Introduction

Hello, I'm Ellen O Gorman.

I'm a senior lecturer in classics at the University of Bristol,

and I'm here to talk about Tacitus histories and this first lecture.

I'm going to talk a bit about the scope of the histories as a whole.

What what Tacitus picked as the first historical work and how

the first book fits into that scope of the work.

When Tacitus decided to write a larger historical work, it was the beginning,

the very beginning of the second century A D.

And he was right at the very top of his political game. He'd been consul in 97 80

later on, in the second century, he was pro consul of Asia.

He was the foremost orator of his day,

and he was looking to make a name for himself in

a new type of writing history rather than political speech,

which was where he had excelled previously.

He chose as the topic for his first full length historical

work for the period from 80 69 to 80 96.

So he was picking a historical period which for him was contemporary,

and it overlapped with his own early political career.

So what happened in that particular period in 80 69 the state of Rome,

the Empire of Rome was in disarray.

The Emperor Nero had died. And over the first year

of the histories,

four successive emperors are declared by different armies around the Empire.

Uh, we start with the Emperor Galba in power, and he has taken up his position in Rome.

But he has already been disturbed by news of a revolt of

the German legions who are going to declare Vitaly asses their emperor.

Um and he has further destabilised by, um,

the coo of the Praetorian Guard in Rome who declared both o as their emperor.

And that's the opening scene which dominates the first

half of the first book of the Histories.

Um, after Galba has been killed in Otho becomes emperor,

he has to march north to face the German legions

who are coming down and fighting for Vitaly Asse.

Oh, though is defeated in battle

and takes his own life. And Martellus marches over the Alps and takes Rome.

Meanwhile, the Emperor Vespasian has been declared

in Judea and Syria,

and soon his legions are marching across from Malaysia and Asia from Austria

into northern Italy, where Vitaly Ass's armies have to meet

them.

Victorious armies are eventually defeated,

and Vespasian is emperor of Rome.

So that was the tumultuous first year of the Histories,

which takes up the first three books of Tacitus as narrative.

He tells us himself at the beginning of the work

that he's going to speak about three civil wars,

many foreign wars and a time which, even in peace was experienced, a savagery

and what he's talking about. There is the end of his historical work.

So Vespasian becomes emperor. He rules for 10 years.

The main dramatic events in his reign are

particularly the Jewish war and the siege of Jerusalem

and the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple.

On his death, he was succeeded by his elder son, Titus, who reigns for only two years.

But during his reign, of course, we have the great dramatic event,

the greatest natural disaster to strike Italy,

the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

After the death of Titus, he was succeeded by his younger brother de mission,

and this is the period that Tacitus refers

to as a period of savagery even in peacetime

de mission encouraged treason trials against the senatorial class.

Under the mission, many senators were exiled or sentenced to death,

and Tacitus himself experienced this as a time of silence and sadness

and slavery as he saw many of his friends suppressed

and he himself unable to speak out in public.

Um, die Mission was assassinated in 96

we think that was probably the end

of the historical narrative that Tacitus constructed.

So that's the scope of the histories as a whole

and some sense of how Tacitus, his own life, interwoven with that narrative.

What we have of the task of the histories, however,

is only about four and a quarter books.

The narrative breaks off sometime in Book five,

just as the siege of Jerusalem is getting underway.

So we don't have, uh, Tacitus, his account of the rain of Vespasian.

We don't have his account of the reign of Titus.

Uh, we don't have his account of emissions, rain and assassination,

and therefore we don't know how to set us,

wrote about his own involvement in political events at that time.

What we can tell of the histories from what we've got

is that Tacitus was very interested in this opening scene of civil war,

and we can tell that from the fact that the Civil War of 80 69

takes up three books of the narrative,

the histories as a whole would have been either 12 or 15 books long.

So three books of the narrative is either a quarter or 1/5

of the whole historical work.

And if we think that the period from the Civil War

to the death of the mission was a period of 27 years,

we can see that Tacitus has devoted either a quarter or 1/5 of the work

to one year out of those 27.

And that indicates that he saw this Civil

War period as something that was very important.

It was necessary to go into it in great detail

and that it indicated some important truths about the Roman

state that he thought his readers ought to know.

Perhaps to understand why the civil war is so important, important for tacit us,

we might think about what I've just said about

the end of the work about emissions reign,

a time that was experienced by the senators as savage.

One of the things he says in his preface to the work is that during this period,

slaves were induced to betray their masters.

Freedmen were induced to betray their patrons,

and friends were induced to betray each other.

Um, what he's showing us is that under the reign of the mission, all social no

broke down

and Romans preyed upon each other.

They sought out each other's destruction.

In that way.

I think Tacitus looked at the reign of the mission and saw it as very similar

to what he sees in the Civil War narrative in the opening books of the histories,

a time when Roman fought against Roman,

a time when it was not clear, Um,

which citizens you could trust or whether you could trust your fellow citizens

at all.

Um, so if we imagine the work as a whole,

we can perhaps imagine it as having a

structure where it returned to these bleak prospects.

Um,

the time when you cannot trust other citizens the time when your understanding

of historical events is always an understanding of loss of violence and betrayal,

and we can see how that plays out in the first half of book one of the histories,

which is the half that I think many people will be reading, um,

for a level and a level Latin over the next few years.

What we see in that period is the Emperor Galba,

who has been supported by this senator.

Oh, um, Oth Oh was the provincial governor in Lusitania,

in Portugal when Galba was declared emperor by his soldiers in Spain

and being quite close to Spain.

Oh, throw immediately lent his support to the Emperor Galba.

He went to the trouble and expense of helping him with enough money

so that he could raise a second legion and he marched with Galba

to the city of Rome.

Um but what we see in the narrative is both Oh, first of all,

feeling betrayed by Galba.

He had counted on Galba,

adopting him as his successor and naming him as the

young man who would be emperor after Galba is death.

Instead, he sees himself passed over

as Galba instead chooses a relatively unknown senator named Pezzo,

who he prefers as his heir

and successor.

And both oh,

in resentment at this imagined slight turns

to the soldiers and courts their favour,

working behind Galvez back in order to win over the Praetorian Guard.

The people who the soldiers in the city who

were tasked with the protection of the emperor.

Um oh ho wins over the Praetorian guard,

and I will say more about this in a later lecture, but partly by bribery.

And that act of bribery, I think, illustrates

that leak vision that Tacitus has given us about the histories

a time when you should be able to trust certain people.

An emperor should be able to trust the Praetorian guard,

but instead they can be corrupted by money

and they can betray you.

You should be able to trust a senator who has led to his support,

but instead he works behind your back.

He's declared Emperor in your stead, and he works to bring about your downfall.