The Neronian Annals

About the lecture

In this lecture, we introduce Tacitus and the Annals in general, and think about Tacitus’ arrangement of events in the books covering Nero’s reign, focusing in particular on: (i) the figure of Tacitus himself, his political career and his literary output, including the Annals; (ii) the structure of the Annals, in particular its division into three sets of six books (hexads); (iii) the inherent subjectivity of historical writing, particularly when deciding how much coverage to give different events and when deciding how to split up (or ‘periodise’ the narrative; (iv) the three major turning points in Nero’s reign, according to Tacitus: the murder of Agrippina (early 59), the replacement of the ‘good’ advisors Burrus and Seneca with the ‘bad’ advisor Tigellinus (62), and the Pisonian conspiracy and the purge that followed (spring 65); (v) the events that may have been covered in the second half of the Neronian hexad (Books 16-18), most of which has now been lost.

About the lecturer

Christopher Whitton is Professor of Latin Language at the University of Cambridge. He works on Latin literature of the early Roman Empire, especially Pliny the Younger and Tacitus, with particular interests in prose style, intertextuality and the intersection of literature and history. His main research projects at the moment are a 'green and yellow' commentary on Tacitus Annals 14 and a monograph provisionally entitled Tacitus Revoiced: Reading the Histories with Pliny the Younger.