain to Rome during the late summer and early autumn of 68. Cingonius Varro, a senator and consul-designate, had written a speech for Nymphidius Sabinus to deliver before the praetorians during his bid for power (Plutarch, Galba 14). Petronius Turpilianus had been consul in 61 and served as governor of Britain. He commanded some of the troops raised by Nero when Galba revolted, but the soldiers switched their allegiance to Nero.

18.   The Seventh (Galbiana) Legion, recruited by Galba in Spain in June 68 shortly after arriving in Rome, was posted to Carnutum in Pannonia under the command of Antonius Primus.

19.   Vindex, praetorian governor of the province of Lugdunese Gaul, had challenged Nero in early March 68 and eventually mustered a force of nearly 20,000 men (Plutarch, Galba 6.3). In mid-May, he was defeated at Vesontio by Verginius Rufus, the governor of Upper Germany, and committed suicide.

20.   Despite Galba being proclaimed emperor in Spain, Clodius Macer, the legate in charge of a legion in Africa, decided in April 68 to initiate his own rebellion and issued coins bearing his own name and image. He was put to death in the late summer or early autumn of 68 by the procurator of Africa, Trebonius Garutianus, on Galba’s orders. See further 2.97.

21.   Fonteius Capito, governor of Lower Germany from mid-67 to 68, had acted promptly to address the threat of a Batavian revolt (4.13), but he had been plotted against by his subordinates (1.58).

22.   Nero was thirty-one when he died; Galba was now seventy-two: Plutarch mentions his baldness and wrinkles (Galba 13) and Suetonius says that he had a hooked nose and hands and feet deformed by arthritis (Galba 21).

23.   The ex-consul Cluvius Rufus, Galba’s successor as governor of Spain, had accompanied Nero on his singing tours and survived the civil wars to write history under Vespasian. Tacitus presents him as defensive (2.65) and cautious (4.43).

24.   Hordeonius Flaccus had succeeded Verginius Rufus as governor of Upper Germany. His efforts subsequently to contain the Batavian revolt were ineffectual (4.18–19) and he was eventually killed by his soldiers (4.36).

25.   There were in fact only three legions to hand, since the Third (Gallica) Legion had been sent to Moesia by Nero.

26.   This war had broken out in 66 and would last until 73. The main problem now facing the Romans was the capture of Jerusalem.

27.   See 2.1, where Titus’ trip is not presented quite so straightforwardly.

28.   Tiberius Alexander was born in Alexandria and was a member of a prominent Jewish family. He was the first significant figure to endorse Vespasian’s imperial challenge by getting his troops to swear an oath of loyalty to him on 1 July 69 (2.79).

29.   Tacitus here deploys ring-composition, picking up on the opening words at 1.1 and rounding off the opening section before embarking on his main narrative.

30.   Pompeius Propinquus was loyal to Galba and was subsequently murdered (1.58).

31.   Tacitus’ contemporary readers would no doubt have compared Galba’s plans for adopting a successor in 69 with the elderly emperor Nerva’s adoption of Trajan in 97.

32.   Icelus had travelled from Rome to Clunia with extraordinary speed (the journey took seven days) in order to tell Galba about Nero’s suicide, and his promotion to equestrian status was part of his reward, although Tacitus is generally scornful about the promotion of freedmen. The substitution of the respectable Roman name Marcianus for Icelus is a measure designed to obliterate evidence of Icelus’ servile past.

33.   There are four other versions of this story (Tacitus, Annals 13.45–46, Plutarch, Galba 19–20, Suetonius, Otho 3, Cassius Dio 61.11) and they all manifest differences in points of detail, reflecting the diverging narrative concerns of each author.

34.   Marius Celsus was a military man, who subsequently became governor of Syria in 73. He wrote a monograph on military tactics and Tacitus may well have used his writings as a source.

35.   Piso Licinianus came from a lofty but unlucky family. His father, mother and eldest brother were put to death during Claudius’ principate; another brother was prosecuted and executed towards the end of Nero’s principate, and his last brother, Scribonianus, was approached to make a bid to become emperor in 70 (4.39). Although he refused, he appears to have been executed (1.48). Piso’s wife, Verania, survived, but was later victimized by the informer Regulus, who sought a legacy from her (Pliny, Epistle 2.20).

36.   Rubellius Plautus, a great-grandson of the emperor Tiberius and an aristocrat with strong Stoic sensibilities, was put to death in 62 (Tacitus, Annals 14.57–9).

37.   Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 5.19 discusses the formal procedures for adoption, including preliminary investigation by the pontiffs and ratification by the curiate assembly. Augustus used a lex curiata to adopt Tiberius (Suetonius, Augustus 65), as did Claudius in adopting Nero (Tacitus, Annals 12.26). Galba’s procedure here seems rather less formal.

38.   Galba’s illustrious ancestry was rooted in these two prominent republican families.

39.   Galba means Crassus Scribonianus (see note 35 above).

40.   Tacitus means the Fourth (Macedonica) Legion and the Twenty-Second (Primigenia) Legion in Upper Germany.

41.   The reality of staging the adoption before the army (the source of power) undercuts many of the plausible and lofty sentiments just expressed by Galba in his speech.

42.   Galba refers to an ancient Italian method of levying troops, which is anachronistic in the current context, but is designed to play up his reputation as a man who adheres to standards associated with the Roman republic.

43.   This theme recurs in the description of Galba’s murder at 1.41.

44.   The sestertius was a unit of Roman currency. For further details, see S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds.), Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn, Oxford 1996), ‘coinage, Roman’.

45.   Plutarch (Galba 23) and Suetonius (Galba 16) imply that these men were discharged by Galba because they had been involved in Nymphidius Sabinus’ plot, which may mean that Tacitus has postponed a detail which could have been related earlier. Pacensis and Fronto feature subsequently in the narrative as supporters of Otho.

46.   This thought seems to prepare the way for Otho’s altruistic and impressive suicide narrated at 2.46–51.

47.   Tiberius was the first emperor to keep an astrologer openly at court (Tacitus, Annals 6.21), but they were frequently banished (Annals 2.32, 12.52). Even an emperor such as Vespasian, who himself habitually consulted astrologers, was prepared to banish them publicly (Cassius Dio 65.9). See further Histories 2.78.

48.   Tacitus is the only author to name Maevius Pudens, but this coheres with his general practice of naming minor characters in order to bolster his authority as a historian. For Tigellinus see 1.72.

49.   The Temple of Apollo, dedicated in 28 BC, was on the Palatine Hill next to the imperial palace and it had a magnificent library attached to it, but its precise site is disputed.

50.   Julius Martialis appears only here and at 1.82.

51.   Galba had warned Piso about the dangers of flattery at 1.15, so this comment is pointedly ironic.

52.   As C. Damon notes (Tacitus Histories Book I, 2003), Tacitus’ formulation in the Latin here echoes words used by Caesar at Civil War 2.32.8 about Nero’s great-great-grandfather, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus.

53.   Otho makes a point of raising the issue of the unpaid bonus in his speech at 1.37.

54.   This colonnade in the north of Rome was completed by Augustus and housed the general Agrippa’s map of the world (Pliny, Natural History 3.17).

55.   This building housed the censors’ archives and lay near the senate house, so the German troops were within easy reach of the Palatine and the Forum.

56.   This rebuke also features at Plutarch, Galba 26, Suetonius, Galba 19 and Cassius Dio 64.6.

57.   See 1.6.

58.   The warping of language in troubled times is a theme in Thucydides (3.82–3). Tacitus returns to it at 2.101.

59.   Polyclitus was a freedman of Nero, and Vatinius, a cobbler from Beneventum, was one of his lower-class favourites, described memorably by Tacitus at Annals 15.34. Aegialus is otherwise unknown.

60.   The Arsacidae, named after the tribal chieftain Arsaces, were the rulers of Parthia c. 250 BC–AD 224. Vologaeses I, who spent much of his reign fighting Rome, was the king of Parthia in 69, and Pacorus was his brother. This comparison does not feature in the parallel tradition.

61.   The military standards bore the image of the current emperor. The same powerfully symbolic act occurs when Caecina abandons Vitellius (3.13).

62.   The Pool of Curtius was a hallowed spot in the Forum which had emotive associations. It was here that Marcus Curtius sacrificed himself to preserve the well-being of the state in obedience to an oracle in 364 BC (Livy 7.1–6), and subsequently this was where annual vows to preserve the emperor’s safety were sworn.

63.   Plutarch and Cassius Dio both claim that Densus was protecting Galba, not Piso. In Tacitus, the emperor is completely abandoned.

64.   The insincere kisses here recall Otho’s kisses for the crowd at 1.36, but once he is dead the praetorians will shower his corpse with kisses which reflect their genuine affection for the man (2.49).

65.   Vespasian’s elder brother, Flavius Sabinus, was removed from his post as city prefect in 68 by Galba. See 3.75 for his obituary.

66.   The freedman Icelus died by crucifixion, which was the standard method of execution for slaves (and thus ‘demotes’ him in death).

67.   Modern critics generally argue for emending this figure to forty-seven, on the grounds that fifty-seven implies that Vinius would have been twenty-six or twenty-seven when he first began his military service (i.e. suspiciously old).

68.   Tacitus may have meant to say ‘paternal grandfather’. The ‘proscriptions’ were lists of Roman citizens who were declared outlaws and often hunted down and executed: Sulla, Antony and Octavian (Augustus) all resorted to this brutal means of eliminating personal and political enemies. There was a Titus Vinius on the proscription lists of 43 BC.

69.   The emperor Caligula, who held power between 37 and 41.

70.   These were all battles which took place during the civil wars of the late republic. At Pharsalus in northern Greece, Julius Caesar defeated Pompey in 48 BC; at Philippi (also in northern Greece), Antony and Octavian defeated Brutus and Cassius in 42 BC; in 41 BC Octavian sacked the town of Perusia (north of Rome), and in 43 BC Antony was defeated at Mutina in northern Italy by Octavian and the consuls Hirtius and Pansa.

71.   Tacitus’ ambivalent attitude towards Vespasian in some sense reflects his independence as a historian: since the Flavians won the civil war, the available sources were likely to have cast them in a good light.

72.   Tacitus means the boundary between Upper and Lower Germany, formed by the Vinxtbach near Niederbreisig, between Remagen and Andernach.

73.   See 1.8.

74.   Lyons had suffered a serious fire in 65, but Nero had intervened financially to help (Tacitus, Annals 16.13) and the city had stayed loyal to him during the revolt of Vindex.

75.   I.e. 68.

76.   Vitellius’ father had been consul in 34, 43 and 47 (the last two with the emperor Claudius as his colleague). He is the only person other than the emperor to hold a third consulship between Augustus’ associate Marcus Agrippa in 27 BC and the accession of Vespasian.

77.   Plutarch, Otho 6 also offers a description of Caecina in which he stresses his outlandish appearance and tendency to wear Gallic trousers.

78.   These clasped hands of bronze or silver (also at 2.8) served as tokens of alliance or hospitality.

79.   A similar miscalculation occurs at 1.80 (where exploiting the cover of darkness only increases suspicion).

80.   These two legions were based at the same winter camp in Mogontiacum. This sort of ‘double occupancy’ was later banned by Domitian (Suetonius, Domitian 7).

81.   This incidental detail about Vitellius’ dining (also at Plutarch, Galba 22, Suetonius, Vitellius 8) introduces an important motif in the characterization of Vitellius (elaborated at 1.62).

82.   The base was at Bonna.

83.   The Batavian auxiliary leader Civilis will go on to stir up trouble in the form of the Batavian revolt (4.12–37, 54–79, 5.14–26).

84.   See 1.56.

85.   Trebellius Maximus, the son of a legionary commander and an enthusiastic supporter of Vitellius, governed Britain from 63 to 69. Tacitus gives an alternative version of his governorship at Agricola 16, but one which is equally discreditable to Trebellius Maximus. Nevertheless, he survived the civil wars to become one of the Arval Brethren in 72.

86.   Vitellius will not arrive in Rome until mid-July 69 (2.89).

87.   The troops are themselves playing the role of an ideal general by spurring themselves to action. The lack of involvement of the supreme commander Vitellius thus becomes even more conspicuous.

88.   Tacitus here uses the Latin word sagina for food (also associated with Vitellius at 2.71, 88), which has degrading associations with feeding up gladiators.

89.   Vitellius continues to shy away from the title of Caesar after he has defeated Otho (2.62), but he does eventually accept it when his position as emperor is under threat (3.58).

90.   There is another important bird omen (this time associated with Otho) at 2.50. Vespasian was apparently influenced by omens in formulating his own imperial challenge (2.78).

91.   Although the two towns were indeed located on opposite banks of the River Rhône, Vienne on the east bank was 20 miles downstream from Lyons on its west bank. Tacitus has come up with a description which heightens the drama of the rivalry.

92.   This was because Lyons was a garrison town through which supplies and reinforcements passed and where retired veterans tended to settle.

93.   This was a considerable sum, amounting to one third of a legionary’s annual salary.

94.   The German armies supported Vitellius but the Pannonian armies subsequently backed Otho (1.76, 2.11). The dispatch was presumably trying to persuade the Pannonian legions to support Vitellius.

95.   Claudius Severus is otherwise unknown.

96.   Vespasian later established a colony of veterans at Aventicum, possibly a reflection of his gratitude for the Helvetii’s attempt to resist Vitellius’ forces.

97.   This cavalry unit perhaps got its name from Gaius Silius, a governor of Upper Germany under Tiberius.

98.   These towns (mod. Milan, Novara, Ivrea and Vercelli) were all located north of the River Po.

99.   The reason for this cavalry unit’s name is disputed.

100. Tacitus presents the quest for military glory as a crucial motivation for Caecina (cf. 2.24).

101. Tacitus’ version of this incident does Otho much less credit than the parallel scene at Plutarch, Otho 1 (placed prominently right at the start of the biography), where Otho is cast as kind and sincere in his offer of clementia.

102. This plan is curiously similar to Vespasian’s strategy for winning the civil war (3.8), but his corn blockade was superseded by the actions of the pro-Flavian general Antonius Primus.

103. There is exaggeration here: Vitellius had been acclaimed emperor in Germany over the course of 2 and 3 January, while Otho had been declared princeps in Rome on 15 January. Both men had made their challenge against Galba.

104. In fact the praetorians will remain so loyal to Otho that some of them will commit suicide beside his funeral pyre (2.49). Vespasian shrewdly exploits this loyalty by setting himself up as Otho’s avenger (Suetonius, Vespasian 6).

105. The text here is uncertain and the name is a conjecture.

106. This was a statue of the general in the costume associated with a triumph. Full triumphal processions in Rome could now only be held by members of the imperial family.

107. The right (enjoyed by a consul) to use a special ceremonial chair (sella curulis) inlaid with ivory, and to wear a special bordered toga. These ornamenta were awarded to the commanders of all three legions even though only one legion had participated in the fighting.

108. The mutiny is mentioned more briefly in the parallel tradition (Plutarch, Otho 3, Suetonius, Otho 8, Cassius Dio 64.9). The juxtaposition of this sequence and the easily won victory against the Rhoxolani maintains tension: despite that victory, this is no time for complacency as internal troubles continue to escalate.

109. The cohort’s arms, or some of them, were evidently stored in the armoury of the praetorian barracks. It looks as if the unit had been ordered to move northwards to the front.

110. Plutarch, Otho 3 says that there were eighty guests.

111. The picture of a captured city (urbs capta) was a familiar rhetorical set-piece (cf. Quintilian 8.67–71) so this shorthand would have enabled Tacitus’ readers to summon up their own vision of the troubled city.

112. This extraordinarily generous sum represents 20 months’ pay for a legionary (and seems excessive given that order has now been restored). Plutarch, Otho 3 gives the same figure.

113. Plutarch’s abridged version of this speech at Otho 3 has a different emphasis.

114. Otho takes the opportunity to appeal to his soldiers’ xenophobia by aligning Vitellius’ men in exaggerated terms with German barbarians.

115. Otho here appears to exaggerate the scope for upward social mobility in a bid to forge a bond between the senate and the soldiers.

116. Some Vitellians do appear to have been sent to Rome already (1.75).

117. Lists of prodigies regularly appeared in traditional republican annalistic history (especially Livy), but here there is a tension between the ‘traditional’ subject matter and the unconventional context – civil war.

118. Plutarch, Otho 4 and Suetonius, Vespasian 5 imply that this portent indicates the challenge of Vespasian, based in the East, but Tacitus avoids making this reading explicit.

119. This ancient wooden bridge, famously defended during the early republic by Horatius Cocles against the invading army of Lars Porsenna, was considered sacred. It was therefore maintained by priests. Augustus took special pride in the fact that he had restored it (Res Gestae 20.5).

120. This was the main road for travel between Rome and the Po valley in the north. It ran through the Tiber valley, across the Apennines to Ariminum on the Adriatic coast. Suetonius, Otho 8 locates the obstruction at a point on the road 20 miles out of the city.

121. This was a purification ritual to propitiate the gods – the presiding priest progresses around the city boundary three times and then sacrifices a pig, a sheep and an ox. Otho’s respectful attitude towards omens and the gods here contrasts with Galba (1.18) and Vitellius (2.91).

122. This campaign will be described at 2.12–15 and 28.

123. The ex-consul Suetonius Paulinus was the most famous of the three generals, particularly after his exploits in Britain where he put down the revolt of Boudicca (60–61). In Otho’s council-ofwar he argued for a delay before engaging with the Vitellians, but he was ignored, despite his experience (2.32).

124. Aquinum was the hometown of the poet Juvenal.

125. Dolabella’s luck would not last. See 2.63–4 for his death at the hands of Vitellius.

126. Scribonianus was a governor of Dalmatia, who led a short-lived revolt against Claudius in 42, but he was abandoned by his troops and soon met his death. Tacitus would have given an account of these events in one of the lost sections of the Annals.

127. The original sacred shield had been a present from Jupiter to Numa, but then eleven copies were made to safeguard the original (Ovid, Fasti 3.365–86). Special priests called the Salii would carry them around Rome from 1 until 23 March. For Otho to have waited until this ceremony was complete would have involved lingering in Rome for another eight days. Otho’s desire for speedy action is here presented in positive terms, but it will prove fatal to him in the first battle of Bedriacum (2.39–45).

128. The eminent and charismatic orator Galerius Trachalus had been consul in 68 with Silius Italicus and then became Otho’s spin-doctor (despite being related to Vitellius’ wife, Galeria). He was apparently very good looking and had an extraordinary speaking voice (Quintilian 10.1.119, 12.5.5).

BOOK 2

1.     Titus (born 30 December 39) was currently twenty-nine years old and was probably seeking a praetorship.

2.     Suetonius, Titus 3 gives a description of Titus, emphasizing his strength, small stature, pot belly and excellent memory.

3.     Tacitus makes a point of stressing that the Flavian challenge emerged at a relatively early stage in the year 69, whereas Josephus (reflecting pro-Flavian propaganda) locates the first moves to the principate of Vitellius. The emphasis on Titus here, rather than Vespasian, hints at a possible fault-line in the Flavian camp, with Titus as the potential emperor rather than Vespasian himself.

4.     Berenice, great-granddaughter of Herod the Great of Judaea, was a prominent and fabulously wealthy eastern queen, who had the potential to assist the Flavians financially, but she could also evoke memories of dubious predecessors, such as Cleopatra, from the civil wars of the late republic. After the civil war, she came to Rome in 75 to live with Titus, but she was eventually dismissed, despite the help she had provided.

5.     The temple of Venus on Cyprus in Old Paphos overlooked the wealthy city of New Paphos, which contained the Roman proconsul’s residence and the main port for those en route to Syria and Egypt. It was a backdrop aptly reflecting the character of the hedonistic young Titus.

6.     Aerias (also featuring at Annals 3.62) is not mentioned outside Tacitus. Alternative versions of the story suggest that Agapenor, leader of the Arcadian forces who fought with Agamemnon at Troy, founded the temple.

7.     A legendary king of Cyprus, who was supposed to have invented tiles and copper mining (Pliny, Natural History 7.195).

8.     Tacitus’ readers could have seen this conical representation of Venus on coins.

9.     The Jewish revolt began in May 66 and was eventually suppressed on 2 September 70 when Titus overran Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. Masada, the final fortress to hold out after the fall of Jerusalem, capitulated in April 73, but Vespasian and Titus still held their joint triumph in Rome in 71. Tacitus would have narrated all of this in the lost books of the Histories.

10.   Tacitus also implies that Mucianus commanded four legions at 1.10, 2.6 and 76, but the Third (Gallica) Legion had been transferred to Moesia by Nero.

11.   This understatement downplays the campaigns of Nero’s general Corbulo, who fought a number of campaigns to recover Armenia from Parthia.

12.   The Latin text here is problematic and different editors have suggested different readings. See R. Ash, Tacitus Histories II (2007), p. 94 for discussion.

13.   The appearance of a false Nero, suggestively juxtaposed with Tacitus’ account of the incipient Flavian challenge, neatly captures the uncertainty of the times. At least one, and more probably two other men, would claim to be Nero. One pretender appeared during the principate of Titus (Cassius Dio 66.19) and another surfaced in 88 or 89 under Domitian (Suetonius, Nero 57). The chaotic circumstances of Nero’s suicide left room for belief that the emperor had not actually died.

14.   These references would have featured in the missing books of the Histories.

15.   This was a small island in the Cyclades, famous for its cheeses and hot springs.

16.   Calpurnius Asprenas, a member of a distinguished consular family, was a relative of Galba’s adopted son, Piso. He became suffect consul at some point between 70 and 74 and proconsul of Africa in 83.

17.   The journey of the severed head back to Rome marks a neat, if gruesome, narrative transition. Tacitus liked this touch sufficiently to deploy it again almost at once (2.16).

18.   At Dialogue 8.1, Tacitus’ Aper cites Vibius Crispus as the model of a successful speaker, while Quintilian calls him ‘smooth, agreeable, born to please’ (10.1.119). He flourished under Nero and became a notorious informer, but he still went on to become a friend and adviser to Vespasian. Crispus allegedly survived to the age of eighty by not speaking his mind (Juvenal 4.89–93), or by doing so only when it was safe. He was dead by 93.

19.   This Neronian equestrian informer appears only here in Tacitus, despite the emphasis on his notoriety.

20.   Boudicca’s revolt had broken out in the late summer of 60, but it was suppressed by Suetonius Paulinus in 61 (Tacitus, Agricola 15–16, Annals 14.29–39, Cassius Dio 62.1–12).

21.   Tacitus is our only source to preserve an account of this Othonian expedition (2.12–15).

22.   This pleasant Ligurian town features in the Histories only here.

23.   The mother of Tacitus’ father-in-law Agricola was also killed in this very attack (Tacitus, Agricola 7).

24.   Julius Classicus was a wealthy and high-ranking noble from Augusta Trevirorum, who will later join the rebellion of Julius Civilis.

25.   Histories 1.70.

26.   Those recruited to the Roman army were trained to swim, but the Batavians were renowned as naturally talented swimmers (2.35, 4.12).

27.   The multicoloured cloak and trousers were seen as archetypal Gallic clothing. The locals are right to be wary of Caecina, but this should not be because of his clothing.

28.   Plutarch, Otho 6 has onlookers criticize Caecina, but in Tacitus he puts pressure on himself.

29.   The village of Bedriacum, notorious, yet obscure, provided the name for the two central battles of the civil wars of 69, although the fighting actually took place closer to Cremona, 20 miles to the east.

30.   Plutarch, Otho 7 also relates this military action, but his primary interest is in the hostile reaction of the Othonian soldiers to Suetonius Paulinus. Tacitus instead uses it as a marker of Caecina’s deteriorating morale.

31.   Castores was named after the twin gods Castor and Pollux, who probably had a shrine here.

32.   The capable and warlike Epiphanes, son of the wealthy king of Commagene, Antiochus IV, survived his injuries and is seen leading auxiliary troops to Judaea for his father in May or June 70 (Josephus, Jewish War 5.460–65).

33.   This mutiny has been strikingly displaced within the narrative. It broke out before the Vitellians reached Ticinum on c. 6 April, but perhaps after they had crossed the Alps and reached Augusta Taurinorum (c. 30 March). The decision not to place it before the narrative of the skirmish at Castores (the logical position) enables Tacitus to avoid interrupting the sequence of Caecina’s military setbacks and hints at the general’s self-absorption, as he appears to know nothing about the problems being faced by his colleague Valens.

34.   Ancient authors liked to use the metaphor of the body for the army (cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.48, Plutarch, Galba 4, Curtius Rufus 6.9.28, Silius Italicus 10.309–11), but here, while the auxiliaries are the ‘limbs’ and the legionaries the ‘trunk’, the ‘head’, usually representing the general, is completely (and expressively) ignored by the soldiers.

35.   This assertion seems to contradict Tacitus’ observation at 2.27 that it was Caecina’s defeat that prompted Valens’ men to obey their general, but it is not necessarily inconsistent: here we have a momentary disciplinary ‘blip’, which the soldiers resolve themselves.

36.   Tacitus here refines the earlier public assessment of Otho and Vitellius at 1.50, which had tended to elide the differences between the two men. The impressive conduct of Otho during the narrative of his suicide (2.46–50) will undercut the opinion here and demonstrates how quickly reputations can fluctuate.

37.   There are a number of council-of-war scenes in the Histories (extensive ones at 1.32–3, 3.1–2; abridged ones at 2.1, 2.16, 2.81). Often it is the personalities of the speakers rather than the specific nature of the advice in which Tacitus seems most interested. Here it is suggestive that Suetonius Paulinus’ unsuccessful set of arguments is given in full, whereas there is only one sentence devoted to the winning proposition that they should fight at once (outlined in more detail by Plutarch at Otho 8).

38.   The notion of a dramatic reversal on a single day derives from ancient epic, but Tacitus’ focus on the ‘first’ day sets up a painful reversal in slow motion. There is a poignant contrast, too, between the knowledgeable narrator and readers on the one hand and the protagonists in the text on the other, who have no idea of the impending disaster.

39.   This sequence of the battle on the River Po narrated at 2.34–6 has led some critics to see Tacitus as a bad military historian, since it is unclear what the strategic purpose of Caecina and Valens is (or indeed whether the crossing really was a bluff). The aim was presumably either to divert some Othonian troops from preparing for battle or to maintain pressure on the Othonian generals: in these two respects the venture certainly succeeds. Plutarch’s brief version of the same events (Otho 10) gives no hint that the Vitellians are bluffing.

40.   This was not Vespasian’s brother, the city prefect, but probably that man’s son, Vespasian’s nephew.

41.   Tacitus implies diligent consultation of multiple sources. Plutarch at Otho 9 cites Otho’s secretary Secundus for one explanation of the decision to fight immediately, but if Tacitus used Secundus, this must have been supplementary to his main source.

42.   Plutarch at Otho 9 offers a very different version, in that he speculates that the flawed characters of Otho and Vitellius make it plausible that the soldiers conferred in this way.

43.   This digression, written in such a style as to evoke the republican historian Sallust (cf. Catiline 10–13, Jugurtha 41–2, Histories 1.11–12), locates the latest power struggle in a dark moralizing framework and opens up a broad sweep of history for comparison. It also delays for dramatic impact the description of the final battle.

44.   The general and statesman Gaius Marius (157–86 BC), who was consul seven times, famously abolished the practice of enrolling soldiers from the propertied classes and enrolled a large army of volunteers from the people. With such a force he was able in 101 BC successfully to confront a German invasion by the Cimbri. In 88 BC, tensions came to a head with his rival Cornelius Sulla (138–78 BC), who had been elected to command the war against Mithridates VI, but who now marched on Rome and drove Marius to flee to Africa. Sulla was voted in as dictator for the purpose of reforming the constitution in 82 BC, after which he dominated Rome.

45.   At Pharsalus in northern Greece, Julius Caesar defeated Pompey in 48 BC; at Philippi (also in northern Greece), Antony and Octavian defeated Brutus and Cassius in 42 BC.

46.   There is a notorious problem in the Latin text here. See R. Ash, Tacitus Histories II (2007), p. 186 for discussion.

47.   14 April 69.

48.   Caecina and Valens will refer to this incident during Vitellius’ subsequent tour of the battlefield (2.70).

49.   For Suetonius, Otho 9, this rumour directly causes Otho’s defeat. The notion of the deception was useful afterwards as it allowed the Othonian soldiers to save face and to cast their enemies as underhand. By asserting that the rumour could have started by chance, Tacitus is laying claim to his independence as a historian.

50.   The notion that it was difficult to sell captives during civil war features again (3.34), but the reason highlighted there is the unanimous feeling of the people of Italy, determined not to buy such slaves, rather than any lack of effort from the Flavian soldiers.

51.   The lack of burial is shockingly expressive about the moral deterioration unleashed by civil war and also prepares the way for Vitellius’ gruesome visit to the battlefield almost forty days later (2.70).

52.   Otho’s suicide at Brixellum early in the morning of 16 April is a focal point in all our accounts (Plutarch, Otho 15–17, Suetonius, Otho 9–12, Cassius Dio 64.11–15). Tacitus employs various techniques to ennoble and add pathos to the death scene. His emphasis on calmness here imbues Otho with Stoic traits, further pointed up by the rising hysteria of everyone around him. Tacitus’ readers would have compared Otho’s conduct with famous scenes of suicide by Cato the Younger and Seneca the Younger.

53.   Versions of Otho’s speech to his soldiers also feature in the parallel tradition (Plutarch, Otho 15, Cassius Dio 64.13).

54.   Otho’s effort to lay the blame firmly on Vitellius for starting the war is put into perspective and undermined by an earlier observation that nobody attributed the start of the war to Vitellius (2.31).

55.   Otho’s grandiloquent use of his name to refer to himself in the third-person suggests emotional detachment and pride.

56.   The Latin word nouus here (in familiam nouam) is used in the same sense as in the phrase nouus homo: i.e. ‘new’ in the sense of being the first to attain the office of consul.

57.   Tacitus (and his readers) were well aware that Cocceianus would later be executed by the emperor Domitian for celebrating the birthday of his uncle Otho (Suetonius, Domitian 10.3).

58.   Plutarch, Otho 17 reports that Otho slept so soundly his attendants outside the room heard him snoring. Tacitus may have toned down this prosaic detail in accordance with the dignity of his genre.

59.   Otho knew all about such dangers from the treatment accorded to Galba, Piso and Vinius by his own troops in Rome. It is a pointed reminder of his more dubious characteristics just when he is at his most impressive. Severed heads could be a focus for particularly scornful treatment, as when Nero looked at Rubellius Plautus’ severed head and said ‘I didn’t know that he had such a big nose!’ (Cassius Dio 62.14).

60.   The prodigy of the strange bird is part of a structuring diptych which picks up on the earlier incident of the eagle leading Valens’ army south from Germany (1.62).

61.   Rubrius Gallus was sent by Nero to confront Galba (Cassius Dio 63.27), but promptly changed sides. He switched his loyalty first to Otho, then to Vitellius, and perhaps served as Flavius Sabinus’ agent in securing the betrayal of Caecina (2.99). He became governor of Moesia in 70 and conducted a punitive campaign against the Sarmatians.

62.   The Latin term patres conscripti (literally, ‘enrolled fathers’) is an honorific title designating the members of the Roman senate.

63.   Licinius Caecina, a new man in the senate and clearly ambitious, has chosen a formidable target. Eprius Marcellus was a notorious informer under Nero. His most famous victim was Thrasea Paetus in 66 and for prosecuting him he earned a staggering 5 million sesterces (Tacitus, Annals 16.33). Eprius Marcellus will feature again scrapping with Thrasea Paetus’ son-in-law, Helvidius Priscus, during the same senatorial meeting at which Vespasian was voted imperial powers (4.7–8).

64.   These travel warrants (diplomata) were folding tablets bearing the emperor’s name and seal and entitling the bearer to use the administrative infrastructure of the imperial communication network (posting-stations, transport and provisions).

65.   Wellesley emends the text here to make it clear that Lucius Vitellius, not the new emperor, is meant. Lucius was at Bononia (c. 200 miles from Rome) while Vitellius was at Andematunnum in Gaul (c. 600 miles from Rome), and as only days passed before the order reached Rome it is much more likely that the brother who was closer to the capital gave the order.

66.   The festival of Ceres was celebrated between 12 and 19 April with shows and games. On the final day of the festival, foxes were set on fire and released onto the track as an offering to Ceres (Ovid, Fasti 4.681–2). The holiday atmosphere of the festival of Ceres, a goddess associated with productivity and growth, seems alarmingly out of place after the self-destructive sequence of the battle and Otho’s suicide.

67.   Military commanders were normally deputies of the emperor, and as such reported to him, and not directly to the senate via the consuls. In the morally debased world of the Histories, even the absence of a vice can be taken as a virtue.

68.   Suetonius, Vitellius 12 accentuates the sensational, casting Asiaticus as Vitellius’ lover, whom he sold in a fit of temper to a travelling trainer of gladiators, but then he retrieved him and set him free. Suetonius does not mention anything about the request to reward Asiaticus coming from the soldiers.

69.   Albinus had been a particularly corrupt governor of Judaea between 62 and 64.

70.   Juba was the illustrious king who ruled Mauretania from 25 BC to AD 23. He was a cultured man and a prolific writer of works (now lost) in Greek on history, ethnography, geography, zoology, painting and drama.

71.   Albinus’ unnamed wife dies beside her husband in exemplary Roman fashion and indeed trumps Albinus by her bravery (cf. the unnamed Ligurian woman at 2.13).

72.   Vitellius will later secure the death of Junius Blaesus by poisoning (3.38–9).

73.   The boy, now about six years old, will be put to death by Vespasian’s general Mucianus (4.80). Try as he might, Vitellius, in projecting a message of a robust dynasty for the future, cannot compete with Vespasian’s two grown-up sons.

74.   Vitellius’ edict that all astrologers should leave Italy by 1 October apparently met with a sharp and witty response. The astrologers countered with their own notice that ‘a great good will have been done if Vitellius is no more by the same date’ (Suetonius, Vitellius 14, Cassius Dio 65.1).

75.   See 1.88.

76.   Given that Dolabella is about to be murdered, it is grimly appropriate that the first part of the Flaminian Way was flanked by tombs (Juvenal 1.170–71).

77.   The ex-consul Lucius Arruntius, famously considered capable of being an emperor by Augustus (Tacitus, Annals 1.13), was appointed governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, but Tiberius then kept him in Rome for ten years (Annals 6.27). He killed himself shortly before Tiberius’ death.

78.   See 2.43.

79.   The violent escalation is pointed up by the focus on two soldiers fighting to two cohorts being annihilated.

80.   Tacitus means the Batavian revolt (4.12–37, 54–79, 5.14–26), seen variously as a continuation of the civil war or as a foreign conflict.

81.   Warped spectatorship is an increasingly insistent aspect of Tacitus’ portrayal of Vitellius (cf. 2.61), but in the end he himself will become a ‘revolting spectacle’ (3.84). Victorious generals are seen surveying battlefields elsewhere in Roman literature (Caesar at Pharsalus, Lucan 7.786–96; Hannibal at Cannae, Livy 22.51, Silius Italicus 10.449–53), but usually they themselves have participated in the battle and there is not such a long interval between the fighting and the visit.

82.   The generals pointedly ‘rewrite’ the account of the battle, suggesting that the start of the fighting was much more organized than it really was (cf. 2.42).

83.   Even Hannibal after Cannae buried the Roman dead (Livy 22.52, Silius Italicus 10.558–75), so Vitellius’ callous treatment of his fellow-citizens is especially shocking.

84.   The implicit point of comparison is Vespasian (Tacitus, Annals 16.5, Suetonius, Vespasian 4), but Tacitus here omits the name, perhaps in a bid to distance himself from pro-Flavian propaganda.

85.   The man’s identity is not completely certain, but he was probably the nephew of Galba’s adopted heir Piso Licinianus and thus came from an illustrious family.

86.   That is, he was crucified.

87.   Tacitus now returns to the Flavian challenge, last considered extensively at 2.1–7. This current section has the effect of ‘decelerating’ Vitellius’ march to Rome by splitting it into two sections (2.57–73, 87–9) and it also undercuts pro-Flavian accounts of the challenge, which emphasized the spontaneity of the rising and suggest that it was triggered by a popular movement from the soldiers (Josephus, Jewish War 4.588–604). Tacitus’ Vespasian is much more calculating.

88.   See Book 1, note 28 for Tiberius Alexander.

89.   Tacitus will narrate the pro-Flavian uprising of the Third (Gallica) Legion at 2.85.

90.   Mucianus’ speech recalls but trumps Fabius Valens’ self-interested address to Vitellius to persuade him to become an imperial challenger (1.52; cf. the speeches to the wavering Flavius Sabinus at 3.64, and to Gnaeus Piso at Tacitus, Annals 15.59). The suasoria, ‘speech of advice’, was a familiar feature of the declamation schools, but Mucianus’ speech is much more than a rhetorical exercise. It serves to introduce a central figure in the Flavian campaign in his own voice, where previously he had only been characterized by Tacitus as narrator.

91.   Corbulo was an able but arrogant general under Claudius and Nero and had campaigned in Germany and Parthia. Nero forced him to commit suicide late in 66 or early in 67. His daughter, Domitia Longina, will marry Domitian, perhaps as early as 70.

92.   Mucianus’ point is that although he and Vespasian were unlikely to have worried Nero, Vitellius, not coming from such a lofty background, was far more likely to feel threatened.

93.   Mucianus is effusive about the unnamed Titus, but expressively silent about Domitian, with whom he may have had a tense relationship (4.85–6).

94.   Compared with the range of examples listed at Suetonius, Vespasian 5 and Cassius Dio 66.1, Tacitus is pointedly selective, passing over other early omens from the tradition.

95.   Carmel was the eponymous god of a mountain situated near the coast on the borders of Syria and Judaea. The place had long been associated with divine activity. The story of Vespasian’s consultation of Carmel’s oracle also features in Suetonius (Vespasian 5), but it is much less detailed there than the version in Tacitus.

96.   This detail is also in the parallel tradition (Suetonius, Vespasian 6), although there only the German legions are earmarked for transfer to the East and Mucianus is not identified as the originator of the emotive statement.

97.   Sohaemus became king of Emesa on the Syrian river Orontes in northern Syria in 54 and consistently helped the Romans, especially the Flavians. Antiochus IV was made king of Commagene by Caligula in 38. Despite the fact that he promptly aided Vespasian in both the civil and the Jewish wars, the emperor annexed his kingdom in 72 after the governor of Syria had accused him of planning an alliance with Parthia.

98.   Agrippa II, who had accompanied Titus on his journey to Rome, was the brother of Berenice, with whom he ruled a large area of eastern Palestine.

99.   Tacitus means the coastal region of Egypt, especially the area around the cities of Alexandria and Pelusium.

100. Mucianus has already staked his claim to the role of Vespasian’s socius, ‘colleague’ (2.77). It was a term which recalled the relationship between the elderly emperor Nerva and his adopted son, Trajan (Pliny, Panegyricus 9), as well as more dubious precedents such as the emperor Tiberius’ partner in power, Sejanus (Tacitus, Annals 4.2).

101. The formulation that Vespasian’s plans were accelerated, not prompted, by the enthusiastic Illyrian army pulls against pro-Flavian accounts of the civil war which suggested that the soldiers rather than Vespasian triggered this phase of the civil war (Josephus, Jewish War 4.588–604).

102. This self-selected Flavian general (nicknamed ‘Beaky’, Suetonius, Vitellius 18) is perhaps the most influential figure on the outcome of the whole civil war. The ambivalent character sketch which follows has been criticized as being inconsistent with the more positive portrait in Histories 3, but nothing in Tacitus’ subsequent narrative will detract from the opening assessment, which acknowledges the general’s talents, but warns of a distinctively amoral personality.

103. Cornelius Fuscus went on to become prefect of the praetorian guard under Domitian and so he would have featured prominently in the lost books of the Histories. He was killed on active service in 86 or 87 while fighting the Dacians.

104. See 2.68–9.

105. By this bridge (which was the inauspicious site of Galba’s massacre of the marines as he entered the city), the Flaminian Way crossed the Tiber two miles north of Rome.

106. In 477 BC the Romans were defeated on the River Cremera by Etruscan soldiers from Veii, and in 390 BC or 387 BC, they were beaten by the Gauls on the River Allia, after which Rome was sacked. Such anniversaries were deemed religiosi, that is, days when sacrifices should not be offered, nor any public business be conducted.

107. See 4.5 for Tacitus’ character sketch of this man.

108. Thrasea Paetus, a man of consular rank and a famous Stoic, engaged in increasingly frequent clashes with his fellow-senators and the emperor Nero (Tacitus, Annals 13.49, 14.48–9, 15.20, 15.23) and eventually withdrew from public life. He was prosecuted by Eprius Marcellus and Cossutianus Capito in 66, and this prompted his suicide (Annals 16.35), which was carried out in front of Helvidius Priscus, his son-in-law.

109. Promotion from commanding an auxiliary cohort to become one of the prefects of the praetorian guard is a meteoric rise. Vitellius will later imprison Sabinus because of his friendship with the treacherous general Caecina (3.36).

110. Now that the former masters of these freedmen had been reinstated, they could expect to be supported by them financially in a time of need and also to claim inheritances from them. In reinstating these rights, Vitellius is passing on to the former slaves a cost which he might potentially have had to bear himself.

111. Under Tiberius there were nine pretorian cohorts of 500 or 1,000 men each (Tacitus, Annals 4.5), but Sejanus added a further three cohorts. Vitellius’ increase to sixteen cohorts of 1,000 men was unprecedented.

112. Vitellius’ birthday was either 7 or 24 September (Suetonius, Vitellius 3).

113. Tacitus later corrects himself, saying that Tatius, not Romulus, had instituted the Titian priesthood (Annals 1.54). Tatius was a Sabine king who was supposed to have ruled jointly with Romulus for a time, but was eventually murdered.

114. Vettius Bolanus’ task was not made any easier by the fact that Vitellius had removed 8,000 troops from the island (2.57).

115. Suetonius, Vespasian 4 gives a different picture of Vespasian’s proconsulship, stressing his integrity and honesty (despite once getting pelted with turnips during a riot).

116. The Etesian winds blow in the Mediterranean during July and August from a north-westerly direction, making it easier to travel from west to east than vice versa.

117. It is probably now mid-September. Valens will set off in a few days (3.36), but Tacitus expressively and proleptically inserts his entire account of the Vitellian defeat at the second battle of Bedriacum (24–25 October; Histories 3.16–35) before narrating Valens’ departure.

118. The shifty former cavalry commander Lucilius Bassus was promoted by Vitellius to the prefecture of the fleets at Ravenna and Misenum (an unprecedented dual command), which makes his bitterness at lack of promotion seem rather unreasonable, although this is a conventional motive for treachery. Caecina’s motives for betraying Vitellius are much harder to pin down. Bassus was later adlected to the senate and made governor of Judaea in 71. He died in 72 or 73.

119. The warping of language during times of civil strife is a motif from the Greek historian Thucydides (Peloponnesian War 3.82). We have already seen the phenomenon when Otho appeals to his riotous soldiers to check their ‘valour’ (1.83).

BOOK 3

1.     Antonius Primus’ point is endorsed by Tacitus’ own description of the soldiers in the narrative at 2.93 and 99.

2.     The soldiers had earlier complained that they had been beaten by deception (2.44). The Pannonian legions in question are the Seventh (Galbiana), of which Antonius Primus himself is the legate, and the Thirteenth (Gemina/Twin), while those from Moesia are the Third (Gallica), the Seventh (Claudia) and the Eighth (Augusta).

3.     This version of events does not tally with the narrative at 2.41 (and cf. 2.70 for another version).

4.     See Book 2, note 103 for Cornelius Fuscus.

5.     This was a nomadic Sarmatian tribe who occupied the area between the Danube and Tisza rivers. Domitian led at least one campaign against them in 89.

6.     Sido and Italicus ruled the Suebian tribes, the Marcomanni and Quadi, in mod. Bohemia–Moravia. J. B. Rives, Tacitus Germania (Oxford 1999), pp. 298–300, has a helpful note.

7.     See Book 2, note 91 for Corbulo. Varus will be rewarded for his role in the Flavian campaign with the post of prefect of the praetorian guards, but Mucianus was clearly wary of his military talents and demoted him, although he puts him in charge of the corn supply as a compensation (4.68). Nothing is heard about him after this point.

8.     The defection will be described at 3.12, but the writing is already on the wall at 2.100–101.

9.     The exact location of Forum Alieni is unknown.

10.   The strategy of a corn blockade would also have a devastating impact on Italy, as well as on Vitellius’ soldiers, so the military intervention of Antonius Primus can, in some sense, be cast in a positive light. The plan is mentioned again at 3.48, and by February 70 Rome is presented as having only enough grain left to last her populace for ten more days (4.52).

11.   There appears to be a short lacuna in the Latin text here.

12.   The Po.

13.   The military tribune Vipstanus Messalla, the temporary commander of the Seventh (Claudia) Legion at the second battle of Bedriacum, is twice named by Tacitus as one of his sources (3.25, 28). He also features as a protagonist in Tacitus’ Dialogue, and later defends his half-brother, the informer Aquilius Regulus (4.42).

14.   The military standards were decorated with medallions bearing the images of Jupiter, Victory and Mars.

15.   Vespasian must have summoned or complimented Flavianus, who was therefore allowed to go on his way without further trouble.

16.   This pleasant accommodation is hardly the ideal place for a commander on campaign to be staying, accentuating as it does the contrast with the living situation of the common soldiers.

17.   Editors are divided over whether the Latin text here should read Memmius or Vibennius Rufinus. Either way, this commander features only here in the Histories.

18.   The idea that intermediate officers in the military hierarchy are unreliable and that the bond between the emperor and the soldiers takes precedence recurs in the Histories. We have seen it before in the response of the soldiers to the Othonian defeat after the first battle of Bedriacum and their protestations of loyalty to their emperor (2.46).

19.   This was a bridge across the Po which the soldiers destroyed in a bid to protect their rear as they marched westwards.

20.   Anticipating problems and taking action in advance to prevent them is a mark of the ideal general in Classical literature. Antonius Primus is highly competent as a general, if morally flawed as a man.

21.   24 October 69.

22.   The description here recalls the conduct of the republican rebel Catiline in his final battle narrated by Sallust, Catiline 60. Catiline, talented but morally flawed, was an eloquent figure for Tacitus to evoke in his portrait of Antonius Primus. He will conjure him up again in his character sketch of Sejanus at Annals 4.1.

23.   This is another instance where the Latin text is uncertain. Editors have suggested different readings for the first two words of the Latin of this sentence.

24.   Otho had used a similar argument at 1.84 in his speech to the mutinous praetorians. In both instances, the emphasis on the proper military hierarchy is problematic in the mouths of men who have been prepared to subvert it in order to get what they want.

25.   Weapons and uniforms were normally a way to distinguish two sides, but this differentiation evaporates in civil war: cf. Livy 8.6.15, Virgil, Georgics 1.489, Lucan, Civil War 1.6–7, Cassius Dio 41.58.

26.   The Latin text specifies the Fifteenth Legion, which was not involved in the fighting, so the Sixteenth is an emendation.

27.   Cassius Dio 64.13.1 also mentions the moon as a factor in the battle, but casts it as a dramatic effect, rather than a strategic one, as Tacitus does. Soldiers are portrayed elsewhere as having a superstitious regard for the moon, as in the description of the lunar eclipse at Tacitus, Annals 1.28.

28.   The Third (Gallica) Legion had served in Syria from the time of Mark Antony until 68, so it was well attuned to local customs.

29.   The father is fighting for the Vitellians and the son is a soldier with the Flavians. This story is trumped by Histories 3.51, an incident of fratricide where a Flavian soldier kills his brother on the opposing side and then shockingly seeks a reward for his actions. The notion of family members who kill their relatives on the enemy side is an expressive motif in the context of civil war (and may even make us think of the fratricide of Romulus and Remus, which lies at the heart of the Roman foundational myth). See also [Caesar] De Bello Hispaniensi 27.6 and Silius Italicus, Punica 9.66–177.

30.   A testudo (Latin for ‘tortoise’) was a military formation, a closely bunched party of men interlocking their semi-cylindrical shields above their heads to form a screen against missiles.

31.   This sort of disreputable incentive was usually portrayed as being offered by foreign commanders to their troops, as when Juba gives the town of Vaga to his men to plunder ([Caesar] De Bello Africo 74.2); or if a Roman commander did make such an offer, it would ideally be in the context of a foreign war. There is something surreptitious and underhand about pointing to Cremona without giving clear and explicit orders.

32.   Pliny the Elder, whose Natural History survives, also wrote a continuation of the history of Aufidius Bassus (cited by his nephew Pliny the Younger in Epistle 3.5.4). It covered some or all of Nero’s principate, the civil wars and at least some of Vespasian’s principate, perhaps culminating in the Jewish triumph of 71.

33.   Priestly headbands (infulae) were woollen headbands adorned with ribbons worn by priests and used as symbols of surrender (cf. 1.66). They were also worn by sacrificial victims.

34.   The Vitellians capture some Othonian forces at Cremona (2.17) to which Caecina advances after his defeat at Placentia (2.22–3). The Cremonese may have capitulated relatively quickly to the Vitellians after that, but the level of Cremonese collaboration with the Vitellians during this phase of the war is left open by Tacitus. For the building of the amphitheatre, see 2.67.

35.   Descriptions of the sack of a city were a conventional aspect in Roman historical narratives and epic, with a familiar set of rhetorical motifs (cf. Sallust, Catiline 51.9, Livy 21.15.1, 29.17.15 and indeed the whole of Virgil, Aeneid 2). The fact that this sack takes place during a civil war deepens the sense of horror.

36.   Mefitis was the goddess of sulphurous vapours emanating from the ground who was worshipped in Italy for her power to avert such pestilential exhalations and to protect the fields and flocks. The reference to her here is pointed, given that the bloody battlefield full of stinking unburied corpses was likely to generate disease.

37.   218 BC.

38.   This is a gentle dig at the parsimonious Vespasian, who apparently refused to offer financial help to restore Cremona, even though it had been destroyed by troops fighting in his name.

39.   Caecina’s departure was described at 2.100, and the narrative now moves back to relate events in Rome from that point onwards. Tacitus’ decision to place this material after his account of the Vitellian defeat at Bedriacum accentuates the sense of futility associated with all of Vitellius’ actions during this period.

40.   Caecina had beaten them to it by betraying Vitellius and currying favour with the new regime.

41.   It may seem odd, but although under the principate the Roman people no longer elected their magistrates (including the consuls), such appointments were still formally terminated by popular legislation, not by the senate. So by offering the one-day consulship to Rosius Regulus, the emperor was insulting the Roman people, with the collaboration of the senate.

42.   See Book 2, note 72 for Blaesus. Romans had developed a taste for so-called exitus literature, involving descriptions of the death scenes of famous men and women. It is possible that Blaesus’ death featured in such a work written by Titinius Capito, a friend of Pliny the Younger, who mentions the work (Epistle 8.12).

43.   In Roman literature, there were often piquant connections between dining and death. Models of skeletons featured at Roman dinner-parties in a bid to remind guests to enjoy themselves (life being short). Here, however, the association is rendered all too literal.

44.   Suetonius also records the grisly aphorism (Vitellius 14), although he attaches it to a different murder. It recalls the emotive language of Cicero (In Verrem 2.5.65, Orationes Philippicae. 11.8). We have already seen Vitellius’ grisly spectatorship of the aftermath of the first battle of Bedriacum (2.70).

45.   The accusation of sleeping with other men’s wives is a good device to blacken character: Cicero memorably uses it to denigrate the corrupt governor of Sicily, Verres (In Verrem 2.5.81). Tacitus reinforces his earlier portrait of Valens at 1.66.

46.   We last saw him in action at 2.12, resisting an Othonian incursion, albeit ineffectually. His loyalty would not last for long (3.43).

47.   Claudius had appointed him to the post in 43 (Tacitus, Agricola 13). See Suetonius, Vespasian 4 and Cassius Dio 60.20 for Vespasian and the campaigns in Britain.

48.   Caratacus was king of the Catuvellauni, a powerful tribe in southern Britain. He led an armed revolt against the Romans, but after his defeat he was handed over to the Romans by Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes with whom he had sought refuge. Claudius spared his life (Tacitus, Annals 12.33–8).

49.   Julius Civilis had been preparing his revolt between August and November 69. Tacitus will narrate these events at 4.12–37, 54–79 and 5.14–26.

50.   Tacitus has already narrated the short-lived incursion of the Rhoxolani into Moesia (1.79). Tacitus’ contemporaries would have been reminded of Domitian’s defeats when campaigning against the Dacians in 86 and 88 (which he would have narrated in the missing books of the Histories), and Trajan’s more successful campaigns against them in 101 and 102.

51.   The former consul Fonteius Agrippa was killed in Moesia late in 69 or early in 70 (Josephus, Jewish War 7.90–91). Rubrius Gallus (2.51, 99) was sent out to replace him and engaged in a series of punitive campaigns.

52.   Polemo II was the last king (38–63) of independent Pontus before it became a Roman province. He apparently continued to rule parts of Cilicia.

53.   This digression on Pontic shipbuilding exemplifies a standard technique of Roman historians, who liked to add colour to their narratives by supplying ethnographical details (cf. Tacitus, Annals 2.6 for a similar digression about special boats). Here, however, the potential enjoyment for Roman readers would have been tinged with concern that the digression is set in the context of barbarians threatening the stability of the Roman Empire.

54.   See Book 3, note 10 on the plan for a corn blockade.

55.   Mucianus will successfully deflate Antonius’ power-base by removing his most loyal soldiers to their winter-quarters, leaving the general isolated (4.39), and by writing critical letters to Vespasian (4.80).

56.   Legionary pay and terms of service were better than what was on offer to those who served in the fleet.

57.   Roman soldiers were made to pay for their kit by stoppages against their pay, and excessive marching wore out their hobnailed boots more quickly. It is interesting that Tacitus’ readers should need the term glossed, but this must reflect the increasing professionalization of the Roman army.

58.   In what survives of the Histories, Tacitus names only two sources directly, Vipstanus Messalla (3.25, 28) and Pliny the Elder (3.28), but the identity of Tacitus’ main source remains elusive.

59.   See note 29 above.

60.   This battle took place in 87 BC, when the Marian army under Cinna captured Rome, which was being defended by Pompeius Strabo (father of Pompey the Great).

61.   L. Cornelius Sisenna, praetor in 78 BC and legate to Pompey, died in 67 BC. He wrote a (now fragmentary) history of the Social war and the Sullan civil war, covering the period 91 to 78 BC. The work was consulted by Sallust (Jugurtha 95) and admired by Cicero (Brutus 228, On the Laws 1.7).

62.   Tacitus apparently took a story (the centurion’s suicide), which other sources (Suetonius, Otho 10, Cassius Dio 64.11, Plutarch, Otho 15) locate in the run-up to Otho’s suicide, and attached it to Vitellius. This reflects Tacitus’ narrative agenda in two respects: he did not want to detract from the heroism of Otho’s suicide by having a soldier show him the way, but instead he saw the potential of switching the tale to Vitellius in order to accentuate the emperor’s passivity and his stubborn denial that the Flavians were winning.

63.   The Latin right awarded (among other things) Roman citizenship to those who had held office as magistrates in their own communities, and legal privileges (without full Roman citizenship) to the inhabitants of such towns.

64.   Cassius Dio 64.16.1 says that they were vultures. For other suggestive omens involving birds, see 1.62 and 2.50.

65.   Tacitus likes to draw attention to cases where long-standing local rivalries flare up in the context of civil war (Lugdunum (mod. Lyons) and Vienna (mod. Vienne), see 1.65; Placentia and her neighbouring colonies, 2.21; Lepcis and Oea, 4.50). At 5.1, Tacitus refers generally to ‘the hatred common between neighbours’.

66.   See 1.62 and 2.62.

67.   Tacitus accentuates Flavian good fortune at 2.1, but he makes it clear here that this was partly due to inadequate leadership on the Vitellian side.

68.   The dashing but careless Petilius Cerialis had been commander of the Ninth Legion in Britain in 61, where he had suffered a humiliating defeat against Boudicca (Tacitus, Annals 14.32–3). He would go on to be consul and commander in the Rhineland in 70, where he was put in charge of quelling the revolt of Civilis, and he became governor of Britain over 71–74 (and consul again in the year 74).

69.   Urvinum is usually taken to be mod. Urbino, but Wellesley suggests that Tacitus refers to Urvinum Hortense (mod. Collemancio). The date is c. 10 December 69.

70.   Tacitus is probably thinking here primarily of Caecina and Bassus (2.100).

71.   See Book 1, note 65 for Flavius Sabinus.

72.   See Book 1, note 23 for Cluvius Rufus. Silius Italicus, consul in 68 and later governor of Asia, was an orator and poet whose epic on the Punic wars, the Punica, is still extant. Both men were dead by the time that Tacitus wrote the Histories.

73.   Strictly speaking, neither Julius Caesar nor Augustus had the opportunity to display clemency: Pompey had been murdered in Egypt without Caesar’s knowledge, and Antony committed suicide after his defeat in the battle of Actium.

74.   Vitellius, the emperor’s father, had been consul in 34, 43 and 47 (the last two with Claudius). The emperor Vitellius had been consul in 48, but Claudius was not his colleague.

75.   Vitellius’ wife is Galeria Fundana, cast by Tacitus at 2.64 as a woman of exemplary moderation. She was the mother of his two children, a boy (Germanicus, about six years old) and a girl (Vitellia? Suetonius, Vitellius 6). The daughter became a political pawn, being betrothed first to Valerius Asiaticus, who soon died (1.59); then she was requested as a wife by Otho (Suetonius, Otho 8) and was offered to the Flavian general Antonius Primus as a wife (3.78). Vespasian later arranged her marriage, though the identity of her husband is not known (Suetonius, Vespasian 14). Vitellius’ mother is Sextilia (2.64, 89).

76.   Suetonius, Vitellius 15 presents this as a ruse, which stirs the crowd to declare that Vitellius himself was Concord, after which the emperor defiantly lays claim to the surname Concordia. The Temple of Concord, founded by the republican general Camillus in 367 BC, was where the fate of the Catilinarian conspirators had been discussed in 63 BC. Lucius Vitellius’ house was presumably close to it, overlooking the north-western end of the Forum. Cassius Dio 65.16 actually has Vitellius successfully reaching his brother’s house.

77.   The Sacred Way led from the south-eastern end of the Forum to the Velia (a hill between the Palatine and Oppian hills), which therefore gave access to the imperial palace.

78.   The house of Flavius Sabinus was located on the Quirinal Hill in the north-eastern quarter of Rome.

79.   The Pool of Fundanus was somewhere along the route which led down from the Quirinal towards the Forum.

80.   Tacitus does not mean that her children and relatives were Vitellian sympathizers, but that as a woman she had duties to her family which she dropped in order to support Sabinus. She is named here partly to accentuate her bravery in doing so, but she does not feature again in Tacitus’ narrative. She was married to the Stoic Arulenus Rusticus (3.80) and was exiled after his execution in 93.

81.   The Aventine Hill in the south of the city was historically associated with the plebs, but by this point it was the location of elite housing. In the end, Vitellius will indeed flee to his wife’s house shortly before his death (3.84).

82.   The Grove of Refuge and Tarpeian Rock were both ancient sites with suggestively ironic associations, given the self-destruction and criminality of the protagonists. Romulus established the Grove of Refuge, located in a dip between the two peaks of the Capitoline Hill, as a way of expanding the citizenship and strengthening the state (Livy 1.8). The Tarpeian Rock, now the route for carrying out a criminal act, was the place from where criminals and traitors were thrown to their deaths (Livy 1.11).

83.   By suggesting that public opinion at the time pointed to the besieged as having set fire to the houses, Tacitus here is asserting his independence from pro-Flavian accounts (Josephus, Jewish War 4.649, Suetonius, Vitellius 15, Cassius Dio 64.17), which categorically laid the blame for setting fire to the Capitol on the Vitellians (the besiegers) rather than on the Flavians (the besieged).

84.   I.e. the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest.

85.   Tacitus refers here to two events. First, the Etruscan king Lars Porsenna laid siege to Rome (c. 507 BC) in order to try to reinstate the exiled king Tarquinius Superbus. The usual version of the story is that he was so impressed by Roman heroes such as Horatius Cocles and Mucius Scaevola that he abandoned his efforts and made peace with the Romans. Tacitus, in saying that the city surrendered, apparently follows a different version. Second, after defeating the Romans at a battle on the River Allia, the Gauls in either 390 or 387 BC captured and sacked the city of Rome (but according to many accounts, not the Capitol).

86.   This was in 83 BC during the civil war which Sulla won (Appian, Civil War 1.86, Plutarch, Sulla 27).

87.   Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus were the fifth (trad. 616–579 BC), sixth (trad. 578–535 BC) and seventh – and last (534–510 BC) – kings of Rome. Suessa Pometia, the capital of the Volsci in Latium, was captured by the Romans and its spoils were used to help pay for the building of the Capitoline Temple (Livy 1.53).

88.   Horatius Pulvillus’ second consulship is usually dated to 507 BC.

89.   I.e. 83 BC.

90.   Sulla’s associate Lutatius Catulus (consul in 78 BC) had dedicated the rebuilt temple in 69 BC.

91.   The Velabrum, a low-lying and congested commercial area of Rome, was located between the Capitol and the Palatine Hill.

92.   Unsurprisingly, Domitian’s activities during the siege of the Capitol later became the focus of flattery (Josephus, Jewish War 4.649, Martial, Epigrams 9.101, Statius, Thebaid 1.21, Silvae 1.1.79, Silius Italicus, Punica 3.609). In contrast, Tacitus accentuates Domitian’s cowardice on the day (Suetonius, Domitian 1 is more neutral).

93.   At the Gemonian Steps (‘Stairs of Groaning’) leading from the Capitol to the Forum, near the Mamertine prison, the bodies of criminals were exposed for final humiliation before being thrown into the River Tiber, so the place encapsulates the extremity of Flavius Sabinus’ fall from power. They will feature dramatically in Vitellius’ own death scene (3.85, Suetonius, Vitellius 17).

94.   This figure of a twelve-year tenure (not necessarily in consecutive years) has been questioned. It is possible that Tacitus has made a mistake, or a scribal error has crept in.

95.   This ploy of Atticus taking the blame did not succeed in the longer term: see note 83 above.

96.   The shrine of Feronia, an Italian goddess often associated with freedmen, was about three miles from Tarracina in the direction of Rome.

97.   See 3.57.

98.   Vergilius Capito had been governor of Egypt between 47 and 52. He came from Capua but seems to have owned property near Tarracina. His slave will later be executed for his treachery (4.3).

99.   Lucius Vitellius shares the vice of warped spectatorship with his brother the emperor: see Book 2, note 81 and Book 3, note 44.

100. The city was probably captured during the night/early morning of 17/18 December.

101. The Flavians had left Narnia on 16 December (Ocriculum was about 45 miles from Rome). The fact that they stop here to celebrate the festival of Saturnalia, which began on 17 December and lasted for several days, is highly inappropriate. If they had hurried to Rome, then they might have drawn trouble away from the Capitol and its temple, which was destroyed on 19 December.

102. This was the night of 19/20 December. The Saxa Ruba lay between Rome and Veii on the Flaminian Way, about 5 five miles north of Rome. The name was derived from the red volcanic rocks of the area (Vitruvius 2.7.1), but suggests a blood colour appropriate in the context of imminent slaughter in the city. The rocks were visible from the Janiculum (Martial, Epigrams 4.64.15).

103. Arulenus Rusticus, tribune in 66, praetor in 69 and suffect consul in 92, was a member of the Stoic group whose most prominent representatives were Thrasea Paetus and Helvidius Priscus. He published an account of Thrasea Paetus’ death (Agricola 2), which Tacitus may have used as a source in Annals 16. He was put to death by Domitian in 93. See note 80 above for his wife, Verulana Gratilla.

104. Musonius Rufus was a Stoic philosopher exiled by Nero in 65 (Tacitus, Annals 15.71). He had only recently returned to Rome after being recalled by Galba. Vespasian exiled him again, but he was recalled by Titus. Here Tacitus makes him seem especially unworldly in the face of the menacing soldiers.

105. I.e. 21 December. Antonius’ meeting with the legions took place on 20 December.

106. At 3.80, Tacitus had depicted the city populace as arming enthusiastically for Vitellius, and their glinting arms in the hills have just been seen by the Flavians (3.82). Here, however, Tacitus elaborates a general rhetorical theme of the work, which often casts the people of Rome as fickle and mercurial in the face of imperial challengers.

107. Sulla’s troops won victories in Rome in 88 BC and 82 BC (although on the latter occasion, strictly speaking, the fighting itself took place just outside the city); Cinna’s men did the same in 87 BC.

108. This was located just outside the Colline Gate to the north.

109. Suetonius specifies that it was a doorkeeper’s cubbyhole made to look inconspicuous by a dog tethered outside it (Vitellius 16) while Cassius Dio says that it was a dog kennel (64.20). Tacitus avoids such details, either because he regarded them as being inconsistent with the grandeur of historiography, or because he wanted to allow his audience some scope for pitying Vitellius in his final moments (or both).

110. Near the Pool of Curtius: see Book 1, note 62. The place is also a focus of attention at Vitellius’ accession (2.55).

111. See note 93 above.

112. The Latin text here has a short gap, but it obviously contained some basic information about Vitellius’ father which editors have supplied.

113. Tacitus sets up an apt closural device to the book (day becoming evening), but his focus on Domitian (who only emerges when it is safe to do so) points forward to the future; and the same device ends Book 4. In the absence of Vespasian and Titus, Domitian becomes a natural focus for the soldiers’ attention.

BOOK 4

1.     This is a familiar motif from accounts of the proscriptions which took place under the late republic (e.g. Appian, Civil Wars 4.26, a passage which also offers examples of loyal slaves).

2.     Capua had been loyal to Vitellius (3.57), but the Flavians had used Tarracina as a base, which was then captured by the Vitellians (3.76–7). So one might have anticipated that Tarracina would be treated especially well by the victors, but this did not happen.

3.     See 3.77.

4.     The combination of consular power with the praetorship (also specified at Suetonius, Domitian 1) is unparalleled. In the absence of Vespasian and Titus, Domitian is a convenient focus for the senate’s expression of support for the new regime.

5.     A triumph could only be celebrated for a victory over a foreign enemy (not over fellow-Romans). At 3.46 Tacitus records Mucianus quelling trouble which had broken out among the Dacians (rather than Sarmatians).

6.     Religious business usually took precedence over secular on the agenda of the senate, so Tacitus is being cutting here.

7.     Valerius Asiaticus, governor of Belgica, was Vitellius’ son-in-law (1.59), but he apparently died at some point very soon, leaving Vitellius’ daughter available for marriage again.

8.     His first appearance is at 2.91, but Tacitus postpones his character sketch until now in order to accentuate Helvidius Priscus’ role as a major opponent of the Flavians (Vespasian exiles him in 75 and he was subsequently executed).

9.     There are problems with the Latin text at this point.

10.   That is, Stoicism.

11.   See Book 2, note 63.

12.   Barea Soranus had been condemned in 66 under Nero (Tacitus, Annals 16.23, 30–33). The other man mentioned here may be Sentius Saturninus (the consul in 41 who had taken part in Claudius’ invasion of Britain), but this identification is far from secure.

13.   The references here are to Lucius Junius Brutus, who expelled Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome, and instituted the republic, and to Marcus Junius Brutus, the ‘tyrannicide’ who was one of the leaders of the group which assassinated Julius Caesar in 44 BC. The austere Marcus Porcius Cato (234–149 BC), the ‘Censor’, was a byword for upright behaviour, as was his great-grandson of the same name (95–46 BC), who opposed Julius Caesar.

14.   During the republic, tribunes of the people could use their ‘veto’ to intervene and stop particular motions being passed by the senate. It was an office which therefore originally had revolutionary and popular associations, but by the time of the principate tribunician power was subsumed under the emperor’s personal powers. This is the last known example of a veto being imposed by a tribune, but the fact that it is being used to bolster imperial power (rather than as an expression of independence) is striking and ironic.

15.   Publius Egnatius Celer was a Stoic from either Berytus or Tarsus, whose treacherous involvement in the downfall of Barea Soranus in 66 is described emotively by Tacitus at Annals 16.32 (cf. Juvenal, Satires 3.117). His subsequent conviction is narrated by Tacitus at 4.40.

16.   Calpurnius Galerianus had been exiled by the emperor Caligula, but was restored and given the consulship by Claudius. He was the cousin and son-in-law of the unlucky Piso who was proconsul of Africa (4.49) and son of the famous Piso who became the figurehead of the unsuccessful conspiracy against Nero in 65.

17.   This scene inauspiciously recalls Vitellius’ elimination of Dolabella narrated at 2.64.

18.   He was crucified (the usual mode of executing slaves). Tacitus accentuates that the freedman Asiaticus was ‘demoted’ in his manner of death.

19.   Civilis was preparing his revolt over the months August to November 69, but the really serious trouble only broke out in December (4.36 and 55).

20.   Tacitus also describes the Batavians at Germania 29. Their island (formed by the split of the lower Rhine in the Netherlands) is first mentioned by Julius Caesar (Gallic War 4.10). They had served as auxiliaries in the Roman army since the time of Augustus, and their knowledge of Roman fighting techniques potentially made them dangerous enemies.

21.   This land mass in the Netherlands is located between the mouths of the rivers Rhine and Waal. Tacitus describes it at Annals 2.6.

22.   Either in 43 when the invasion of Britain took place, or in 60–61 during the rebellion of Boudicca.

23.   The text here is contested: the name may be Julius Paulus.

24.   I.e. Civilis had lost an eye; Hannibal lost an eye while crossing the Alps during the invasion of Italy. Sertorius was a distinguished adherent of Marius and as governor of Spain was in rebellion against the Sullan regime during the years 80–72 BC. His liminal position between Roman and foreign makes him an especially apt point of comparison with Civilis, and Tacitus’ language here directly recalls Sallust’s description of Sertorius in a fragment of his (now fragmentary) Histories.

25.   This reflects the traditional ethnographic motif that northern barbarians had a large frame (e.g. Caesar, Gallic War 1.39, 4.1, Velleius Paterculus 2.106, Tacitus, Germania 4).

26.   Pro-Flavian accounts cast this revolt unambiguously as a foreign movement, but Tacitus persistently emphasizes the way in which it evolved from the civil wars (1.2, 2.69, 4.22).

27.   See 2.69 for the Batavians being sent to Germany.

28.   Gaius (Caligula) had gone to Germany in 39–40 and tried to engineer a ‘triumph’ by getting some Gauls to dye their hair red and pretend to be German prisoners (Suetonius, Caligula 47).

29.   Tacitus has Civilis use another ethnographical stereotype, namely submissive easterners passively acquiescing in kingship. Yet it will become clear by 4.17 that Civilis himself is aiming at kingship (4.17), so he is using the emotive language of liberty for ulterior motives. The Roman general Petilius Cerialis formulates this as a general point in his speech to the Treviri and Lingones: ‘However, they [the Germans] use “liberty” and other fine phrases as their pretexts. Indeed, nobody has ever desired to enslave others and gain dominance for himself without using this very same language’ (4.73).

30.   Since the collection of tribute was imposed in 27 BC, Civilis is clearly exaggerating for dramatic impact.

31.   In 9, the German rebel leader Arminius had famously ambushed the troops of Quinctilius Varus in the Teutoberg forest and massacred three legions. Varus subsequently committed suicide.

32.   The camp was at Vetera, and the two legions were the Fifth (Alauda) and the Fifteenth (Primigenia). Both legions were operating at a reduced strength since a proportion of each force had been sent to Italy (2.100, 3.14).

33.   Civilis appears to have read his ethnographical handbooks. This practice of stationing women and children behind the battleline for inspiration is described elsewhere as a stereotypical aspect of German warfare (Caesar, Gallic War 1.51, Plutarch, Marius 19 and 27, Tacitus, Germania 7).

34.   The auxiliary cavalry enjoyed more pay and prestige than the auxiliary infantry.

35.   I.e. the First (Adiutrix) Legion.

36.   The common soldiers are being much more decisive and robust in their denunciation of Civilis than their hesitant and ineffectual generals (whose potential status as traitors Tacitus leaves open as a possibility). At 4.24, they will direct their angry feelings towards Hordeonius Flaccus and openly accuse him of treachery.

37.   The serious consequences of this basic error become clear at 4.60.

38.   See also Tacitus, Germania 7.

39.   There is further ethnographical stereotyping at work here: short-lived ferocity at the start of a battle and greed for booty are common attributes of German fighters in Roman texts.

40.   Notice of the continuing siege is given at 4.28, 34 and 36; its grim finale is described at 4.59–60.

41.   Cf. here a related but different omen involving a river, the sudden flooding of the Tiber (1.86).

42.   In a related passage, Tacitus sceptically highlights the tendency for appropriate omens to be supplied only after events have happened (1.10).

43.   There are some words missing from the Latin text at this point (possibly indicating the distance of Novaesium from Gelduba), but the general sense is clear.

44.   For a similar instance of the common soldiers’ loyalty to Vitellius (and support for Vespasian amongst the officers), see 3.61.

45.   The official name Colonia Agrippinensium (mod. Cologne) reflects the settlement of a Roman colony of veterans there in 50 at the request of Agrippina the Younger (wife of Claudius), who had been born there.

46.   I.e. the camp at Vetera.

47.   Further ethnographical colouring: fondness for alcohol and pointless recklessness in battle were stock elements in the portrayal of northern barbarians.

48.   That is, until the point when news of the battle (24–25 October) reached Germany on about 7 November 69.

49.   Civilis may have appealed to Montanus in an opportunistic way, but the bond between the two men proved enduring: see 5.19.

50.   I.e. the Fifth and Fifteenth legions at Vetera.

51.   Vitellius had been killed in Rome on 20 December 69 (3.82–5).

52.   Tacitus will supply the details of these events at 4.48–50. The groundless fear of supposed trouble in Africa is particularly ironic given the apparent lack of reaction to the much more serious chain of events in Germany.

53.   Cf. Juvenal Satires 10.81 (the famous snub about the Roman people only being concerned with bread and circuses).

54.   The competent Julius Frontinus would go on to hold three consulships after serving as a legionary commander in Germany in 70 and governing Britain (c. 73–7). He wrote About the Aqueducts of the City of Rome (Nerva had appointed him superintendent of the aqueducts in 97) and Stratagems (both extant). He died in 103 or 104.

55.   For Tettius Julianus see 1.79 and 2.85.

56.   For Plotius Grypus see 3.52.

57.   Crassus Scribonianus was the brother of Galba’s adopted son, Piso. See Book 1, note 35.

58.   I.e. the Seventh (Galbiana) Legion, raised by Galba in Spain and brought to Rome (1.6). Its winter camp was at Carnutum in Pannonia.

59.   Suetonius, Domitian 18 refers to Domitian’s ruddy complexion. Tacitus at Agricola 45 claims that Domitian’s natural flush was a screen against showing any potential shame at his callous acts (also Pliny, Panegyricus 48). Blushing was normally associated with modesty (Pliny, Epistle 1.14, Seneca, Moral Epistles 11).

60.   The calendar was highly susceptible to proposals involving changing the names of months in a bid to flatter the emperor. So, the senate proposed that the month of April should be named after Nero (Tacitus, Annals 15.74), and May and June should be named after Claudius and Germanicus (Annals 16.12).

61.   See 4.10.

62.   The famous Cynic philosopher Demetrius, independent and out-spoken, was later banished by Vespasian in 71 for criticizing the regime (Cassius Dio 66.13). He features regularly in the writings of Seneca the Younger, who appears to have been fond of him, and he is seen advising Thrasea Paetus about the nature of the soul in the run-up to his death (Tacitus, Annals 16.34). Cynics abided by the principle that they should live according to nature and often lived a simple, primitive lifestyle. They frequently found themselves at odds with the Roman authorities.

63.   Junius Mauricus, the brother of Arulenus Rusticus (3.80 and Book 3, note 103), was exiled by Domitian after his brother’s execution. Nerva recalled him and he became one of Trajan’s advisers. Pliny the Younger speaks highly of him in Epistle 4.22.

64.   Despite Tacitus’ emphasis on the notoriety of these three informers, nothing further is known about them.

65.   In 67 (the year in which Paccius Africanus was consul), Scribonius Rufus and Scribonius Proculus were summoned to Greece and forced to commit suicide by Nero (Cassius Dio 63.17).

66.   For Vibius Crispus, see 2.10.

67.   The normal minimum age for a senator was twenty-five.

68.   Aquilius Regulus was a notorious informer under Nero and in 67 he had accused Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi (brother of Galba’s adopted son, Piso), as well as his father-in-law Quintus Sulpicius Camerinus Pythicus. Salvidienus Orfitus had been consul in 51 and was executed in 66 by Nero thanks to Regulus’ prosecution. No doubt these events would have featured in the lost final books of the Annals.

69.   Tacitus relates the colourful case of Octavius Sagitta, condemned in 58 for killing his lover Pontia, in more detail at Annals 13.44. Antistius Sosianus had been condemned in 62 for writing slanderous poems against Nero (Annals 14.48).

70.   The mock funeral is curiously reminiscent of the grand finale of Trimalchio’s dinner-party, narrated by Petronius at Satyricon 78.

71.   See 2.67 for their original discharge by Vitellius.

72.   See 4.2 for the surrender at Bovillae.

73.   The hunting down in Rome of individuals who were distinctively tall and young (4.1) already implies a particular vindictiveness against German troops (traditionally cast as being unusually tall, according to the ethnographic stereotype).

74.   See 2.71 and 91 for Vitellius’ distribution of consulships.

75.   Marcus Junius Silanus, who had been consul in 19 and had married Augustus’ great-granddaughter Aemilia Lepida, had been governor of Africa in 36–9 (although the dates have been contested). All four of their children suffered because of their illustrious parentage.

76.   The legates were appointed by the emperor, who personally decided when to bring them back, which often meant that they were in post for a long time, but the proconsular governors of senatorial (public) provinces rotated in office much more regularly so had less time to become entrenched.

77.   Valerius Festus, legate of the Third (Augustan) Legion, was a new man from Arretium. Despite being Vitellius’ relative (probably by marriage), he secretly switched his loyalty to Vespasian (2.98) and concocted a sound scheme to prove his loyalty by securing Lucius Piso’s death and winning gratitude from the Flavians. He was later granted triumphal ornaments for defeating the Garamantes, became suffect consul in 71 with Domitian and served as curator of the Tiber in 72–3. He afterwards served as legate of Pannonia in 73 and legate of Hispania Tarraconensis in perhaps 78–81.

78.   The reason for this cavalry unit’s name is disputed.

79.   See 4.11 and note 16 above for Galerianus.

80.   Baebius Massa became a notorious informer under Domitian and was later condemned for extortion in the province of Baetica in 93. Pliny the Younger writes to Tacitus about this case in Epistle 7.33 (also 3.4, 6.29), in a bid to ensure its inclusion in the Histories. Tacitus’ reference here suggests that Pliny would have found him receptive to such information.

81.   The Garamantes, from the interior, south of Oea and Lepcis, were a troublesome tribe who had helped the rebel Tacfarinas during Tiberius’ principate (Tacitus, Annals 3.74). Pliny the Elder talks about their irritating habit of filling up the wells with sand to prevent inroads being made into their terrain (Natural History 5.38).

82.   Vologaeses I was king of Parthia from 51 to 79.

83.   Tacitus will pick up this narrative at 5.1–13.

84.   Tacitus’ portrait of Vitellius’ mother, Sextilia, is an illustration of this point (2.63).

85.   See Book 3, note 10 on Vespasian’s original plan for blockading the corn supply. Tacitus uses the focus on the corn-ships as a neat transitional device to shift his narrative back to Rome.

86.   Lucius Vestinus, a knight from Vienna (mod. Vienne, in Gaul) had been prefect of Egypt (59–62) under Claudius.

87.   Certain types of tree were considered to bring good luck (Macrobius, Saturnalia 3.20 lists fourteen varieties).

88.   Plautius Silvanus Aelianus had been suffect consul in 45 (again in 74), and after military service in Germany (39–40) and Britain (43–44) he became proconsul of Asia in perhaps 53/4 and, later, legate of Moesia (60–66 or 67). Under the Flavians he served as governor of Hispania Tarraconensis and became prefect of Rome. Vespasian belatedly awarded him triumphal ornaments for his military achievements on the Danube during Nero’s principate.

89.   This triple sacrifice was a standard part of Roman rituals of purification. The sacrificial victims were led in procession around the object to be purified and then sacrificed to Mars, as the god who was supposed to ward off plague and pollution.

90.   The juxtaposition of this point with the narrative in the previous chapter about the restoration of the Capitol is pointed. The Flavians may have embarked on a physical restoration of the temple, but it will take more than that to reinstate respect for Rome after the civil wars.

91.   See 4.36.

92.   Julius Caesar apparently had many casual affairs: see Suetonius, Divine Julius 50–52, including some choice verses about his philandering in Gaul.

93.   See 4.18.

94.   Julius Sacrovir was an Aeduan chieftain who was one of the ringleaders of a Gallic revolt against Rome in 21 (Tacitus, Annals 3.40–47). He committed suicide after a decisive defeat and so offers Vocula an apt historical precedent.

95.   In terms of style, Vocula’s speech can be seen at many points to evoke Livy’s version of Scipio’s speech to his mutinous soldiers at 28.27–9.

96.   At 4.22, we can see that this lack of supplies is partly down to a basic mistake made by the Roman generals.

97.   Quirinus is the name that was taken by the deified Romulus, founder of Rome.

98.   The tables will soon be turned on Aemilius Longinus (a minor character named for impact): see 4.62.

99.   The early stages of the siege at Vetera are described at 4.21–3; and details of its continuation are given at 4.28, 34 and 36.

100. See note 96 above.

101. Tacitus at Germania 31 attributes a similar practice to the Chatti.

102. Tacitus also mentions at Germania 8 the veneration in which Veleda was held. She also features briefly in a poem of Statius (Silvae 1.4.90), indicating her capture in 77 or 78 by the Roman general Rutilius Gallicus, after which she was taken to Rome.

103. Tacitus has added significant Livian echoes in what follows. Livy had recorded in a vivid and memorable scene (9.4–6) the humiliating surrender of the Romans to the Samnites in 321 BC, after their defeat at the battle of the Caudine Forks. Further echoes are added at 4.72 in the description of the formerly rebellious legions.

104. Claudius Sanctus’ physical affliction recalls the one-eyed Civilis (4.13).

105. For the odium which could attach to an individual general for allowing the sacking of a city, we can compare Antonius Primus and the bad reputation which he gained after the destruction of Cremona (3.34). That incident becomes a point of comparison for the Roman soldiers in expressing their desire to sack Augusta Trevirorum (4.72); and a deterrent for their general Petilius Cerialis, who restrains his men for fear of gaining a bad reputation.

106. Tacitus allocates a Roman name (Mars) to the native god (Tiu), a ubiquitous technique among Roman authors, even if to a modern reader it seems a little odd in the immediate context of the envoy asserting German independence.

107. See especially Tacitus, Agricola 21.

108. This civilized vignette of the Tencteri and the people of Colonia Agrippinensium resolving their internal differences by speech rather than by resorting to warfare offers a pointed contrast to the conduct of the Romans during the recent sequence of civil wars.

109. See 4.12 for the talents of the Batavians at swimming.

110. He was building, perhaps, on his earlier claims of descent from Julius Caesar (4.55), but he seems not to have any of the military talents associated with his ‘ancestor’.

111. Sabinus and his wife successfully hid out for many years in an underground tomb and they even managed to have two sons during this time. Plutarch tells the story of their execution (Moralia 770d).

112. See Book 3, note 68 for Petilius Cerialis.

113. See 4.39.

114. His sister Tertulla had been married to Titus before her death (Suetonius, Titus 4). Clemens went on to become consul in 73 (and again at some point under Domitian) and governor of Spain in 81–3. Domitian eventually put him to death (Suetonius, Domitian 11).

115. The prefect of the praetorian guard was normally a knight, not a senator.

116. These are tribes from the west bank of the Rhine. The Vangiones had provided the Roman general Pomponius Secundus with auxiliary troops to combat raids made by the Chatti (Tacitus, Annals 12.27); and the current defection of all three tribes from Rome is very short-lived.

117. See 4.62.

118. The Roman troops here are represented in relatively positive terms by Tacitus: they are motivated not by a desire for booty, but by desire for revenge for the slaughter of their colleagues. Yet how far Tutor and Classicus were directly responsible for slaughtering the legions who had been besieged at Vetera is an open question. We see again how easy it is for individuals to be blamed for events set in motion by large groups of people.

119. See note 103 above for the Livian echoes in play here.

120. Although the Lingones are represented as having been defeated in battle (4.67), there is no indication that they had surrendered and hence they are an appropriate component for the audience of Cerialis’ speech defending Roman imperialism (cf. 4.14 for Civilis’ denunciation of it). The defeat of the Treviri under Valentinus is narrated at 4.71.

121. In the time of Marius, the Teutoni had invaded Narbonese Gaul and the Cimbri had marched into northern Italy, but the former were defeated in 102 BC at Aquae Sextiae and the latter were repulsed in 101 BC at Vercellae. These invasions had, nonetheless, caused huge anxiety at Rome.

122. Ariovistus, king of the Suebi, had invaded Gaul in about 71 BC. He defeated the Aedui and resisted all attempts of the Gauls to oust him. In 58 BC, however, Julius Caesar intervened and routed him (Caesar, Gallic War 1.31–53).

123. This assertion is an exaggeration: the one prominent example is Julius Vindex, governor of Lugdunese Gaul. Cf. Tacitus’ version of the debate in 48 about whether Gauls should be allowed to become senators (Annals 11.23–5).

124. This cynical observation endorses the point made by Petilius Cerialis in his speech at 4.74.

125. The reason for his absence is unclear. At 5.22, he is away from the camp because (people thought) he was having an affair with an Ubian woman named Claudia Sacrata.

126. This rash move is indicative of bravery, but could have been fatal: when the African rebel leader Tacfarinas did the same thing, he was promptly killed (Tacitus, Annals 4.25). Civilis tries something similar during battle and the plan backfires (5.21).

127. See 4.70 for their execution.

128. Tolbiacum was an important road junction.

129. Vitellius’ six-year-old son, Germanicus, had featured at 2.59, when the army had met him at Lyons. He apparently had such a bad stammer that he was almost dumb (Suetonius, Vitellius 6) and he is a poignant figure in the history of these civil wars.

130. Vespasian left Alexandria in late August or early September 70. His absence from Rome was convenient, in that he left Mucianus to handle the most distasteful aspects of the immediate aftermath of the civil war (such as the execution of Vitellius’ son).

131. Tacitus here uses a grand periphrasis for saliva (oris excrementum, ‘refuse of the mouth’), perhaps in order to avoid a term which he deemed incompatible with the grandeur of his genre. The most famous example is at Annals 1.65, when he refers to a spade as ‘the implement with which earth is removed’.

132. The two healings are also reported by Cassius Dio 66.8 and Suetonius, Vespasian 7, but in the latter version, they are preceded by the incident involving Basilides, which Tacitus places subsequently (4.82). The cynical coda about the witnesses who no longer have an incentive to lie is a Tacitean addition.

133. The oracular god Serapis (whose name is a blend of the Egyptian god Osiris and the Egyptian sacred bull Apis) was associated with the underworld. His most magnificent temple, the Serapeum, was in Alexandria. Vespasian’s visit reminds us of Titus’ earlier visit to the shrine of Aphrodite at Paphos (2.4) and Vespasian’s other visit to the altar of the god of Mount Carmel (2.78).

134. The name Basilides means ‘prince’ which (despite the fact that Vespasian regards the incident as confirmation of his own power) should draw our attention to his sons Domitian and Titus. Tacitus appears to have moved this story from a point before Vespasian was aware that he had won (cf. Suetonius, Vespasian 7). Here it points forward in a suggestive way to the problematic son Domitian at the end of the book.

135. There is also an account at Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 28, but Tacitus’ claim to originality is one of a range of techniques he uses to bolster his authority as an author.

136. Ptolemy I Soter (c. 367–283 BC) was one of Alexander the Great’s generals. Following the struggles in the aftermath of Alexander’s death, Ptolemy made himself king of Egypt and instituted a Greek-speaking administration of Egypt (with Alexandria as his capital). He wrote a comprehensive and eulogistic history of Alexander the Great, which is no longer extant.

137. A mountainous and fertile region in Asia Minor which included the south coast of the Black Sea and extended southwards to Cappadocia.

138. Eleusis was a town near Athens, which contained a sanctuary of Demeter and held the annual festival of the Eleusinian Mysteries (an initiation cult associated with Demeter).

139. Jupiter Dis indicates Pluto (= Greek Hades), god of the underworld. Proserpina, daughter of Jupiter and Ceres (= Greek Demeter), was queen of the underworld, after being abducted by Pluto.

140. This was the famous oracle at Delphi.

141. Apollo’s father is Jupiter (here to be identified with Jupiter Dis, strictly speaking Pluto, Apollo’s uncle) and his sister is Proserpina.

142. This temple, the Serapeum, was actually built in the reign of Ptolemy I’s grandson, Ptolemy III Euergetes (reigned 246–221 BC).

143. Aesculapius was the Roman god of healing.

144. These common attributes of Pluto’s statues which could allow this identification with Serapis include the depiction of the dog Cerberus and a snake, suggesting the underworld, and a corn-measure, associated with Ceres (Demeter).

145. Julius Valentinus had been captured at Rigodulum (4.71).

146. Suetonius, Domitian 2 links Domitian’s role in the aborted expedition to Gaul and Germany to his desire to compete with Titus. He also notes that Domitian was reprimanded for his ambition (a point which may reflect Cerialis’ snub here).

BOOK 5

1.     In the year 70.

2.     See Suetonius, Titus 4 for his exploits in Germany (also mentioned by Mucianus in his speech at 2.77) and Britain.

3.     Cf. the praise of Vespasian at 2.5.

4.     See Book 2, notes 97 and 98 for Sohaemus and Agrippa.

5.     The ethnographical digression which follows is highly controversial and contains various errors, but, in narrative terms, the formally demarcated excursus stands as a marker of the transition from self-destructive internal civil conflict to more laudable foreign campaigning.

6.     According to myth, Jupiter ejected his father Saturn and became ruler of the gods: Tacitus’ point about the Jews being refugees from Crete is not found in other sources. The use of Saturn’s deposition as a chronological marker will be picked up at 5.4 when Tacitus offers explanations for the Jewish institution of the Sabbath.

7.     In Greek myth, Cepheus was king of Ethiopia and father of Andromeda, who was famously rescued by Perseus.

8.     See Homer, Iliad 6.184 and 204, where they appear to come from Lycia (Herodotus 1.173 notes that they were displaced by arrivals from Crete).

9.     The connection is between the Solymi and Hierosolyma (the Latin name for Jerusalem).

10.   Leprosy.

11.   Bocchoris was king of Egypt during the eighth century BC (c. 721–715), but the exodus is thought to have taken place at some point in the thirteenth century BC.

12.   The oracle of Hammon was located at the oasis of Siwa in the Libyan desert. Alexander paid a visit here in 331 BC which subsequently led to stories that the general was the son of the god (commonly identified with Zeus).

13.   Tacitus means that they dedicated the image of an ass, but this is inconsistent with what he says at 5.5 and 9. Josephus, Against Apion 2.248 expresses his disapproval of the belief (held by others before Tacitus) that the head of an ass was to be found in the innermost part of the Temple.

14.   Hammon was frequently depicted as having horns and the Egyptians regarded the ram as sacred to him.

15.   This practice apparently prompted the emperor Augustus to joke: ‘I would rather be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son’ (Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.4.11; the original version in Greek would have contained a pun involving ‘pig’ and ‘son’).

16.   This pejorative comment reflects the Jewish observance of the Sabbatical year, when every seventh year the land is left to lie fallow and debts are remitted.

17.   All Jews made annual contributions (whether financial or otherwise) to the Temple. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 7.2 says: ‘Let nobody wonder at the wealth of our Temple, seeing that all the Jews in the world had long been contributing to it’ (cf. Cicero, On Behalf of Flaccus 28, 66–9). After the Temple was destroyed, the Romans required that the Jews send their tribute to Rome. Tacitus refers to the wealth of the Temple specifically at 5.8.

18.   In Classical texts, in accordance with general theories of environmental determinism, lack of sexual restraint was often attributed to those living in hot southern climates (Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places 20–22), whereas those living in the chilly north were usually portrayed as chaste (cf. Germania 18.1). Here Tacitus ingeniously condemns the Jews for being sexually loose and exclusive at the same time.

19.   However, the Egyptians also practised circumcision. Petronius makes Giton refer with comic exaggeration to circumcision as an extreme way to disguise oneself as a Jew (Satyricon 102). Juvenal also points to circumcision as a typically Jewish practice (Satire 14.99).

20.   Juvenal alludes to the lack of physical images of the gods when he says that the Jews worship only the ‘clouds and the divine spirit of the sky’ (Satire 14.97). The absence of images of the gods in other cultures tends to provoke comment and becomes something of an ethnographical commonplace: Persians (Herodotus 1.131), Gauls (Diodorus Siculus 22.9) and Germans (Tacitus, Germania 9) are described in this way. Yet the Roman King Numa, inspired by Pythagoras, apparently forbade cult-images of the gods (Plutarch, Numa 8).

21.   I.e. Bacchus, the god of wine.

22.   Pliny, Natural History 16.135 says that balsam can only grow successfully in Judaea. Josephus, Jewish War 4.469 identifies it as the most valuable local crop.

23.   Tacitus is describing the Dead Sea.

24.   Josephus, Jewish War 4.477 says that Vespasian threw in some non-swimmers with their hands tied behind their backs to test this quality: luckily, they floated.

25.   This same method of gathering bitumen is also related by Josephus, Jewish War 4.478–81.

26.   This is a reference to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18–19).

27.   Tacitus appears to jump rather suddenly from the south-east of the country to the north-west: the River Belius flows into the Mediterranean near Ptolemais (Pliny, Natural History 36.190).

28.   King Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Syria (ruled 176–164 BC) banned Jewish religious practices in 167 BC, but then faced a revolt (described by Josephus at Jewish Antiquities 12.265ff.) which forced him to annul his legislation.

29.   Something has gone wrong here. The revolt of Arsaces I took place in 247 BC under Antiochus II (ruled 261–246), whereas Antiochus IV campaigned against Parthia in 165 BC.

30.   This took place in 63 BC after Pompey had been invited to decide between rival candidates – Hyrcanus and his brother Aristoboulus – for the throne. Pompey opted for Hyrcanus.

31.   Julius Caesar granted permission for the walls to be rebuilt soon afterwards.

32.   Antony controlled the East between 42 and 31 BC. Pacorus (the son of King Orodes rather than king himself) captured Jerusalem in 40 BC, only to be killed by Antony’s associate Ventidius in 38 BC.

33.   The general Gaius Sosius was appointed by Antony as governor of Syria and Cilicia in 38 BC, after which he captured Jerusalem and helped to set up Herod as king in 37 BC (celebrating a triumph for his achievements in 34 BC).

34.   Herod the Great (c. 73–4BC) became governor of Galilee in 47 BC. Despite being made king of Judaea by Antony in 37 BC, he supported Octavian at Actium. In 23 BC he was given various territories north-east of Galilee, including Trachonitis, Batanea and Auranitis.

35.   Simon had been one of Herod’s slaves (Josephus, Jewish War 2.57–9). He was one of a number of rival claimants, but Tacitus has simplified the story.

36.   Quinctilius Varus was governor of Syria from 6 to 4BC. See further Book 4, note 31.

37.   The three sons were Archelaus, Antipas and Philip. In fact, the eldest son, Archelaus, was deposed in 6 and Judaea was placed under the control of Roman prefects.

38.   The assassination took place on 24 January 41.

39.   Antonius Felix, brother of another imperial freedman, Pallas, governed Judaea between 52 and 60. Tacitus gives further details about his troubled tenure as governor at Annals 12.54.

40.   Gessius Florus, a Greek from Clazomenae, was governor of Judaea between 64 and 66.

41.   I.e. the years 67 and 68.

42.   Josephus, Jewish War 5.52–63 says that Titus narrowly missed being killed at this point after getting separated from the main force with only a few men.

43.   The sources generally portray Titus as a hedonist, particularly before Vespasian became emperor (2.2, Suetonius, Titus 7). His motivation for conquering Judaea highlighted here does him little credit.

44.   Josephus, Jewish War 5.136–75 offers a lavish description of Jerusalem and its defensive walls. Tacitus’ version is concise in comparison, but it still accentuates the imposing nature of the city and points forward to the impressive achievement of Titus in finally conquering it.

45.   Tacitus here casts the factions in Jerusalem as enacting a civil war in miniature, despite the pressing threat now facing them from the Romans. Josephus, Jewish War 5.25 observes that the corn which was lost would have lasted the besieged for many years and that famine played a significant part in the fall of the city. This is curiously reminiscent of the self-inflicted problems resulting from lack of food that were faced by the legionaries besieged at Vetera (4.22).

46.   Josephus, Jewish War 6.288–98 also lists some of these portents (a star over the city and a comet lasting for a whole year; a bright light around the altar in the middle of the night lasting half an hour; a cow giving birth to a lamb in the Temple; the spontaneous opening of the eastern gate of the Temple’s inner sanctuary; chariots and soldiers in the sky; words apparently spoken by the divine spirit leaving the Temple). In comparison with Josephus, Tacitus is selective and relatively brief about the portents which he reports.

47.   See 4.76–8.

48.   The unambiguous polarization of ‘Romans’ and ‘Germans’ offers a refreshing change from the murky allegiances of the civil war and hints at a gradual recovery of Roman identity. Tacitus’ emphasis on the potential strategic impact of the terrain on the two sides is a technique he will redeploy at Annals 1.65–69 in describing the German ambush of the Romans in 15 on the site of the massacre of Roman legions by Arminius in 9.

49.   Tacitus offers a similar contrast at Annals 1.65.

50.   The Fourteenth (Gemina/Twin) Legion had been based in Britain since the conquest of 43 and it had been the main Roman force at the battle in which Boudicca’s revolt was suppressed in 61 (Tacitus, Annals 14.34).

51.   The Sixth (Victrix) Legion in Spain had taken the initiative in hailing Galba as emperor.

52.   The Second (Adiutrix) Legion was a new formation, possibly consisting of former sailors (cf. 3.55).

53.   Civilis here seems to be self-consciously playing the role of the rebel Arminius (see note 48 above; Tacitus, Annals 1.65), hoping that history will repeat itself, but the original victory of Civilis on this site is hardly an equivalent to Arminius’ devastating massacre of Varus’ legions in 9.

54.   See Tacitus, Germania 11 for the German practice of clashing arms as an indication of approval after a speech. Caesar represents the Gauls as doing the same thing (Gallic War 7.21). The explicit pointing up of the ethnographical detail here enhances the sense of polarization between the two sides and accentuates the difference.

55.   See 5.14.

56.   There is a certain appropriate symbolism in the fact that it is a Batavian deserter whose actions determine the final outcome of the battle between Cerialis and Civilis, since Civilis himself is a slippery figure and has already been denounced by the Roman legionaries as a ‘Batavian deserter’ (4.21).

57.   The Roman fleet (from Britain) was last seen in action at 4.79, when it suffered significant losses at the hands of the Canninefates.

58.   Batavodurum. Its precise location has been debated by modern scholars.

59.   Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus (38–9 BC), the brother of the emperor Tiberius, was a popular figure, famous as a republican sympathizer. He died in Germany during a campaign against the Chatti and the Cherusci after falling from his horse. The speedy journey which Tiberius made from Italy to see him before he died was seen as a reflection of fraternal devotion. Tacitus records modification to Drusus’ mole made in 58 (Annals 13.53).

60.   See 4.32.

61.   See 4.70.

62.   See Book 4, note 102.

63.   These were ships built with two banks of oars.

64.   The Liburnian was a type of fast galley, named after an Illyrian people, the Liburni, who were famous as seafarers and pirates. Octavian had made good use of Liburnian ships at the battle of Actium.

65.   This was a standard trick to make people think that the person whose property was spared was in cahoots with the enemy (cf. Thucydides 2.13), but given the uncertainty running through the narrative about the slippery Civilis’ true allegiance, it was particularly sensible to use it here.

66.   The Latin word used for Civilis’ madness (rabies) is the same one used at 2.38 as a causal factor in generating civil war. This is a suggestive echo, given the debate surrounding the status of the Batavian revolt and to what extent it was a continuation of the Roman civil war.

67.   Civilis’ speech of defence completely contradicts what he wrote in his letter to Petilius Cerialis (4.75). The scene of two enemies confronting each other from opposite banks of a river is replayed at Annals 2.9, where the rebel leader Arminius talks to his brother Flavus (a Roman auxiliary) across a river.

68.   Tacitus refers to Antonius Primus’ letter to Julius Civilis right at the start of the narrative of the revolt (4.13). When one letter from Antonius to Civilis is read out to the Roman troops in Germany, it makes them angry because Civilis seems to be addressed as an ally of the Flavian party (4.32).

69.   Unfortunately, this is where the manuscript breaks off. The narrative went on to cover the completion of the Jewish war by Titus and the subsequent triumph in 71 (even though the fortress of Masada held out until 73). As we know from Tacitus’ outline at 1.1–3, in the remaining books (possibly seven further books, making twelve in total), Tacitus dealt with the principates of Vespasian (70–79), Titus (79–81) and Domitian (81–96). Highlights would have included the exile and death of Helvidius Priscus in about 74 for his opposition to Vespasian, the spectacular eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 (Pliny the Younger had written Tacitus two letters about this extraordinary event), Domitian’s Dacian campaigns in the 80s, the execution of Vestal Virgins in 83 and 89 or 90, Domitian’s affair with his niece Julia and the assassination of Domitian in 96.