Week Four
BOOKS IV-VI: The Reign of Terror. The tyrant's "liberation" as self-punishment. The end of Tiberius.
February 25, 2025, 7 PM -8:30 pm
Why would the death of a mother he resented (iv.57.3) make Tiberius more savage and bring his regime to its bloodiest phase (v.1-5)? Why is Tiberius even more cruel and vengeful without Sejanus than with (for example, the punishment of his children, v.9)?
Tacitus says the emperor's "crimes and depravities" became his own torment (vi.6). Is this mere rhetoric, or do tyrants really suffer torments—and if so, why? What is the reason for their extreme cruelty and vengeance? Is it merely a reasonable precaution against revolution and assassination, or is some delusion at work? Why the sexual perversities (vi.1-2, 46.5)? What position of invulnerability does Tiberius imagine he shows by torturing his (step) grandson to death (Drusus Caesar, Germanicus' son, vi.24; also Drusus' brother Nero Caesar, iv.67.4)? Why does Tiberius become a monster when he loses the constraints of shame and fear (vi.51)? Can Tiberius face his mortality (vi.50.2-3, 46.5)? Can Lucius Arruntius (vi.47-48)? What's behind the difference?
At this peak of terror, even the leading men of the country were practicing the vilest criminal denunciations — for things said anywhere to anyone, without distinction — some for their own protection, but "more were infected, so to speak, by sickness and contagion" (vi.7, 19). When accused, Marcus Terentius dares to say openly "what everyone was thinking" (vi.9). What truth does he reveal about the power of regimes to corrupt, and why so many joined the terror? Why didn't Lucius Arruntius join (vi.47-48)?
[Note: Tacitus' account of Sejanus' downfall and execution in AD 31 is missing from the parts of his work that have survived, but is thought to have preceded v.6.]
Reading: v.1-9, 11. vi.1-10, 13, 15, 18-27, 29-30, 38-40, 46-51.
(Also, we'll look again at iv.37-42, 57-60, 67.)
(The translation of the Annals that we are using is by Cynthia Damon (Penguin Books, 2012).)