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Kelly E. Shannon-Henderson
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/10/2018, SPi
OXFORD CLASSICAL MONOGRAPHS

Published under the supervision of a Committee of the
Faculty of Classics in the University of Oxford
The aim of the Oxford Classical Monographs series (which replaces the Oxford
Classical and Philosophical Monographs) is to publish books based on the best
theses on Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and ancient philosophy
examined by the Faculty Board of Classics.
Religion and Memory

in Tacitus’ Annals
KELLY E. SHANNON-HENDERSON
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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© Kelly E. Shannon-Henderson 2019
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
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Acknowledgments
There are many people without whom this volume could not have come into
being. It began life as a DPhil thesis submitted to the University of Oxford in
June 2012. I am very grateful to all the members of Corpus Christi College,
especially Stephen Harrison, for making my years there so productive and
enjoyable. I was able to undertake my graduate studies thanks to the generous
financial support of the Clarendon Fund and the Memoria Romana Project. It
is also to Karl Galinsky and fellow members of the Memoria Romana Project
that I owe this study’s theoretical underpinnings; I am grateful to the partici-
pants in the 2011 workshop in Rome for our lively discussions of cultural
memory theory.
I continued work on the project in 2012–13 at Universität Erfurt, supported
by a Hanseatic Scholarship for Britons from the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung.
In Erfurt, I am immensely grateful to Kai Brodersen for his intellectual
and practical support, and to Richard Gordon, Jörg Rüpke, and the other
members of the ERC-Forschungsprojekt “Lived Ancient Religion” for invalu-
ably enriching my understanding of Roman religion. I am also grateful to
Christiane Reitz (Universität Rostock) and Matthias Perkams and Meinolf
Vielberg (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) for their assistance and hospi-
tality in Germany. The Department of Classics at the University of Virginia
also provided support for research during stays in Charlottesville, especially
during my time as a Lecturer there in 2013–14, and I am grateful to my alma
mater for always welcoming me back into its library. Special thanks are due to
John Miller and K. Sara Myers (as former and current department chairs),
Jane Crawford, and Jon Mikalson. I also thank Paul Halliday, J. E. Lendon, and
Elizabeth Meyer in the Corcoran Department of History for their help and
encouragement. Preparation of the final manuscript was made possible by a
Research Grants Committee Award from the University of Alabama in
2015–17, which allowed for travel to consult library resources in Oxford.
Many have helped this book achieve its present form; any errors, of course,
remain my own. Rhiannon Ash was an excellent doctoral supervisor who
shaped my thinking on the Annals, painstakingly critiqued my writing, and
supported me throughout my graduate studies. I am grateful to Miriam
Griffin, Christopher Pelling, Luke Pitcher, and Tim Rood for their comments
and suggestions at various stages, and to Katherine Clarke and David Levene,
examiners for the doctoral viva. Prof. Levene in particular provided numerous
suggestions for improving the thesis that proved invaluable as I revised it. Kirk
Summers provided helpful comments on several of my revised chapters.
I am also grateful to Salvador Bartera for frequent discussions of Tacitean
vi Acknowledgments
matters. Anthony Woodman has influenced this study at every stage. From his
formative teaching in Roman historiography during my undergraduate days at
the University of Virginia to ongoing email discussions of the finer points of
Tacitean textual criticism, my work has benefited immeasurably from his
guidance; I am especially grateful that he has read the entire manuscript and
enriched this study by his perspicacious comments. (Unfortunately, his com-
mentary on Annals 4 appeared too late to be considered here, as did Rhiannon
Ash’s commentary on Annals 15.)
I am also extremely grateful to Anna Clark, the OUP-appointed mentor for
this project, for her helpful suggestions and guidance as I brought this
manuscript to its final form. I would also like to thank Georgina Leighton
and Charlotte Loveridge at OUP, and the Press’s anonymous reviewer for his/
her comments and suggestions.
Many friends and family members have supported me during this long
process; I am particularly grateful to Brittany McLaughlin, Bettina Reitz-
Joosse, and Lauren Schwartzman. My parents Beth and Jim Shannon have
made the biggest difference: without their emotional and material support, this
volume would certainly not exist. I thank them for encouraging my interest in
Classics, and for so much more besides. Finally, I dedicate this book to Conor
Henderson, my soon-to-be husband, who has seen me through the final stages
of completion, and in general makes me happier than I thought was possible.
K. E. Shannon
April 2018
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Contents
Abbreviations ix
Introduction: Religion, Memory, and Tacitus 1

0.1. Religion and Memory 2
0.2. Tacitus, Priest and Historian: Taking the Religious
Dimension Seriously 10
0.3. Types of Material 18
0.4. The Structure of This Study 22
1. Tiberius the Autocrat 25
1.1. Introduction: Tiberius perinde divina humanaque obtegens 25
1.2. Funeral, Apotheosis, and recusatio 30
1.3. The Use and Abuse of divus Augustus: The maiestas Disease 37
1.4. The Emergence of Religious Flattery 45
1.5. Maiestas Disease Meets adulatio Disease: The Trial
of Libo Drusus 50
1.6. Tiberius Controlling the Triumph 56
1.7. Conclusions 65
2. Germanicus as Religious Interpreter 69
2.1. Introduction: Germanicus and Religious Memory 69
2.2. Germanicus’ Religious Rhetoric in the German Mutiny 71
2.3. Memoria deformes: Commemorating Varus 79
2.4. Gods on Our Side? Dreams, Signs, and Vengeance 89
2.5. Germanicus Abroad 97
2.6. Death and Piso 112
2.7. Conclusions 117
3. Memory and Forgetting from the Death of Germanicus
to the Rise of Sejanus 121
3.1. Introduction 121
3.2. Commemoration, Flattery, Vengeance: Germanicus’
Funeral and Piso’s Trial 122
3.3. Policing Traditions: The flamen dialis 140
3.4. Temple Asylum: The Senate and Cultic Memory 149
3.5. Augusta, fetiales, and the Senate 160
4. Divine Wrath and Annals 4 167
4.2. Fortuna, Divine Wrath, and the Rise of Sejanus 168
4.3. Amnesia and Memory: Temples and Priesthoods 174
viii Contents
4.4. Cultic Memory, Augustus’ Deification, and Tiberius’ Reputation 184
4.5. Aftermath of the Spanish Temple Refusal 192
4.6. Withdrawal, Disaster, and the Perversion of Ritual 202
5. Fate, Astrology, and the End of Life 211
5.2. Commemorating Livia 211
5.3. Remembering Sejanus 217
5.4. Sibylline Books: An Attempt at Tradition 220
5.5. Tiberius the Astrologer 224
5.6. Interpreting the Phoenix 229
5.7. Commemorating Augustus, Predicting Caligula 231
6. Claudius and the Failure of Tradition 237
6.1. Introduction: What We Have Lost 237
6.2. Trials and Cultic Memory for a New Reign: Claudius
the Censor 240
6.3. Messalina and the Misuse of Ritual 252
6.4. Rise of Agrippina: Flattery and Impiety 256
6.5. Divine Anger and the Rise of Agrippina and Nero 266
6.6. Death, Astrology, and Deification 279
7. Nero: A Narrative in Prodigies 285
7.2. Kin Murder and Divine Wrath I: Britannicus 286
7.3. Kin Murder and Divine Wrath II: Agrippina 292
7.4. When Will Nero Be Punished? The Problems of Prodigies 304
7.5. Octavia’s Death and Growing adulatio 308
7.6. The Horrible Year AD 64 315
7.7. Impiety and Misinterpretation in the Pisonian Conspiracy 326
7.8. Fortune’s Playthings 332
7.9. Wrath of the Gods 336
Conclusions 351
Bibliography 363
Index Locorum 391
General Index 404
Abbreviations
Abbreviations to standard authors and texts are usually taken from the Oxford Classical
Dictionary (rev. 3rd edn.).
AC L’Antiquité classique
AION Annali dell’Istituto universitario orientale di Napoli
AJP American Journal of Philology
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt
BAGRW Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World
BICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
BJ Bonner Jahrbücher des Rheinischen Landesmuseums in Bonn und des
Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande
C&M Classica et Mediaevalia
CP Classical Philology
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (1863– )
CISA Contributi dell’Istituto di storia antica dell’Università del Sacro Cuore
CJ Classical Journal
Cl. Ant. Classical Antiquity
CQ Classical Quarterly
G&R Greece and Rome, NS (1954/5– )
IA Iranica antiqua
ILS H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (1892–1916)
IRT Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania, by J. M. Reynolds and J. B. Ward-
Perkins, enhanced electronic reissue by Gabriel Bodard and Charlotte
Roueché (2009), http://inslib.kcl.ac.uk/irt2009/
Inscr. Ital. Inscriptiones Italiae (1931/2– )
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
LCM Liverpool Classical Monthly
MD Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici
OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary
REA Revue des études anciennes
REL Revue des études latines
RSC Rivista di studi classici
SCPP Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre
SEG Supplementum epigraphicum Graecum (1923– )
x Abbreviations
TAPA Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association
ThesCRA Thesaurus Cultuum et Rituum Antiquorum (2004–14)
TLL Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (1900– )
YClS Yale Classical Studies
ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
Introduction
Religion, Memory, and Tacitus
Roman writers seem to have practically always had the fear that various
aspects of their culture were in decline.¹ M. Terentius Varro, author of the
multivolume Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum on Roman gods and cult,²
believed that Rome’s traditional relationship with its gods was in serious
trouble and in need of intervention, according to Augustine:
deos eosdem ita coluerit colendosque censuerit ut in eo ipso opere litterarum
suarum dicat se timere ne pereant, non incursu hostili, sed civium neglegentia, de
qua illos velut ruina liberari a se dicit et in memoria bonorum per eius modi libros
recondi atque servari utiliore cura quam Metellus de incendio sacra Vestalia et
Aeneas de Troiano excidio penates liberasse praedicatur.
(Augustine De civ. D 6.2 = Varro ARD fr. 2)
(He worshipped these same gods and thought they ought to be worshipped, to
such an extent that he says in this very work that he fears they might perish not
because of an enemy invasion, but due to the negligence of his fellow citizens; but
he says that the gods would be freed by him from this negligence as if from
destruction, and that through books of this sort they could be stored in the
memory of good men and preserved with a concern more useful than that with
which Metellus is said to have rescued Vesta’s sacred objects from fire and Aeneas
to have liberated the Penates from the destruction of Troy.³)
In Varro’s view, it was as necessary for these religious traditions to be
committed to writing as it was for the Trojan Penates or the Palladium to
be snatched from burning buildings.⁴ His emphasis on memory is striking:
memoria is conceived of almost as a physical place, a storehouse, where
¹ For examples in Roman literature, see Crawley 1971.

² On Varro’s work, Rawson 1985, 312–16 is still useful; see recently van Nuffelen 2010; North
2014; Kronenberg 2017.
³ All translations from Latin texts are my own unless otherwise stated.
⁴ On the passage, see Rawson 1985, 313–14, and more recently MacRae 2016, 53–4;
Kronenberg 2017, 316–19 (for a different interpretation).
2 Introduction
Roman religious traditions can be placed for safekeeping in a world made
dangerous not by war, but by an equally threatening negligentia. Varro’s sense
of the religious crisis he believes afflicts Rome is palpable, but it is not unique
to him. Elizabeth Rawson has noted that one factor motivating investigations
of Roman cult practice in late Republican “antiquarian” literature was a
“desire to record and understand (usually in order to preserve or revive)
traditions” that were thought to be in the process of being forgotten.⁵
This idea did not go away. In the Annals, written some 150 years after
Varro’s Antiquitates, Tacitus also discusses details of traditional religious
practice, typically from the point of view of alteration or decline. He reports
challenges to, or the loss of, traditional rules, rites, and buildings, focusing on
the interlocking roles of emperor, Senate, and people. Tacitus never explicitly
states why he includes this material, and indeed may not have seen it as a
defined category whose inclusion required justification. Yet certain passages
seem to indicate a desire to maintain memories of religious sites or rituals
when they are threatened. Whereas Varro deplored citizens’ negligence as the
cause of the threat, for Tacitus it seems rather the entire Imperial system that
puts Roman religion at risk.
0. 1 RE L I G I O N AN D M EM O R Y
This emphasis on tradition and decline lends itself well to analysis through
theories about what scholars refer to as cultural memory or collective
memory:⁶ the idea that the way individuals remember the past is determined
by the social frameworks within which they live, and that a society’s past is not
an abstract or objective concept, but is always actively constructed by its
members in the present. From the beginning of cultural memory as a discip-
line, scholars have recognized religion’s role in cementing a society’s identity
and providing continuity with its past. Maurice Halbwachs, the father of
cultural memory studies, already used the concept of “religious memory” in
his Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire (1925), to describe how a religious
community uses stories about its own past, and rituals that commemorate
it, in order to define itself as a community in the present.⁷ Halbwachs was
⁵ Rawson 1985, 300, and ch. 20 passim.

⁶ For an introduction to the field, see Olick and Robbins 1998; for memory/cultural memory
theory and Roman culture, see esp. Walter 2004; Gowing 2005; Galinsky 2014; Galinsky and
Lapatin 2015; Galinsky 2016.
⁷ See Halbwachs 1992, ch. 6, “Religious Collective Memory” (originally titled “La Mémoire
collective des groupes religieux”). Halbwachs 1992 contains English versions of Les Cadres
sociaux de la mémoire (1925) and of part of La Topographie légendaire des évangiles en terre
sainte: Étude de mémoire collective (1941). For a lucid summary of Halbwachs’s ideas on religious
memory, see Stroumsa 2016, 333–4.
Introduction 3
speaking of early Christians who sought to use the memory of the life of
Christ, kept alive via repeated re-enactment in rituals such as the Eucharist
and by the liturgical calendar of the Christian year that followed the outlines of
Christ’s life (birth, death, resurrection), to set themselves apart from the
contemporary pagan society in which they lived.⁸ For other theorists of
cultural memory, a set of religious beliefs and practices that is shared by an
entire society (rather than simply a subgroup within a society, as was the case
with the early Christians) plays an important role in linking an entire civil-
ization to its past. Pierre Nora, in his essay introducing the classic three-
volume study of what he calls “sites of memory” (lieux de mémoire) in French
culture, identified the Church as a component of French cultural memory that
is fragmenting and slipping away in the modern era.⁹ On this interpretation, a
decline in church attendance means that the traditional Roman Catholic faith
no longer plays its role in defining cultural memory, in actively linking the
French people to their own past.
To be sure, we should be cautious in using Halbwachs’s and Nora’s visions
of how Christianity helps construct identity to help us understand Roman
religion, given the many fundamental differences between ancient paganism
and contemporary Roman Catholicism (or even ancient Christianity), and
between the ancient Roman Empire and a modern nation-state. Indeed, the
concept of “a religion” as an identity group distinct from other religions had
not yet developed by Tacitus’ time.¹⁰ But the concept of religious memory
can still be useful for understanding polytheistic ancient pagan societies.
Jan Assmann has applied it to ancient Egypt,¹¹ and recent studies have sought
to do the same for Greek and Roman religion.¹² It should come as no surprise
that a society as invested in (not to say obsessed with) tradition as ancient
Rome is particularly well suited to being analyzed from the perspective of
cultural memory, and its religious system is no exception.
The fact that Roman paganism places a high value on ritual is a commonplace
in studies of Roman religion, and this ritual conservatism could be considered
the linchpin of Roman religious memory. Many theorists have identified ritual
as a key component of collective or cultural memory, in that a community’s
regular repetition of the same ritual is a powerful way of commemorating an
⁸ Halbwachs 1992, 93–9.

⁹ Nora 1992, 2, 9. The work of sociologist Danièle Hervieu-Léger on secularization in
modern France, which she describes as “a crisis of collective memory” (Hervieu-Léger 2000,
130), is also influenced by Nora’s ideas (e.g. Hervieu-Léger 2000, 127–8).
¹⁰ See e.g. Beard et al. 1998, i.42–3; Rüpke 2007, 5–6; Nongbri 2013 (esp. 26–38, 46–64);
Morgan 2015, 264–5. Beard 1986, 46 argues that “religion” as a concept first emerged in Rome
with Cicero’s De Divinatione, but this is still a fundamentally different use of the concept from,
for example, describing Christianity or Islam as “religions.”
¹¹ See J. Assmann 2006, ch. 7; 2011, esp. chs. 4, 6, and 7.
¹² See e.g. Dignas and Smith 2012; Rüpke 2012a; contributions in Galinsky and Lapatin 2015
and Galinsky 2016, esp. Rüpke 2016.
4 Introduction
event or person from its past (often the very distant past) and perpetuating that
memory over decades or even centuries.¹³ The Christian communities discussed
by Halbwachs and Nora made extensive use of biblical texts, whose stories when
continually revisited in worship and study connected believers to their past. In
contrast, as Guy Stroumsa has recently argued, Roman religion had no revealed
scriptures, and there were relatively few who could have read such books even if
they had existed, since Rome was only a “semi-literate” society; instead, regu-
larly repeated rituals were essential in tying Romans to their cultic past.¹⁴ Many
of the major festivals of the Roman cultic calendar, the important priesthoods of
the state cult, and the rites they performed, were thought to have very ancient
origins. Many were ascribed to Numa; some festivals, such as the Lupercalia,
explicitly preserved memories of the time of Rome’s foundation (or even
earlier).¹⁵ By repeatedly observing these festivals and maintaining these priest-
hoods, participants in Roman ritual were in a very real way keeping alive the
memory of the city’s most ancient past, which played a fundamental part in
their collective identity. Whenever the spectators at their twice-yearly festivals
watched a Salian priest dancing in procession through Rome and heard him
reciting the Carmen Saliare, preserved in a Latin so ancient as to be unintelli-
gible at least by the first century ;¹⁶ or every year on 1 March when the Vestal
Virgins extinguished and rekindled the goddess’s sacred flame that had been
carefully tended from the time Numa inaugurated her worship,¹⁷ participants
were using ritual to enact and embody a connection with the city’s past, both the
distant Regal Period in which these rituals allegedly had their origin, and
the entire stretch of time since then, which (to borrow Hervieu-Léger’s image)
¹³ e.g. Connerton 1989, 45: “All rites are repetitive, and repetition automatically implies
continuity with the past”; A. Assmann 2008, 100, identifying religion as an area of active cultural
memory; J. Assmann 2011, 42: “Through regular repetition, festivals and rituals ensure the
communication and continuance of the knowledge that gives the group its identity.” See also
Nora 1992, 6–7 and passim; Rüpke 2012a, 139–40 on “ritual memory” (rituelle Erinnerung).
Rappaport 1999, 36–7 identifies “invariance (more or less)” as an essential feature of his
definition of religion, and also (32–3) notes that even “new” rituals are usually formed from
elements of previously existing rituals, and that attempts to introduce truly new rituals are rarely
successful.
¹⁴ Stroumsa 2016, 335–7. Cf. J. Assmann 2011, 42: “In illiterate societies there is no other way
[but ritual] to participate in the cultural memory;” see also 70–6, 123–4. For a recent discussion
of the interplay between text and religious practice in Rome, see MacRae 2016.
¹⁵ For the attribution of Rome’s festival calendar and major priesthoods to Numa, see Livy
1.19–20. For the Lupercalia, thought to have been celebrated by Romulus and Remus, see Livy 1.5;
Ovid Fast. 2.259–80, 381–421.
¹⁶ On the rituals for Mars performed by the Salii, see Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.70.1–5; Gordon
1990, 188–9; Rüpke 1990, 24–5; Beard et al. 1998, i.43. For the unintelligibility of the Carmen
Saliare in Tacitus’ day, see Quint. Inst. 2.6.40; see recently MacRae 2016, 48–50 for written
commentaries on the hymn. See further §3.2, pp. 123–4.
¹⁷ See recently DiLuzio 2016, 200–1; for Numa as the founder of the worship of Vesta, see
Ovid Fast. 6.249ff.
Introduction 5
we can conceptualize as an unbroken chain of pious Romans carefully preserv-
ing and repeating those rituals down the centuries.
All the examples I have just mentioned are drawn from the Roman state cult
and involve actors, locations, and offerings chosen, maintained, and financed
at state expense. The close entanglement of Rome’s ritual life with its politics,
wars, governmental institutions, and so forth is also a commonplace in the
study of ancient, and particularly Roman, religion,¹⁸ and raises the question of
how far it is possible to separate “religion” from other aspects of Roman
society. In a world where priesthoods were filled from the same pool of elite
families that provided candidates for the magistracies¹⁹ and where every sitting
of the Roman Senate or battle fought by the Roman army was accompanied by
sacrifice,²⁰ it is reasonable to ask whether religion was not so embedded in the
societal fabric that we cannot really think of it as a separable category of Roman
life at all.²¹ This has important implications for the present study of religion
and memory in Tacitus. Is “religious memory” any different from “cultural
memory” or “collective memory?” What makes a form of memory distinctively
“religious?” Or, put another way, does thinking about memory from a “reli-
gious” angle add anything to our understanding of Roman culture, and of
Tacitus, that we cannot get from merely thinking about “cultural memory?”
Where religious memory becomes a particular form of memory, and where
I believe it can particularly help us understand Tacitus’ Annals, is in consid-
ering what were the particular perceived consequences of the repeated per-
formance of ancestral rituals. For Roman rituals were not simply intended as
arenas for the upper classes to advertise their piety, success, or wealth, nor
were they merely traditions that brought the distant past to life (although they
performed those functions too); Roman cult practice was also a vehicle for
maintaining a relationship with the gods. While that relationship was, as
countless scholars of Roman religion have rightly pointed out, inextricably
bound up with other elements of society (government, magistrates, aristocratic
competition), the fact that it involves the gods makes it a peculiar element of
¹⁸ e.g. Liebeschuetz 1979, 1; Beard et al. 1998, 43; Rüpke 2007, 9–10. This fact has also not
been lost on non-classicists in cultural memory studies: cf. Halbwachs 1992, 100–1 n. 22 on
Athenian state religion: “Nothing separates the state from religion, the civil principle from the
religious principle.”
¹⁹ In some cases, these priests performed functions that we moderns might identify as
“secular” rather than “religious:” see Scheid 1984 and Beard et al. 1998, i.25–6 on the roles of
the pontifices.
²⁰ See Rüpke 2007, 6–7. On rituals at Senate meetings, see Gell. NA 14.7.9. Suet. Aug. 35.3 and
Dio 54.30.1 both claim that Augustus instituted the practice of requiring each senator to make a
small sacrifice of incense on the altar of the god in whose temple the meeting was taking place.
A meeting of the Senate had to take place within a templum, a space inaugurated by an augur
(Gell. NA 14.7.7).
²¹ e.g. Clark 2007, 13–14; Rives 2013 (a review of Rüpke 2012b).
6 Introduction
society that deserves special consideration. I have been influenced here by Jörg
Rüpke’s recent attempt to formulate a definition of “religion” as
the temporary and situational enlargement of the environment—judged as rele-
vant by one or several of the actors—beyond the unquestionably plausible social
environment inhabited by co-existing humans who are in communication (and
hence observable).²²
That is, while Roman religion is so bound up with other aspects of Roman
culture that it is not possible to speak of a strict sacred–secular dichotomy, in
actions involving what is not “unquestionably plausible” there is nevertheless
something sufficiently different from other actions that we can consider them
to fall into a special category. What Rüpke thinks of as “beyond the unques-
tionably plausible”, I will refer to as “the divine” or “the supernatural.”
For the Romans, as for other ancient societies, appropriately maintaining
this communication with an environment “beyond the unquestionably plaus-
ible” has important bearing on the success of their society: failing to observe
correct ritual practice as it had traditionally been maintaned could have serious
consequences for the future. Jan Assmann has demonstrated this principle
operating in the religion of Pharaonic Egypt, where hymns and cult acts
performed in honor of the sun god were thought necessary for ensuring that
the sun continued to rise and set, and therefore that human life would continue
to survive and prosper.²³ From a Roman perspective, the concept of the pax
deorum is important here: rituals had to be performed consistently in order to
put Rome on good terms with her gods and ensure the community’s survival;
any departure from established practice, it was thought, could have dire
consequences.²⁴ This is where “cultic” or “religious memory” adds something
beyond “cultural” or “collective memory:” it is connected to the longevity of the
community. Roman cultic memory ties Roman society not only strongly to its
past, when the rites originated and became traditional through repeated
performance, but also to its future, when repeated performance of the rites
will guarantee continuation of the divine favor that allows Rome to prosper
and succeed.
²² Rüpke 2015, 348; Rüpke also presented this definition at a lecture I attended in Aarhus,
Denmark, on 10 April 2013. Cf. Rüpke 2012b, 108–9: “Roman religion could be loosely defined
by the involvement of nonhuman actors, superhuman gods, who were supposed to form a
controlling organization above peer review,” as opposed to institutions (such as voting assem-
blies) that constituted “a public made up of those present.”
²³ J. Assmann 2006, 139–54, esp. 153–4: “Ritual as a form of thought is an officium memoriae,
a cultic memory service that daily sets a vast store of knowledge of the world in motion. Its
purpose is not just to interpret the world, but to take the meaning it has elicited and to feed it
back into the world to strengthen, foster, and rejuvenate it, through liturgical words of comfort
and enactment of the ritual.”
²⁴ For the pax deorum, see Linderski 2007; Bloch 1963, 82–3; MacBain 1982, 1–2; Ando 2008,
5–6; Santangelo 2011; for a slightly different view, Satterfield 2015.
Introduction 7
An important part of Roman cultic memory, therefore, is the preservation of
the details of religious practice. Its emphasis on ritual is an element of Roman
pagan religious culture that scholars long considered excessively formalistic
and devoid of emotional meaning.²⁵ Making sure that festivals take place on
the right day or that sacrifices involve the correct victims slaughtered at the
altar of the correct god may seem reasonable, but other provisions of Roman
ritual may strike modern observers as bizarre. Is it really so important that the
flamen Dialis never set foot outside the city of Rome, or that his parents be
married by the increasingly outdated rite of confarreatio?²⁶ Does the birth of an
intersex baby truly merit drowning the child at sea to remove a threat to the
community?²⁷ Can the gods really demand that an entire set of games be
repeated merely because a paterfamilias scourged his slave in the circus before
the games had even begun?²⁸ The Roman answer to all these questions,
apparently, was yes. Keeping track of all these rules, requirements, and pro-
hibitions, or understanding the signs sent by the gods to inform humans that
they had somehow lapsed in upholding these, was a vast undertaking, for
which Rome’s priests, priestesses, and other religious specialists were respon-
sible. The guarding and handing down of this knowledge, perhaps with the
help of specialist texts focusing on cultic information,²⁹ was seen as vitally
important to the continuation of Roman religious traditions. This view of
Roman religion as knowledge (scientia) has been explicitly connected by
Rüpke with cultural memory: the preservation of ancient religious detail, so
that it can be acted upon repeatedly in the present and future, is an essential
component of Roman identity.³⁰
So, in Roman religion, a cultural memory that tethers Rome to its past
merges with a ritual sensibility that seeks to adhere strictly to rites as they have
traditionally been performed, in all their bewildering ritual detail, as a means
of ensuring the gods’ protection and divinely guaranteed success for the
community in the future.³¹ This notion of the necessity of the perpetual
repetition of ritual is exemplified in a poem of Horace. Among the images
²⁵ Feeney 1998, 3 notes the “powerful inertia” of this outdated scholarly view, which has
happily been challenged by more recent scholarship (e.g. Hunt 2016).
²⁶ Tacitus, Ann. 3.58 and 4.16.2–3, with §3.3, pp. 142–4, and §4.3, pp. 177–80 and references
there cited.
²⁷ See passages cited in Ch. 7 n. 134.
²⁸ Livy 2.36; on the interruption or vitiation of rites, see §2.6, pp. 115–16.
²⁹ See MacRae 2016, esp. ch. 2, for how such texts buttressed “the claim that this religious
system had a traditional connection with the earliest period of Roman history” (50).
³⁰ Rüpke 2016 (on Valerius Maximus), and compare J. Assmann 2008, 114–15 and 2011, 39
on the role of specialists, such as priests and African griots, in the transmission of cultural
knowledge. See also Ando 2008, 13–14 (lacking the memory dimension) and Gordon 1990, 198.
Cf. J. Assmann 2011, 165–70 on the similar mnemonic function of the strict nomos (list of ritual
prohibitions) associated with an Egyptian temple.
³¹ Cf. Satterfield 2015, 436: “Finding the pax [deum] through ritual helped to avert danger and
secure success” and “was an important element in Roman self-understanding.”
8 Introduction
the poet uses to express his work’s immortality is that of the infinite repetition
of religious ritual:
non omnis moriar multaque pars mei
vitabit Libitinam: usque ego postera
crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium
scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex.
(Hor. Carm. 3.30.6–9)
(I shall not entirely die, and a great part of myself
shall escape Libitina: and I shall continually grow,
fresh with later praise, as long as the pontiff
climbs the Capitol with the silent virgin.)
Horace’s vision of eternity is not tied simply to Rome itself, or even to the
physicality of the Capitoline Hill, but to the ritual that takes place there, which
he imagines will always endure; as Fraenkel says, “The future life of Rome
with its unalterable ceremonies is taken for granted, if not to the end of all
time, yet for so immense a period that no one needs to cast his thought
beyond it.”³² Horace does not specify a single occasion or festival, but rather,
is economically referring to any and all of the great number of rituals that will
be repeated on the Capitoline any number of times down the centuries.³³ Yet
alongside this indeterminacy, we are also given specific ritual detail: the Vestal
Virgin’s silence, which alludes to the formula favete linguis (literally, “be
favorable with your tongues!”—that is, avoid words of ill-omen by keeping
silent) familiar in cultic contexts. Horace is interested not only that the
pontifex and the Vestal climb the Capitoline, but also in how they climb the
Capitoline; for him, Rome’s eternity is embedded in such ritual details that
must be remembered and continually repeated.
Roman mortals, then, had to preserve and enact the memory of their rites so
that the gods would ensure that Rome would continue to exist. This is not to say
that there was no room for alterations or additions to Roman ritual practice;
despite the conservatism deeply embedded in this as in other aspects of Roman
culture, Romans could, and did, alter, add, or even abandon rituals. From the
perspective of cultural memory, this does not have to mean an abandonment
of identity, nor does it necessarily constitute an offense to the gods with the
potential to upset the cosmic order. At any time when it might be useful to do
so, Romans could, and did, privilege more recent precedent over the most
ancient examples when making decisions about religious practice.³⁴ Despite
³² Fraenkel 1957, 303. ³³ Nisbet and Rudd 2004, 373. Cf. West 2002, 263.
³⁴ Ando 2008, 15: “Romans could esteem the piety of their ancestors even as they recognized a
necessity to act on the basis of more recent evidence . . . .When a conflict arose, knowledge acquired
during the Hannibalic war, for example, necessarily trumped information of hoary antiquity.”
Introduction 9
Roman cultic conservatism, there were situations in which “older” did not
absolutely mean “better.” This malleability is not out of keeping with the ways
scholars have described the role of change or innovation in cultural memory:
memory of the past is always constructed in the present.³⁵ Societies, just
like individuals, remember selectively; sometimes old practices can be de-
emphasized, and newer ones come to the fore, as the present situation demands.
Cultic memory, just like cultural memory in general, is malleable, multivalent,
and subject to a multitude of interpretations.³⁶
The changes to the ancient priesthood of the Arval Brethren (which had
existed from at least the third century )³⁷ are a good example of departure
from, or at least additions to, traditional cultic practice that appear to have been
unproblematic. While the priesthood was traditionally dedicated to the cult of
the obscure goddess Dea Dia, which took place in a grove outside Rome, it
underwent large changes with the advent of the principate: a shrine of the
Caesars was added to the sanctuary, and sacrifices for the safety of the emperor
were added to its cultic calendar, sacrifices which probably did not take place in
the grove, but rather on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, and were directed not to
Dea Dia but to the Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.³⁸ These
alterations to the Arvals’ cultic memory—not only physical changes to their
sanctuary and additions to their cultic calendar, but even a new location and
different recipients for these new sacrifices—probably represent an unprece-
dented change when compared with what the Brethren practiced during the
Republic (although a paucity of evidence for the earlier period makes it difficult
to be certain). But presumably these changes in the priests’ ritual practice were
not thought of as potentially jeopardizing the pax deorum, or they would not
have been made. If anything, these rites might have been thought of as
strengthening Rome’s relationship with the gods, by asking their favor and
assistance for the emperors who now played such an outsized role in the
community’s success. As we shall see, this idea will be particularly important
in interpreting Tacitus’ Annals, which chronicle the Julio-Claudian principate
and the changes it brings to Roman state and society, with concomitant changes
to Roman cult practice.
I hope to have given a clear account of what I mean by cultic or religious
memory (terms which I use interchangeably in what follows) when it comes
to the study of Roman religion in general, and its application to the works of
Tacitus in particular. Continued performance of ancient rituals and cult acts,
with particular attention (though not necessarily an overly rigid adherence)
³⁵ See e.g. Olick 2008, 159 (“Memory is a process and not a thing . . . something . . . we do, not
something . . . we have”); A. Assmann 2011, 19–20; J. Assmann 2011, 22–3, 27–8.
³⁶ See Halbwachs 1992, 86; Rüpke 2012a, 151: “Cultic memory is not objective” (Kultische
Erinnerung ist nicht objectiv).
³⁷ Beard et al. 1998, i.194.
³⁸ Beard et al. 1998, i.195–6. The classic study of the priesthood is Scheid 1990.
10 Introduction
to the detailed rules and prohibitions of Roman ritual practice, is both a key
component of defining a Roman identity that is strongly linked with the
past and also a necessary precondition for Rome’s continued success and
survival in the future. Cultic memory is an integral part of Roman cultural
or collective memory, but at the same time has special qualities of its own that
make it a distinct, and distinctly important, feature of Roman culture. As
Anna Clark notes,
Public religion was not a separate sphere of Roman society: it might in fact
usefully be conceived of as the register, permeating public life, that determined
the tone of certain elements of the vocabularies of that public life, broadly
understood. It thereby granted those elements a peculiarly intense explanatory
force, a particular resonance in explaining and ordering the world.³⁹
As we shall see, part of my interest in analyzing cultic memory in the Annals is
in the moments when, and methods by which, cultic memory interacts with
other forms of commemoration that do not have an obvious ritual or divine
component. In Clark’s terms, when Tacitus invokes the religious register,
how does that shape the tone of his observations on the nature of the
principate? As I shall argue, Tacitus’ religious material, when interpreted
from the point of view of cultic memory, not only reinforces the observations
other scholars have made about Tacitus’ interpretation of the principate,
but frequently also goes beyond mere reinforcement to help us understand
previously unappreciated aspects of Tacitus’ literary project and societal
commentary in the Annals.
0.2 TACITUS, PRIEST AND HISTORIAN: TAKING

THE RELIGIOUS DIMENSIO N S ERIOUSLY
Scholars have already observed that Tacitus is an author with a deep concern
for memory. Typically, such studies have taken the form of examinations of
Tacitus’ views on remembering the past, and on direct or implicit comparisons
between the past and the present (especially the Republican past and the
Imperial present). Sometimes we see Tacitus’ characters responding to their
own memories of the past, as when observers of Augustus’ funeral are struck
by their own memories of, or the tales they have been told about, the death/
funeral of Caesar.⁴⁰ Elsewhere, Tacitus invites reflection on the power of
history-writing to serve as a memorial of past events and people, as in his
³⁹ Clark 2007, 255–6.

⁴⁰ Ann. 1.8.6, with Gowing 2005, 28–32. Woodman 2002 makes a good case for regarding illum
diem as a reference to the day not of Caesar’s funeral, but of his assassination.
Introduction 11
account of the trial and death of the historian Cremutius Cordus.⁴¹ At still
other moments, Tacitus is interested in showing us how the emperors use their
subjects’ memories of the past to their own advantage, as with Otho’s attempts
to capitalize on Nero’s popularity,⁴² or even attempt to control those memor-
ies, as with the aforementioned case of Cremutius Cordus, or in Tiberius’
attempts to shape popular memories of Germanicus.⁴³
All of these examples, while powerful analyses of the place of memory in
Tacitus’ works, are more concerned with individual memories of the past
than with questions of cultural memory. The present study aims to demon-
strate a new way of thinking about memory in Tacitus, by considering what
an examination of cultic memory, with its particular emphases and concerns,
can do to refine our picture of memory in Tacitus’ works. Tacitus includes in
the Annals stories that involve the details of religious practice and priestly
behavior, prodigies and their expiation, and ruminations in his own voice and
that of his characters on the role of fate or providence in Roman affairs. The
presence of this material suggests that Tacitus considers Rome’s cultic mem-
ory and its potential consequences important enough to have a prominent
place in his account of the Julio-Claudians.
But the religious material in Tacitus’ works has typically not been con-
sidered to be very significant to his overall literary project. Ronald Syme’s
assessment of Tacitus’ inclusion of prodigies, for example, seems to have had
great influence on subsequent readers of Tacitus:
The recording of omens was a traditional feature in the annals of the Romans,
and the effect of premonitory signs on the minds and actions of men provided a
suitable commentary to great events. Idle fables were to be deprecated, but a
serious author had no right to omit a well-authenticated manifestation . . . Not
until the later books do the prodigia become a regular entry. It would be fanciful
to discover a skeptical historian’s relapse into antiquated credulities. The reason is
plain: a stock device in the old annalistic tradition which Tacitus needed all the
more because his subject now defied the fabric and canons of the ‘res publica.’⁴⁴
For Syme, it is more palatable to assume that Tacitus occasionally referred to
the gods, their cult, prodigies, fate, fortuna, etc. because they were part of the
traditional material of the Roman historian, than to think that he wished to
attach some larger meaning to them. Given Tacitus’ general outlook, perceived
by Syme and many before and after him to be dominated by skepticism, irony,
⁴¹ Ann. 4.34–5, with Cancik-Lindemaier and Cancik 1987; Moles 1998; Gowing 2005, 26–7;
Sailor 2008, ch. 5; Shannon 2012, 764–5.
⁴² Hist. 1 passim, with Gowing 2016, 53–4. ⁴³ Gowing 2016, 54–9, and see also §3.2.
⁴⁴ Syme 1958, 522–3. Cf. Ginsburg 1981, 4; Martin 1981, 218. On the fact that prodigies are
more common in the Claudian and Neronian books of the Annals than in the Tiberian hexad, see
further below, p. 13. See also Syme 1958, 397, on Tacitus’ inclusion of details such as the ficus
Ruminalis (13.28) or the altar of Hercules (15.41.1): “Such things had a place, like the report of
‘prodigia,’ in Roman annals, and an author’s belief or disbelief does not come into the question.”
12 Introduction
and even sarcasm,⁴⁵ scholars have assumed that Tacitus’ references to cultic
matters were, if not mandated by the traditions of his genre, merely “an
opportunity for gloomy and sardonic comments,” or opportunities to criticize
the credulity of those who allow their thoughts and actions to be excessively
influenced by religious considerations.⁴⁶
More recently, Jason Davies and Miriam Griffin have sought to push back
against Syme’s view of Tacitean religious material,⁴⁷ and this study follows
very much in their footsteps. Religious material in Tacitus should be taken
seriously. I do not wish to discount the idea that an author can derive a strong
literary effect from deploying religious material that was traditionally included
in annalistic history. As we shall see, when Tacitus includes such material,
he is certainly trying to exploit the assumptions it raises in his readers, but
that need not mean that these references are merely pawns in the game of
generic expectations. Let us further consider Syme’s example of prodigies.
Tacitus made a deliberate authorial choice about which prodigies to include
and where to place them. The Roman historiographical tradition was strongly
influenced by the annales maximi, in which the pontifex maximus listed
important events of the year, especially prodigies recognized by the Senate.⁴⁸
Prodigies play a very important part of the narrative and thematic structuring
of the Ab Urbe Condita of Tacitus’ predecessor Livy.⁴⁹ Tacitus, while he hints
at that traditional structuring of the narrative year according to prodigy and
expiation, is far from following it slavishly.⁵⁰ At the other end of the spectrum
is Sallust, whose extant works are known for their paucity of religious material
and near total lack of prodigies.⁵¹ This shows that prodigies, while perhaps
⁴⁵ Syme 1958, ch. 30 (entitled “The sceptical historian”), esp. pp. 398 (“The prime quality of
Cornelius Tacitus is distrust”), 539 (“The irony of Tacitus pervades whole episodes . . . or is
compressed into a curt phrase”), and 542 (“The ironical manner of Tacitus derives its strength
from a keen and malicious insight, which he scarcely troubles to disguise”). Cf. e.g. Furneaux
1896, 36–7 on a “satiric tendency” in the Annals; Walker 1952, 53; Mellor 1993, 129–30;
O’Gorman 2000, 10–13; Owen and Gildenhard 2013, 27–8.
⁴⁶ Goodyear 1972, 25–6 n. 2; cf. Hutchinson 1993, 240–50. A partial exception is Walker
1952, ch. 12, who attributes to Tacitus cynicism or skepticism in various religious matters, but
nevertheless describes him as “a man of strongly religious temperament” (244) who “did not
reject entirely the idea of supernatural direction” (245); see also Furneaux 1896, 30.
⁴⁷ Davies 2004, ch. 4; Griffin 2009, 169–72.
⁴⁸ Rawson 1971; Ginsburg 1981, 4. Cornell 2013, ii.10–31 collects fragments of the annales
maximi (with commentary, Cornell 2013, iii.3–12). Historians perhaps stopped using them
directly as a source by the time of Cicero, and they may even have disappeared (Frier 1979,
274; Drews 1988; for a slightly more measured view, see Rich in Cornell 2013, i.156–8).
⁴⁹ The classic study is Levene 1993, of which see esp. p. 36: “We should . . . seek to explain
[prodigy lists] in terms of his narrative strategy.” See also Davies 2004, 28–58.
⁵⁰ The classic study is Ginsburg 1981, of which see esp. pp. 29–30 on prodigies.
⁵¹ On Sallust, see Syme 1964, 246–8; Scanlon 1980, 41–7; Levene 2006, 423 (on the lack of
prodigies); Rosenblitt 2011, 406. The picture of Sallust’s approach to religion, however, might
look very different if all of his works had survived. For an example of another historian who may
have felt as Sallust did, see Gell. NA 2.28.4–7 on M. Porcius Cato: “It is not pleasing to write
about whatever is on the tabula at the house of the pontifex maximus” (non lubet scribere quod in
Introduction 13
“traditional” for historiography, were not considered an essential element of the
genre; if Tacitus had wanted to write a work of history that was entirely devoid
of religious material, he would have had good precedent. Comparing the Annals
with other works about the Julio-Claudians is also instructive. Tacitus’ contem-
porary Suetonius includes more prodigious or ominous occurrences in his
account of the Julio-Claudians than Tacitus does,⁵² demonstrating that the
tradition surrounding the Julio-Claudians contained a multiplicity of possible
omens to include.
Tacitus’ selection of such reports, therefore, begins to look more discerning
the more one examines it. Tacitus certainly inserts himself into a historio-
graphical tradition, but does not take the extreme of either Sallust or Livy, and
makes a very careful selection amongst the recorded Julio-Claudian prodigies
available to him. Furthermore, a consideration of where in the narrative these
prodigies occur also suggests deliberate authorial planning. There are many
more prodigies in the Claudian and Neronian books of the Annals than in the
Tiberian hexad.⁵³ While sweeping pronouncements should be avoided, given
that we do not know how, or indeed whether, Tacitus handled prodigies or
other religious material in the portions of the Annals that are now missing,⁵⁴ it
appears that communications from the gods were important to the historian’s
vision of the later principes in a way that they were not when he was thinking
about Tiberius. That is also suggestive; presumably if there had been nothing
more to Tacitus’ inclusion of prodigies than a desire to make his work look
appropriately traditional, the prodigies would have been more equally distrib-
uted than they are.
A detail of Tacitus’ biography also lends credence to the suggestion that
his interest in cultic matters was motivated by more than the conventions of
his genre: his concern with details about priestly responsibilities and cult
practice has been attributed to his position as a quindecimvir,⁵⁵ a priesthood
granted to him by Domitian and probably held for the remainder of Tacitus’
life.⁵⁶ The quindecimvirate was a prestigious office; it is an unusual honor
for Tacitus to have acquired at such a young age (prior to attaining the
tabula apud pontificem maximum est, an allusion to the prodigy records of the annales maximi)
(see Cornell 2013, iii.127–9).
⁵² Davies 2004, 160. For example, Tacitus includes in the Histories only two ostenta predicting
Vespasian’s success, while Suetonius reports eleven, although his biography of Vespasian is quite
short (Wardle 2012, 185–6). On ominous occurrences in Suetonius, see Wallace-Hadrill 1983,
191–3.
⁵³ See §4.2, pp. 169–70, §6.1, and §6.5. ⁵⁴ See §6.1.
⁵⁵ e.g. Syme 1958, 465 (on the digressions on Sarapis and Paphian Venus in the Histories) and
469–70 (on material on the Christians and the oracle of Apollo at Claros in the Annals).
⁵⁶ Rüpke 2008, 646.
14 Introduction
consulship) and signalled the Imperial favor that was to be followed with
further magistracies.⁵⁷ In addition to the cultic functions of such posts, for the
recipients, they were markers of elite political status, just like praetorships or
consulships.⁵⁸ Syme acknowledges that Tacitus’ priesthood may have in-
formed his interest in things like oracles, but also seems to believe that it
was mainly important for the political advantage it conferred.⁵⁹ But when
Tacitus, in a rare moment of authorial commentary, discusses his own tenure
as quindecimvir, he highlights the active role it gave him in significant rituals:
Isdem consulibus ludi saeculares octingentesimo post Romam conditam, quarto
et sexagesimo, quam Augustus ediderat, spectati sunt. utriusque principis rationes
praetermitto, satis narratas libris, quibus res imperatoris Domitiani composui.
nam is quoque edidit ludos saecularis iisque intentius adfui sacerdotio quinde-
cimvirali praeditus ac tunc praetor; quod non iactantia refero sed quia collegio
quindecimvirum antiquitus ea cura et <ii> magistratus potissimum exequebantur
officia caerimoniarum. (11.11.1)
(Under the same consuls, the Secular Games were watched, in the 800th year
since Rome’s founding, and the 64th since the Games which Augustus had given.
I pass over the calculation systems of each princeps, which are sufficiently
narrated in the books in which I wrote about the affairs of the commander
Domitian. For he also put on Secular Games, and I was present at them with
particular keenness, endowed as I was with the quindecimviral priesthood, and
praetor at that time. This I mention not for the sake of boasting, but because this
had been a concern for the college of the quindecimvirs from of old, and those
magistrates in particular were carrying out the duties of the ceremonies.)
Self-reference of this sort is rare for Tacitus; use of the first-person singular
marks the passage as significant,⁶⁰ and we should not overlook the fact that it is
specifically in order to remark upon his own priesthood, and the authority it
grants him as an historian, that he deploys it here. As both quindecimvir and
praetor, Tacitus suggests that he was doubly qualified to assist Domitian.⁶¹
⁵⁷ Syme 1958, 66; Birley 2000, 234. It was probably listed on Tacitus’ tombstone as an
important component of his career (CIL 6.1574; see Birley 2000, 235–6).
⁵⁸ See Beard et al. 1998, i.27–30, 103–8; they assert that despite priests’ involvement in
political life, the religious nature of their office must be taken seriously. See also Várhelyi
2010, 57–69.
⁵⁹ Syme 1958, 65, 523.
⁶⁰ See Syme 1958, 534; Pelling 2009, 152. Woodman 2009, 38–9 argues persuasively that
Tacitus’ “reference” to himself and his own career in actuality “is the focus and climax of the
digression” about the Secular Games, not a case where Tacitus “grudgingly concede[s]” (Syme
1958, 534) details about his own life.
⁶¹ I accept the insertion of ii by Shaw-Smith 1997, which Malloch 2013, 187 rejects, instead
following Nipperdey, 1852, 9 n. 16; Furneaux 1907, 16; and Koestermann 1967, 49 in interpret-
ing the sentence as suggesting that “those quindecimuiri who held magistracies were selected by
preference (potissimum) for the performance of the duties of the religious ceremonies.” But there
is no evidence for this outside of Tacitus.
Introduction 15
Praetors, too, were involved in maintaining the traditional form of the asso-
ciated rituals (caerimoniae),⁶² but the quindecimvirate is particularly mean-
ingful because of the long continuity (antiquitus) of that priesthood’s concern
for the games. To speak in anachronistic terms, cultic memory, as reflected in
continuity of religious practice, mattered to Tacitus. It is also significant that
Tacitus, momentarily leaving aside the political problems of Domitian’s no-
torious regime, can remark neutrally on his celebration of the Secular
Games.⁶³ He does not seem to criticize the games—neither the calculation of
the year when they should be held,⁶⁴ nor the rites themselves—even as
celebrated by this worst of emperors. Tacitus also reveals that in the Histories
(presumably in a portion of the text that has now been lost), he discussed how
each emperor calculated the date for the Secular Games. More than once, then,
Tacitus discussed the detailed expert knowledge necessary for this festival, and
it is likely that his own personal experience was also brought to bear on the
discussion in the Histories. Such details are not confined to the Secular Games
or even the reign of Claudius, as we shall see. Tacitus combines his role as
priest, charged with preserving Rome’s religious rites by continued perform-
ance during his own lifetime, and his role as historian, concerned with
reporting these rites in all their bewildering detail.⁶⁵ Although how the
emperors react to such religious details is certainly not insignificant, Tacitus
can also preserve them without authorial comment.
Both of Tacitus’ twin roles as priest and historian, then, would give him good
reason for including religious material in his works. Reports of prodigies and
observations on supernatural forces such as fate and fortune typically found a
place in the genre of historiography. Furthermore, Tacitus, as a member of the
quindecemviral college—the priesthood charged with interpreting prodigies
with the aid of the Sibylline books, as well as with assisting in the carrying out
of important rituals such as the Secular Games—might have had particular
knowledge of and interest in the interpretation of ominous occurrences and the
details of cult practice. But this need not mean that religious material in his
works has no deeper significance than generic convention or personal interest:
as I shall argue, it plays a crucial and thus far underappreciated thematic role in
Tacitus’ account of the Julio-Claudian principate. As Ailsa Hunt, building on
the work of Denis Feeney, has recently argued, the writing and reading
⁶² Caerimoniae designates religious observance but has a range of meanings, from “religious
taboos” (3.58.1) to “rites, ceremonies” (3.59.2); see Woodman and Martin 1996, 423, 425.
⁶³ Malloch 2013, 180–1. ⁶⁴ Syme 1958, 65. On the passage, see further §6.2.
⁶⁵ See Marincola 1997, 109–12 for examples of ancient historians who cite priesthoods that
they personally hold as granting them a special authority or access to privileged information.
MacRae 2016, 55–9 notes that some (though by no means all) of the specialist religious literature
of the late Republic was written by priests, suggesting that priesthood could grant a similar
authority in a more overtly “theological” genre.
16 Introduction
of literature can be an important way for ancient authors and readers to engage
in religious thought:
We need to recognise that literature is itself a form of religion. Literature is what
I would call a ‘theological voice’ (and a powerful one at that) which, in tandem
with other voices, built up Roman religious discourse. Writing literature was one
way of articulating and engaging with theological questions; reading literature
was another. Thus . . . I approach those texts as a form of theological thinking in
action . . . Being ‘literary’ in no way weakens the value of these texts’ theological
insights.⁶⁶
If we are willing to read Tacitus in this way, his inclusion of religious material
becomes not just another vessel for political commentary upon the Julio-
Claudian line and the (generally negative) changes it has brought about in
Roman society, although it serves that purpose, too. It is also a way of thinking
about the gods and the nature of humans’ relationship with them. While
I would not wish to claim Tacitus as a “theologian,” there are points in his
work where what we might call theological work is being done, in that he is
inviting the reader to think about the place of the divine in human history.
Taking this material seriously, and analyzing it on its own terms, is crucial for
a fuller understanding of the Annals.
The Annals, of course, were not Tacitus’ first work, nor were they the first
place he grappled with these sorts of questions. Already in the Histories, Tacitus
includes many references to fate, fortune, omens, prophecies, and signs.⁶⁷
When Tacitus programmatically sets out the types of material he will consider
in the Histories’ proem, meditations on the divine and the question of its
involvement in human affairs are explicitly included:⁶⁸
praeter multiplicis rerum humanarum casus caelo terraque prodigia et fulminum
monitus et futurorum praesagia, laeta tristia, ambigua manifesta; nec enim
umquam atrocioribus populi Romani cladibus magisve iustis indiciis adprobatum
est non esse curae deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem. (Hist. 1.3.2)
(Beyond these manifold disasters in human affairs, there were prodigies in heaven
and on earth, warnings given by thunderbolts, and presages of the future—happy
and sad, ambiguous and obvious; and never has it been proven by more terrible
⁶⁶ Hunt 2016, 20; see also Feeney 1998, esp. the introduction.
⁶⁷ e.g. Hist. 1.10.3, 1.18.1, 1.27.1, 1.62.3, 1.86, 2.1.1–2, 2.3–4, 2.11.1, 2.12.1, 2.47.1, 2.50.2, 2.78,
2.91.1, 3.56.1–2, 3.71–2, 4.53.1–2, 4.61, 4.81–4, 5.2–10. On religious material in the Histories,
see Henrichs 1968; Scott 1968; Morgan 1993, 1996, 2000; Haynes 2003, 117–20; Davies 2004,
ch. 4 passim; Feldherr 2009; Luke 2010; Hicks 2013; Shannon 2014.
⁶⁸ Woodman 1988, 160–7 is the classic treatment of the proem’s programmatic character,
which corresponds closely to Cicero’s precepts regarding the ideal contents of historical works in
De Oratore. For Hist. 1.2–4 as a “table of contents,” see Damon 2003, 82. See also Shannon 2014,
273–5.
Introduction 17
disasters for the Roman people or by fuller⁶⁹ portents that the gods care not about
our peace of mind, but about vengeance.)
As often in Tacitus’ works, his language leaves the exact meaning of the
sentence unclear. The abstract noun ultio is modified by nostra, equivalent
to a genitive, but ultio can be used either with an objective genitive of the
person avenged (“the vengeance taken on us,” presumably by the gods), or
with a subjective genitive of the agent of vengeance (“the vengeance taken by
us”).⁷⁰ It is unclear whether Tacitus means that prodigies truly express divine
anger, or that they merely mark divine interest in human affairs without
indicating that the gods intend to become involved. The idea of prodigies as
divine vengeance for humans’ breaking of the pax deorum is left open as one
interpretation of Tacitus’ words. Yet the vengeance humans take on each other
is such a major feature of the Histories⁷¹ that it is equally possible that Tacitus
intends to use prodigies to highlight events and themes on a human level.
Admittedly, the notion that the Romans deserve these dire omens (iustis
indiciis) inclines the reader toward the first interpretation, but the other
reading also remains available.
Therefore, even when Tacitus does give a programmatic statement that
appears intended to guide the reader in the interpretation of signs from the
gods, in fact he does not offer much in the way of clarity. Things are even
murkier in the Annals, whose proem lacks a programmatic section of this
sort;⁷² there is nothing to guide the reader in interpreting signs or any other
kind of religious material. It is tempting to interpret passages such as Tacitus’
rumination on fate (Ann. 6.22)⁷³ as offering a similar kind of programmatic
guidance, but the placement of the passage and its ambiguous nature disqual-
ify it from serving such a function. So while religious material is clearly
important enough to Tacitus that he includes it when he need not have
done so, and even broadcasts his authoritative position as a member of one
of the most important priestly collegia in the Roman state cult, he gives us no
explicit guidance on exactly how religious material is important. More theo-
logical work, then, for the reader: as we progress through the narrative and
encounter such material, we must grapple with it unassisted and attempt to
interpret it in its context.
⁶⁹ For this translation of magisve iustis, see Damon 2003, 97.

⁷⁰ OLD s.v. ultio b. Damon 2003, 97 assumes only the former meaning: “nostram is active with
securitatem, passive with ultionem.”
⁷¹ Scott 1968, 47–8.
⁷² Woodman 1988, 168 observes that the preface of the Annals is “notable for what it omits
rather than for what it says . . . From this laconic statement [Ann. 1.3] the reader is left to draw
what further conclusions he can about the narrative which begins with the very next sentence.”
⁷³ On the passage, see further §5.5.
18 Introduction
0.3 TYPES OF MATERIAL
One of the difficulties in writing a study of religious material in the Annals is

its sheer variety: many types of reports are included, and each one relates to
cultic memory, and interacts with the other types of material, in its own way.
The material I consider can be grouped into three broad categories: traditional
cult practice; cultic commemoration of emperors and their family members
(Imperial cult); and attempts to understand the divine and its workings.
One category of material concerns what we might consider the cult of
the gods as it had been traditionally practiced; this mostly comprises rites
of the state religion, but some consideration is also given to the practices of
other communities within the bounds of the Roman Empire. I have been
guided here by Aleida Assmann’s useful list of media that transmit memory in
religion:⁷⁴ calendars (how do Tacitus’ Romans preserve or change the trad-
itional scheduling of religious festivals?); architecture (what determines the
building of or alterations to temples and other religious monuments?); liturgy
(do Tacitus’ Romans celebrate festivals in the same ways as their ancestors?);
and images (how do they treat cult statues?). In addition to these, Tacitus
is also interested in priests and their traditional functions.⁷⁵ When Tacitus
introduces such material, I am interested in analyzing it from the perspective
of memory and forgetfulness. When the trappings of traditional ritual appear,
to what extent are they maintained in the ancestral manner? When or how is
continuity upset, or preserved? Is continuity always valorized, or are there
times when innovation is salutary or necessary? When are the traditional roles
of figures such as priests and other religious experts respected, and when are
they altered or ignored? What about the role of Senate? How does the presence
of the emperor complicate these roles, or affect the continuity of religious
traditions?
Observations on the veneration of emperors is another category of religious
material Tacitus includes, and one that is particularly important for under-
standing how cultic and cultural memory intersect.⁷⁶ Another thread I will
follow through the Annals is moments when the emperors and their relatives
are remembered by being inscribed into cult practice, cultic spaces, and ritual
calendars, a process I term “cultic commemoration.” In other words, what
happens when those same aspects of cultic memory I noted above (calendars,
architecture, liturgy, images, and priests) are used to commemorate emperors
and other members of Rome’s ruling house? Effectively, it turns them into
⁷⁴ A. Assmann 2008, 100. See also J. Assmann 2011, 6–7; Rüpke 2012a, 140.
⁷⁵ Davies 2004, 185–7 emphasizes that priests do not perform their traditional role as “trusted
experts” nearly as often in Tacitus as in Livy; nevertheless, as I shall show, there is still evidence to
demonstrate that Tacitus is interested in priests’ traditional functions.
⁷⁶ For an example of the application of cultural memory theory to ruler cult, see Noreña 2015.
Introduction 19
gods, pushing them, in Rüpke’s terms, “beyond the unquestionably plausible
social environment inhabited by co-existing humans who are in communica-
tion.” Emperor cult fits this definition, in that deceased former emperors are
not coexistent, observable, or in communication with those who offer them
acts of worship.⁷⁷
The question of whether the Romans “really” thought of their deified former
emperors as gods in some ontological sense has been a frequent problem in the
study of emperor cult, but for Tacitus, the question is largely irrelevant. There
is no evidence that he is aiming to make a statement about whether any former
emperor is or is not actually a divinity.⁷⁸ Rather, he focuses on how Augustus’
deification affects the relationship between emperor and subject; for one of
the themes of the Annals is the way that cultic commemoration of deceased
emperors appears to affect the way living ones are treated. From the very
beginning of the Annals, the worship of divus Augustus looms large, especially
as it relates to the way Tiberius himself is perceived and treated by his subjects.
As Jan Assmann puts it, “rulership needs a pedigree” (Herrschaft braucht
Herkunft):⁷⁹ alignment of himself with his predecessor is an important part
of Tiberius’ legitimation of his own rule. But when that “pedigree” includes a
god (and one who lived not during the quasi-mythical era of Rome’s founda-
tion, but within the current ruler’s own lifetime), the line between divine
predecessor and living emperor becomes blurred, and worship of Tiberius’
deified predecessor sets a precedent for quasi-worshipful attitudes to the living
princeps. There is also the further question of the cultic commemoration of
relatives of the emperor. Should these be seen as intermediate steps (Zwischen-
stufen) along the road to the “full” divinity possessed by the emperor,⁸⁰ as an
allowable outgrowth of the worship of divus Augustus, or a worrying develop-
ment that memorializes humans using means appropriate only for the gods?
In the Annals, emperor cult is practiced in many forms by many types of
people. The cultic commemoration of emperors encompasses a wide variety of
practices and actors, from the voting of divine honors to Augustus by the
Senate in the early days of Tiberius’ reign (Ann. 1.11.1), to Tiberius’ own
performance of a sacrifice before a statue of Augustus (4.52.2), to the appar-
ently spontaneous offer by communities in Asia and Spain (4.15.3, 4.37.1) to
⁷⁷ Gradel 2002, 5 defines religion as “between humans and what they perceive as ‘another
world’,” which he finds problematic for explaining emperor cult; Rüpke’s definition eliminates
some of these difficulties.
⁷⁸ Clauss 1999, 23; cf. Gradel 2002, 5. On Tacitus, see Davies 2004, 177. Some passages of
Tacitus could conceivably be interpreted as criticizing emperor cult tout court, but only if taken
out of their narrative context (e.g. Hist. 4.61.3, on the Germans’ worship of Veleda, with Davies
2004, 178). Likewise, the criticisms of Augustus’ deification at Ann. 1.10.6 are spoken by his
critics, not the historian himself; see §1.2.
⁷⁹ J. Assmann 1992, 71. ⁸⁰ See Clauss 1999, 37.
20 Introduction
build temples whose dedicatees include the living emperor Tiberius.⁸¹ These
instances of cult include both “top-down” state-sponsored worship, for which
the Senate gave approval and the state provided funds and personnel, and acts
of worship firmly outside the realm of state cult that represent a “bottom-up,”
spontaneous action by individuals or communities throughout the empire.⁸²
Finally, there is the category of what I call attempts to understand the divine
and its workings. Here, the relationship to cultic memory (rather than reli-
gious thought in general) is less obvious. Partly, as I shall show, references to
this type of material gain meaning through their position in Tacitus’ narrative:
when juxtaposed with observations on ritual details or emperor cult, attempts
to understand the divine affect how we read Tacitus’ observations on the
nexus of memory and ritual, and vice versa. In particular, Tacitus’ characters’
attempts to understand the divine sometimes bring them into conflict with
traditional notions of how humans are supposed to interact with their gods, or
show their fundamental misunderstanding of those notions; the best example
of this will be Germanicus (Chapter 2).
Crucially important is Tacitus’ use of the language of fate ( fatum) and
fortune ( fortuna) or chance ( fors), which represents an attempt to make
sense of the vast timescale on which the divine operates. Discerning Tacitus’
views on this is a problem that has particularly troubled scholars.⁸³ Sometimes,
he seems to favor overarching fatum as an explanation, at other times, the
chance workings of fors/fortuna. The two views are found juxtaposed through-
out his work, which may, as Kroymann observes, be part of the point: “They
stand in juxtaposition and opposition as tensions, and they must remain
standing as tensions”, rather than being dismissed as a change of the author’s
views.⁸⁴
Although fate is mentioned with roughly the same frequency in the extant
portions of the Annals and Histories,⁸⁵ fate in the Annals seems less coherent.
In the Histories, eight out of the sixteen references to fatum indicate Vepasian’s
destiny to ascend to the throne, or the destiny of his opponents to be defeated.⁸⁶
By contrast, there are only a few indications in the Annals that fate may be
⁸¹ On the passages, see §4.3 and §4.4.

⁸² For the important distinction between state cult and other forms of emperor worship,
see Gradel 2002, esp. ch. 12.
⁸³ e.g. Kroymann 1952, with a survey of previous German scholarship; Walker 1952, 244–54;
Syme 1958, 521–7. More recently see Davies 2004, 171–6; Griffin 2009, 168–72.
⁸⁴ Kroymann 1952, 159: “Sie stehen . . . als Spannungen im Nebeneinander und Gegeneinan-
der, und sie müssen als Spannungen stehenbleiben.” He argues against the views of Fabia 1914
and Reitzenstein 1927 (Kroymann 1952, 154–8), but still seems to allow for a change in the final
books of the Annals.
⁸⁵ Fatum or fatalis appears once for every 14.6 Teubner pages of the Annals, as compared to
every 13.9 pages of the Histories.
⁸⁶ Flavian fatum: Hist. 1.10, 2.82. 3.1, 5.13. Demise of competitors: Hist. 1.18, 1.29, 1.71, 3.84.
Cf. also Agr. 13.3. On fate in the Histories, see recently Shannon 2014, 276–7.
Introduction 21
involved in determining who will rule.⁸⁷ Sometimes that task involves fortuna,
as when Claudius emerges as “the princeps-to-be that Fortune was keeping in
hiding,” and Tacitus marks his unexpected elevation as an example of “the
mockeries of mortal affairs” (Ann. 3.18.4 ludibria rerum mortalium).⁸⁸ Even
here, however, it is not clear whether fortuna represents an element of chance,
randomness, or divine capriciousness in the way events unfold, as it occasion-
ally does in the Histories.⁸⁹ Fortuna, it must be remembered, is also a goddess in
the Roman pantheon, associated with prophecy and possessing a popular
oracular shrine at Praeneste; as such, it frequently may also have overtones
of providence rather than chance.⁹⁰ So each time fortuna appears in Tacitus’
narrative, we must ask ourselves whether it appears to signify a force that is
more providential or more random.
As with Tacitus’ approach to prodigies, despite the lack of clarity and
inconsistency in his usage of the concepts of fatum and fortuna, it is still
nevertheless possible for the reader to see fatum and fortuna in action as real
and efficacious forces. Yet in the Annals we are given no universally applicable
dictum as to how this might actually work. The closest we get is Annals 6.22, in
which Tacitus muses on the place of fatum and fortuna in historical causation:
“When I hear such things as these, my judgment is uncertain whether it is by
fate and immutable necessity, or by chance, that mortals’ affairs unfold” (Ann.
6.22.1 sed mihi haec ac talia audienti in incerto iudicium est, fatone res
mortalium et necessitate immutabili an forte volvantur). While it might be
tempting to read Annals 6.22 as a manifesto on Tacitus’ views on fate, the
overwhelming impression of the passage is one of uncertainty rather than of
clarification; Ronald Martin is surely right to state that “it is more prudent to
accept what [Tacitus] says at the beginning of the chapter,” i.e. his expression
of his own uncertainty on the question.⁹¹ It is also important to take account of
the context: Tacitus is not talking here about fatum in general, but about
astrology in particular. There is also a third possible viewpoint to which Tacitus
gives voice here, supposedly that of “the man-in-the-street” (6.22.3), according
⁸⁷ e.g. 1.3.3 (fate perhaps had something to do with Gaius Caesar’s death, a factor that made
Tiberius’ ascendency possible), 6.46.3 (Tiberius’ refusal to name heirs, which allowed Caligula to
take over, is equivalent to leaving the decision to fate; see §5.5, pp. 233–5), 16.5.3 (Vespasian’s
maius fatum keeps him safe under Nero; see §7.9, p. 334).
⁸⁸ See further §3.2, pp. 137–40.
⁸⁹ Cf. Otho’s relationship to fortuna, Hist. 2.12.1 and 47.1, with Ash 2007a, 110, 204.
⁹⁰ For the worship of fortuna, see Champeaux 1982; Davies 2004, 118; Clark 2007, 194–6,
233–43; Matthews 2011, ch. 1 (esp. pp. 21–8 on Fortuna at Praeneste). For fortuna as providence
or divine justice in literature, see Matthews 2011, 136–41.
⁹¹ Martin 2001, 149. Cf. Sinclair 1995, 55–6. Woodman 2016, 170–1 has recently emphasized
the aesthetic and rhetorical dimensions of the passage, noting that the question of whether the
world is governed by providence was sometimes debated in rhetorical schools (e.g. Quint. Inst.
3.5.6).
22 Introduction
to Martin,⁹² which seems to suggest that fate is an important component of
how things happen in history, at least insofar as it pertains to astrology.
Indeed, Tacitus seems to come down in favor of astrological determinism;⁹³
and astrology, along with similar “occult” practices such as magic and necro-
mancy, is often a vehicle for Tacitus to invite his reader to consider the
workings of the divine. The Annals contain several references to astrology
and the taking of horoscopes, sometimes by (alleged) pretenders to the throne
who are supposedly consulting astrologers in an attempt to ascertain their
chances, or a relative’s chances, of deposing the current emperor and ruling in
his place.⁹⁴ But astrologers are also consulted by the emperors themselves, or
by members of the Imperial house. Tacitus sometimes maligns practitioners of
astrology, or criticizes those who interpret its predictions too hastily. Never-
theless, astrological predictions in the Annals mostly end up coming true.⁹⁵
Even if Tacitus does not wish us to view everything that happens to Rome
under the Julio-Claudians as the ineluctable will of the stars, with these
references he does invite the reader to consider the relationship between the
principate and the divine.
0.4 THE STRUCTURE OF THIS STUD Y
Given the disparate nature of the types of material I will consider, it would have
been possible to analyze each type of material one by one—in other words, to
structure my analysis thematically. This is indeed the approach taken by Jason
Davies in his recent examination of religion in Tacitus.⁹⁶ What I have opted for
instead is a chronological analysis: I proceed one by one through each book of
the Annals taking religious material as it comes and consider what effect it
would have on a reader progressing sequentially through the narrative. Apart
from occasional deviations where I believe it helpful for the reader to be
presented with a passage “out of order,”⁹⁷ I largely follow the order in which
Tacitus arranged the episodes I consider.
This approach is warranted for several reasons. The physical form of
ancient book rolls meant that it was easier to read them straight through
than to jump around to different portions of the work, given that rolling
and unrolling the papyrus roll would have been more difficult than flipping
backward and forward in a codex; therefore, a sequential reading of each book
is the way of interacting with the text Tacitus may have had in mind for his
⁹² Martin 2001, 149. ⁹³ See Woodman 2016, 181–3.

⁹⁴ e.g. 2.32.3, 12.22.1, 12.52.1–3, 16.14.1–2. ⁹⁵ Davies 2004, 166.
⁹⁶ Davies 2004, ch. 4. ⁹⁷ As e.g. in §1.1.
Introduction 23
putative reader when composing the Annals.⁹⁸ Tacitus could, and did, use this
expectation of sequential reading to achieve important literary effects. As
Levene has convincingly demonstrated in his analysis (also structured sequen-
tially) of religious material in Livy,⁹⁹ part of what is important about the
religious material in a historical work is where in his narrative the historian
chooses to situate it, and the effect it has on the reader proceeding sequentially
through textual time. My sequential-reading analysis of the Annals highlights
important juxtapositions of religious material and religious language, shows
how Tacitus depicts important religious ideas and trends developing over
time, and allows for speculation about the effect of unexpected developments
on the reader. This is particularly important for the Annals given the wide
variety of types of religious material Tacitus includes: part of what is signifi-
cant is the juxtaposition and interrelation of these different concerns.
The other advantage to a sequential-reading approach is that it allows one
to assess whether and, if so, how, Tacitus is trying to show or suggest that the
way the Julio-Claudian emperors approached cultic questions changed over
time. One of the disadvantages of Davies’s study, structured thematically
rather than chronologically, is that it creates a picture of religion in Tacitus
that is monolithic and does not allow for the shades of difference between
principes and developments across the entire narrative of the Annals (and
indeed between the Annals and the Histories, which have a religious character
very different from that of the Annals, as Davies’s synthesizing treatment
sometimes obscures). I have chosen to structure my analysis according to
the reigns of different emperors, in order to highlight the differences in
Tacitus’ portrayals of each princeps: each reign has its own approach to cultic
memory, and the continuities and developments that link these approaches
offer crucial insights into Tacitus’ conception of the progression of the history
of the principate.
Much of my analysis concerns the Tiberian hexad (Chapters 1–5), with
Claudius (Chapter 6) and Nero (Chapter 7) receiving treatment in one chapter
each. The reason for this imbalance is that the first hexad lays out many of
the important themes and questions for a religious analysis of the Annals. In
the Claudian and Neronian books, Tacitus revisits these themes and questions
⁹⁸ On the physical form of the ancient book and its effect upon reading habits, see Van Sickle
1980, esp. pp. 5–6; Small 1997, 11–19; Cavallo 1999, 84–5 (for the notion that ease of cross-
referencing is an advantage of the codex format over the book roll; for a different view see
Johnson 2009, 267). Starr 1981 notes that Tacitus’ practice with “cross-references,” like that of
other authors, is to refer mainly (though not exclusively) to passages that are close by, and to
provide “short summaries for the reader’s convenience;” this also suggests that sequential
reading, rather than skipping around, is what Tacitus envisioned. The Annals, however, would
have comprised many papyrus rolls, and there is of course no guarantee that ancient readers
would read all the rolls, or that they would read them in order.
⁹⁹ Levene 1993.
24 Introduction
to show how they have developed, but it is in the Tiberian books that they
are gradually established. Their development therefore needs extraordinarily
careful analysis and more detailed examination. It is also the case that in the
Tiberian hexad there seems to be the greatest degree of change over time:
Tacitus’ books 1–6 chronicle the gradual development or solidification of
many things about the principate, including its approach to cultic memory,
and then the way Tiberius’ increasingly withdrawn and secretive approach to
ruling pushes those trends even further. I analyze Tiberius’ first grapplings with
religious questions in Annals 1–2 in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 deals with the same
books, but from a different perspective: that of Germanicus, a religious actor in
his own right, whose approach to cultic memory is just as flawed as Tiberius’
despite his apparent status as a potential redeemer of the Julio-Claudians.
Chapter 3 covers Annals 3, in which questions of memory and commemor-
ation come to the fore with renewed vigor after Germanicus’ death, and in
which the Senate has to come to terms with how it will perform its traditionally
central role in the settling of cultic questions in a society where the emperor
increasingly makes all the important decisions. Annals 4, the subject of
Chapter 4, continues to offer some of the same questions, but also represents
a turning point, as the gods’ wrath becomes increasingly manifest. Toward the
end of Tiberius’ life, chronicled in Annals 5–6 (Chapter 5), another shift
occurs: questions about the role of fate invite the reader to think about
Rome’s larger trajectory. Tacitus’ accounts of the principates of Claudius and
Nero show how two of Tiberius’ successors deal with the religious system they
have inherited: the mistakes they make are increasingly clear-cut, in compari-
son with the shifting, murky religious world of the Tiberian principate, but it
is also apparent that Claudius’ and Nero’s mistakes are a logical extension of
the problems Tiberius raised. Claudius (Chapter 6) represents a laudable
attempt to renew interest in Rome’s cultic memory, but the deeply flawed
nature not only of Claudius’ own reign, but also of the principate in general,
means that this is only marginally successful and does not make much differ-
ence to Rome’s apparent collision-course with the gods’ anger. Under Nero
(Chapter 7), the full extent of the gods’ wrath, and of the brokenness of Rome’s
system of cultic memory, finally becomes clear. This progressive analysis of
the religious material in the Annals offers a new way of understanding the
work: as a narrative of a system of government (the principate) that becomes
increasingly irreligious as its first dynasty progresses, but whose problems
are due not only to the actions of its individual members, but also to the
inherent flaws the system itself has introduced into the way Rome interacts
with her gods.
Tiberius the Autocrat
1.1 I NTRODUCTION: T I B ERI U S PERI N D E D I VI N A

HUMANAQUE OBTEGENS
It is typically advisable to begin at the beginning; but for Annals 1, we will

begin near its end. Before we embark upon a sequential reading of the book, a
closer look at a passage where Tiberius is confronted with a flood of the Tiber
River (Ann. 1.76.1) early in his principate ( 15) provides a clearer picture of
Tiberius than do the complex, shifting dynamics of the first part of Annals 1,
where his accession to the throne is described. In this later episode, the
emperor must respond not only to the destruction of property and loss of
life caused by the flood in low-lying areas of Rome, but also to the religious
problem it seems to represent. In this one episode, narrated in two short
passages, Tacitus tells the reader much about what kind of emperor Tiberius is
and about the consequences for how he approaches questions of religious
interpretation.
Eodem anno continuis imbribus auctus Tiberis plana urbis stagnaverat; relaben-
tem secuta est aedificiorum et hominum strages. igitur censuit Asinius Gallus ut
libri Sibyllini adirentur. renuit Tiberius, perinde divina humanaque obtegens; sed
remedium coercendi fluminis Ateio Capitoni et L. Arruntio mandatum.
(Ann. 1.76.1)
(In the same year the Tiber, increased by continuous rains, had covered the flat
areas of the city with floodwater; as it withdrew, there followed the destruction of
buildings and people. Therefore Asinius Gallus recommended that the Sibylline
books should be approached. Tiberius refused, covering up divine affairs just the
same as he did human ones; but the task of finding a means of restraining the
river within its bounds was assigned to Ateius Capito and L. Arruntius.)
While Tacitus does not explicitly describe this flood as a prodigium,¹ several
features of his description hint that Tacitus wants the reader to interpret this
flood as ominous (as the senator Asinius Gallus does), or at least consider the
¹ On this question, see §0.2, and §6.5, p. 270.

26 Tiberius the Autocrat

possibility that it should be so interpreted. Floods were traditionally interpreted
as prodigies, and Tacitus’ language implicitly places this flood in the same
traditional category by recalling how Livy reports prodigious occurrences in
general and prodigious floods specifically.² Tacitus uses the same temporal label
(eodem anno, “in the same year”) with which Livy often introduces prodigy
lists when he clusters them at year-ends, signifying that he has reported them
out of chronological sequence.³ In particular, Tacitus’ use of the verb adire
(“approach”) to describe the proposed consultation of the Sibylline books
in response to the flood is the expression Livy generally uses for the practice⁴
(e.g. Livy 39.5.5 horum prodigiorum causa decemviri libros adire iussi, “because
of these prodigies, the decemvirs were ordered to approach the books”). Thus,
while Tacitus does not explicitly say that the floods of  15 are ominous,⁵ his
language seems to suggest to the reader that they are similar to those to which
the Romans of the past had responded as prodigies.
Yet while Tacitus’ choice of words hints that this Tiber flood is one in a long
line of traditional prodigies, he also provides clues that the world in which this
flood occurs is very different from the world of Livy. A reader seeking the
cause of what Tacitus implies is divine anger against Rome would not have far
to look: the delatores’ recent attempts to convict Faianius and Rubrius on
trumped-up religious charges (Ann. 1.73) might well be enough to merit the
wrath of the gods, especially since Tacitus identifies their trials as the begin-
ning of an “extremely serious destruction” (gravissimum exitium) afflicting the
state.⁶ Immediately before describing the flood, Tacitus also chronicles further
accusations of delatores against Granius Marcellus (1.74–5), showing that
Faianius and Rubrius’ trials were not isolated incidents. In Nero’s principate,
Tacitus will explicitly connect such convictions by delatores, and the subse-
quent executions of the plaintiffs, with the wrath of the gods (16.16.2); but he
already implies the connection here near the beginning of Tiberius’ principate,
chosen as the starting point of his enquiry into the Julio-Claudian past. While
ominous floods are not new in Roman religious memory, the Tiber flood of
 15 comes at a moment when society has begun to change for the worse in
new ways.
Tiberius works outside the traditional procedures in the way he responds to
the flood; this not only sheds light on the nature of the relationship between
² For Tiber floods viewed as prodigies, see Pliny NH 3.55; Krauss 1930, 61–2; Goodyear 1981,
171; Aldrete 2007, 219–21. For Tacitus’ allusions to Livy in this passage, see Shannon 2018.
³ Ginsburg 1981, 33–4; Levene 1993, 35–6. Tacitus follows Livy’s “year-end” strategy by
placing nearly all his reports of prodigies at or near the ends of narrative years. For 1.76–81 as
a cluster of annalistic material, see Wille 1983, 376–7.
⁴ Oakley 2005b, 341.
⁵ Compare Tacitus’ explicit assertion that Tiber floods of  69 were prodigious (cf. Hist.
1.86.2); see Damon 2003, 273–4, 278–9; Shannon 2018.
⁶ See further §1.5, p. 39. On the delatores, see Powell 2010.
Tiberius the Autocrat 27

Senate and emperor, a major theme of the Tiberian hexad, but also provides
insight into Tiberius’ failures at religious interpretation. According to Repub-
lican tradition, it was the Senate’s job to decide whether an ominous event
reported to it had really occurred and, if so, whether it was of a type that
required religious remedy; if the prodigy was found to be genuine, it was also
the Senate’s job to mandate the quindecimvirs to consult the Sibylline books
to determine the proper remedy.⁷ In this case, it is not in doubt that a flood of
the Tiber has occurred, and there is ample precedent for considering floods as
prodigies worthy of expiation. Indeed, Asinius Gallus considers the flood
worrisome enough to warrant the Senate’s attention;⁸ as a quindecimvir, he
would have been responsible for consulting the Sibylline books.⁹ But Tiberius
overrules Gallus’ expert advice and refuses to let traditional procedure be
followed. Goodyear considers Tacitus’ charge of dissimulation too harsh, and
some commentators attribute Tiberius’ reluctance to consult the Sibylline
books to the fatalistic character of a man convinced that all prophecies were
bound to come true, and hence reluctant to investigate them lest he should find
dire predictions about himself.¹⁰ But Tacitus’ claim about Tiberius’ motives
rings true with his usual practice of silencing debate on religious issues, a
strong feature (as we shall see) of Tacitus’ narrative throughout Annals 1–2. By
refusing to allow consultation of the Sibylline books, Tiberius deprives the
Senate of its traditional role as the body which determines when the books
should be consulted, casting himself as the only source of religious authority.¹¹
The passage’s Livian character only serves to underscore Tiberius’ departure
from tradition: although the language is traditional, the Senate’s lack of
freedom to act is certainly not. Only the emperor may now decide when
something is a religious problem, and once he has decided that the flood is
not, there is no more discussion.
Furthermore, Tacitus strongly implies that Tiberius has interpreted this case
incorrectly. Tiberius is forcing a deviation from how the prodigy-expiation
system is traditionally supposed to work, leaving open the possibility that
divine displeasure may result from this lapse. Tacitus’ use of traditional
language implies that the Tiber flood should be considered a prodigy, in the
traditional manner. This implicitly raises the possibility that Tiberius’ refusal
⁷ Potter 1994, 149–51; Oakley 1998, 251; Davies 2004, 73–8; Santangelo 2013, 128–9. For an
example of a prodigy rejected by the Senate, see Livy 43.13.6, with Levene 1993, 115–16; Briscoe
2012, 431.
⁸ I doubt Levick’s 1976, 105 suggestion that “Gallus’ proposal was sarcastic.” Tacitus’
deprecatory comment on Tiberius as divina . . . obtegens would be odd if the suggestion that
the floods were prodigious were supposed to be patently ridiculous.
⁹ Rüpke 2008, 547–8. Asinius’ priesthood is also attested outside Tacitus (ILS 5050 l. 150).
¹⁰ Goodyear 1981, 171; see also Furneaux 1896, 280; Maggi 1946, 165–6; Koestermann
1963, 247.
¹¹ Cf. Davies 2004, 190–1, who also notes that there may be a personal element to the conflict
between Tiberius and Gallus (cf. 1.12–13).

to consider it as such could have consequences for Rome in the future. Since
Tiberius overrules the Senate, no legitimate judgment is able to be made about
the flood; if the flood was really a warning from the gods, the traditional
procedure that would allow that warning to be recognized and acted upon
cannot be followed. Thus, Tiberius’ autocratic decision-making has the poten-
tial to upset the relationship between Rome and the gods even further. If we are
to see a connection between the flood and the gravissimum exitium of treason
trials, for which Tacitus partly blames Tiberius (Ann. 1.73.1), then the emperor
is twice guilty when it comes to the Tiber flood: he had a hand in the divine
displeasure that may have caused it, and he fails to recognize that divine dis-
pleasure once it has been aroused. The recognition and expiation of prodigia, a
crucial element of Roman cultic memory, is closely intertwined with Tiberius’
failings as a ruler.
Yet despite Tiberius’ ruling that the floods are not prodigious, he also fails to
solve the problem by purely practical means. The proposal to divert the Tiber
provokes objections from Italian townspeople: some of the proposed alter-
ations will cause destructive flooding in other parts of the Italian countryside
(Ann. 1.79.1–3), but some of their objections relate to cult:
optume rebus mortalium consuluisse naturam, quae sua ora fluminibus, suos
cursus, utque originem, ita finis dederit; spectandas etiam religiones sociorum, qui
sacra et lucos et aras patriis amnibus dicaverint; quin ipsum Tiberim nolle prorsus
accolis fluviis orbatum minore gloria fluere. seu preces coloniarum seu difficultas
operum sive superstitio valuit, ut in sententiam Pisonis concederet<ur>, qui nil
mutandum censuerat. (1.79.3–4)
(Nature, they said, had looked after mortals’ affairs excellently, since she had
given to rivers their mouths, their courses, their beginning as well as their
boundaries; consideration should also be given to the religiones of the allies,
who had dedicated sacred rites, groves, and altars to the rivers of their fatherland;
indeed, the Tiber himself would certainly not wish to flow with less glory by
being deprived of his neighbor-rivers. Either the settlements’ pleas, or the diffi-
culty of the works, or superstitio was effective, with the result that there was a
concession to the opinion of Piso, who had recommended that nothing must
be changed.)
The religious practices of the Italian towns will also be affected, since the
planned diversions of rivers will apparently make it difficult for them to carry
out the traditional rituals (religiones) for their local river gods.¹² The Italians also
imply there is a risk of offending the divine Tiber by removing its tributaries.¹³
On the face of it, this is not a bad argument, given the religious importance of
¹² For this meaning of religiones, see OLD s.v. religio 8b; Grodzynski 1974, 46; Kahlos
2007, 391.
¹³ The Tiber is a divine guarantor of Roman success at Virg. Aen. 8.36–65. See also Benario 1978.

river gods and water in Rome and throughout Italy.¹⁴ Nevertheless, Tacitus
labels their objections as superstitio. The term has pejorative connotations and
indicates “excessive forms of behavior” or “excessive commitment to the gods,”
and refers to religious practices outside the realm of the elite-dominated Roman
state cult.¹⁵ With this term, Tacitus suggests that the Italians’ fears are “a little
excessive,”¹⁶ and implies that they do not understand the situation properly.
Much like the soldiers in the Pannonian mutiny who are filled with superstitio
and give way to irrational fears during an eclipse (1.28.2), these rural Italians
become overly concerned with their river gods at the expense of rationality and
practicality.¹⁷ The proper, non-superstitio-influenced way to interpret the flood
would have been to recognize it as a prodigy and expiate it according to the
traditional apparatus of the state cult, an interpretation Tiberius has refused.
The Italians, in their concern for their river gods, advance an alternative
interpretation that is irrational, excessive, and not state-sanctioned, as Tacitus
implies by using superstitio to describe it.
In this episode, then, Tiberius fails either to provide proper religious guid-
ance, or to prevent problematic religious interpretations. Because of this, Roman
religious memory (as embodied in the traditional prodigy-expiation system) is
neglected, and superstitio springs up unchecked in its place. This toxic combin-
ation is also infused with the tincture of ineffectiveness: Tiberius comes across as
inactive, since in the end no steps whatsoever are taken against the flood.
Tiberius (if he was present at the Senate’s meeting) does not react to this reversal
of his recommendation. Perhaps he would have preferred to go ahead with the
works, but thought it better to tread carefully in view of the Senate’s oppos-
ition.¹⁸ Perhaps he found the colonists’ religious arguments against the works
valid, but if so, he does not comment on this directly. Just as Tiberius closed off
debate by refusing to interpret the flood as a supernatural event, this time he
allows inactivity through silence.
It seems that Tacitus deliberately chose to depict these events so as to
highlight Tiberius’ failings. Dio frames his account of the same episode
(57.14.7–8) differently by reporting the flood in the context of other occurrences
¹⁴ See Edlund-Berry 2006.

¹⁵ Beard et al. 1998, i.217. Cf. Salzman 1987, 173–4; Gordon 2008, 73–4. By the early second
century , it was also used as a derogatory term for the religious beliefs and practices of non-
Roman peoples, and Tacitus frequently uses superstitio in this sense: see Grodzynski 1974, 47–8;
Scheid 1985, 23–4; Beard et al. 1998, i.221–2; Kahlos 2007, 394. On Tacitus’ usage of the term in
the Histories, see Shannon 2014, 283–92.
¹⁶ Scheid 1985, 22.
¹⁷ On the Pannonian eclipse, see §2.2, pp. 72–3. Irrational interpretations of natural phe-
nomena are often characteristic of lower-class groups, as opposed to the superior, natural-
scientific explanations of the educated aristocracy; see Grodzynski 1974, 53; Ronca 1992, 55;
Gordon 2008, 74; Santangelo 2013, 41.
¹⁸ Koestermann 1963, 254; Seager 1972, 129. The emperor had the right to speak at any point
in senatorial proceedings; disagreeing with him was rare (Talbert 1984, 163–74).

(earthquakes, lightning) generally interpreted as omens. Dio’s Tiberius also
privileges a practical solution over a religious one, thereby coming across as a
more dynamic ruler than in Tacitus’ account: after Tiberius forms a committee
to oversee the river (note Dio’s active προσέταξεν, compared with Tacitus’
passive mandatum), Dio’s narration stops, ending on a high note of Imperial
activity. Moreover, the episode does not take place during a meeting of the
Senate, so there is no debate for Tiberius to obstruct, no traditional consultation
of the Sibylline books for him to disallow, and no Italian superstitio for him to
take (erroneously) into account. In Dio’s account, Tiberius’ decision not to
interpret these occurrences as prodigies could be viewed negatively, since
ignoring omens arouses the gods’ wrath (ira deum). But Dio also leaves out
the element of superstitio, the policing of problematic religious interpretations
at which Tacitus’ Tiberius fails so spectacularly. Dio’s version does not have the
same implications for how religious concerns affect (and are affected by) the
dynamics of the relationship between Tiberius and the Senate. Tacitus’ Tiberius
is both more autocratic and less conscientious about following religious tradi-
tions. As we shall see, the interplay between these two characteristics inhibits his
ability to provide religious guidance for his subjects.
The episode of the Tiber flood is in many ways paradigmatic for how we
should view Tiberius’ relationship with Roman cultic memory: with a diktat
from on high, Tiberius silences the interpretation of the flood that would have
been traditional (as a prodigy that must be expiated), leaving the way open for
superstitio, which prevents the problem from being addressed on a practical
level. This intertwining of the emperor’s religious failings and his subjects’
problematic religious interpretations (which he does too little to counter) will
be a major feature of Tiberius’ principate: it is not just Tiberius himself who
gets things wrong, and his failure to enforce religious norms correctly is no less
destructive than the attitudes that prevail in society at large. Neither Tiberius
nor his subjects seem to have a solid understanding of Roman religious
memory and how best to preserve it.
1.2 F UNERAL, APOTHEOSIS, AND R E C U S A T I O
But where does this problem start? Were the Roman people already losing sight
of religious tradition and falling into problematic practices before Tiberius
became princeps, or is he personally responsible for the decay of Roman
religious memory? Tacitus, true to fashion, does not answer this question
directly; nevertheless, it is clear from the way he tells the story of early Julio-
Claudian history that the problem does not simply begin with Tiberius. Strictly
speaking, the Annals themselves do not begin with Tiberius, but rather, with
“a few things about Augustus, and his final stages” (Ann. 1.1.3 pauca de

Augusto et extrema). Tiberius is the first emperor whose reign is narrated in
any detail, emphasizing that the story Tacitus wishes to tell in the Annals is one
of dynastic succession within a hereditary monarchy.¹⁹
There is much that Tiberius will inherit along with the position of princeps.
The end of Augustus’ principate casts its shadow over Tiberius’ accession,
implying that the problems that Tacitus will chronicle in the Annals are not
simply Tiberius’ fault, but rather, arose from a system that existed before he
became emperor. This is especially true from the point of view of cultic memory,
for Tiberius’ accession is accompanied by the consecration of Augustus as a god:
the leader of the political regime changes, and in the same moment, the
pantheon is expanded to include the previous leader. Deification is a particu-
larly thorny issue that proves difficult to navigate for both Tacitus’ Romans
(particularly the Senate) and the reader. As Tacitus portrays it, divus Augustus
has profound and far-reaching influence upon religious memory under Tiber-
ius; the associated religious problems therefore do not come about because
of Tiberius’ accession specifically, but are a product of the Imperial system
in general.
In reality, Augustus’ deification was probably accepted without difficulty
even if there may have been individuals who opposed enrolling men among the
gods.²⁰ Yet in the world of the Annals, Tacitus presents Augustus’ deification in
such a way that the reader hears only critical voices, thereby bringing into the
foreground a cynical view of deification as being connected primarily with
attempts to consolidate political power regardless of its appropriateness ac-
cording to traditional religious norms. The first reference to Augustus’ deifi-
cation comes from his critics, censuring his apparent desire for worship:
“Nothing was left for honors for the gods, since he wished himself to be
worshipped with temples and divinities’ image by flamines and priests”
(Ann. 1.10.6 nihil deorum honoribus relictum, cum se templis et effigie numi-
num per flamines et sacerdotes coli vellet). As Gradel has convincingly argued,
what Augustus’ critics accuse him of wanting is nothing other than an official
decree of deification after his death at the hands of the state: flamines and
sacerdotes must refer to the priestly apparatus of the official state cult that
would be established only after a posthumous deification, and templum and
effigies would therefore also have to refer to a state-financed temple and cult
statue.²¹ These physical elements would permanently build divus Augustus into
the physical fabric of Rome, becoming a site to which future worshippers
through the centuries would regularly return to make dedications; through
this material continuity, Roman temples functioned as important repositories
¹⁹ On Tacitus’ decision to begin the Annals with Augustus’ death and Tiberius’ succession,
see Syme 1958, 368–74; O’Gorman 1995, esp. pp. 101–14. For the centrality of dynastic concerns,
see Kraus 2009, 102–3; Klaassen 2014, 158–9.
²⁰ Taylor 1931, 232; Price 1984, 88; Beard et al. 1998, i.208. ²¹ Gradel 2002, 276–9.

of religious memory.²² A flaminate of Augustus would similarly ensure that
the memory of the divus remained alive in Roman religious life, since these
priests would be mandated to perform regular rituals for Augustus, presum-
ably (like other priests) at specific moments in the Roman calendar. The choice
of a flamen particularly underlines this notion of longevity and living cultic
memory: the first flamen dated back to the reign of Numa as “a continuously
present priest” (Livy 1.20.2 adsiduum sacerdotem), and the flamen Dialis (the
flamen about whom the most is known) was said to be “celebrating every day”
(Gellius NA 10.15.16 cotidie feriatus). In other words, what Augustus wanted
(or at least what his critics implied he wanted) when he aimed at deification was
nothing less than to be inscribed forever into the cultic memory of the
Roman state.
Previous commentators have misunderstood the nature of the criticism and
claimed that these detractors are somehow being unfair; they highlight the
worship of Augustus in communities outside Rome or in private contexts
within Italy, seen as less problematic than official state deification, and em-
phasize Augustus’ refusal of state cult during his lifetime.²³ Those non-state-
sanctioned varieties of emperor cult were clearly in existence and would have
been known to both Tacitus’ readership and the characters in Annals 1.9–10
alive at the time of Augustus’ death. For example, Tiberius later refers to
Augustus’ temple at Pergamum, famous as a site of worship within Augustus’
own lifetime,²⁴ as a “pleasing example” (4.37.3 placitum . . . exemplum), imply-
ing that he not only expected the temple to be well known to his audience, but
also thought it would be relatively uncontroversial. Tacitus could have in-
cluded such examples of non-state-sanctioned worship of Augustus in these
chapters of the Annals; placed in the mouth of Augustus’ supporters, examples
like that of the temple at Pergamum could have been construed as evidence
that Augustus deserved to be deified by the state after his death, since steps had
already been taken to worship him as a god during his lifetime, spontaneously
and at the request of Augustus’ subjects throughout the empire, rather than at
the behest of the emperor himself.
An official state cult of Augustus could, then, have been made to look like a
posthumous rubber-stamping of the divinity that had been becoming appar-
ent throughout Augustus’ life. Yet by allowing only Augustus’ critics to refer to
the deification, and by mentioning specific components of state worship,
Tacitus implies that Augustus may have deliberately aimed at being honored
²² See §0.3, p. 18. For temples as physical repositories of cultic (and cultural) memory in the
Annals, see §7.6, p. 320, and Shannon 2012, 751–4, 759–60.
²³ e.g. Koestermann 1963, 103; Goodyear 1972, 166.
²⁴ See Hänlein-Schäfer 1985, 166–8 for literary, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence for the
temple.

as an official state god after his death.²⁵ It is striking that we are not given a
pro-apotheosis point of view: Tacitus’ report of the pro-Augustans’ opinions
(Ann. 1.9.3–5) contains no reference to deification. While there was a positive
spin to be put on Augustus’ involvement in the civil wars after Julius Caesar’s
death and the political settlement that followed, Tacitus does not allow the
same to be true of state-sponsored deification. Presumably some would have
agreed that Augustus should become a divus after his death,²⁶ but Tacitus does
not allow that viewpoint any space in the Annals. With that omission, Tacitus
implies that Augustus’ desire for divinity was only to be viewed in a negative
light, as part of Augustus’ grasping after unprecedented power by dubious
means. For, by juxtaposing remarks about deification with the preceding litany
of Augustus’ misdeeds in the mouths of the critics, Tacitus draws a pointed
and possibly ironic contrast between Augustus’ behavior and his deification:
“It is of such a man that a god is made!”²⁷ Augustus’ critics may wish to
insinuate that his blood-soaked rise to sole ruler of the Roman Empire makes
him in some way unworthy of being a god.
A similar argument is made in Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis (“a prime source
for imperial apotheosis”²⁸) about why Claudius is unworthy of deification:
in a council of the gods, divus Augustus argues that Claudius should not be
allowed to become a god because of the large number of people (especially
members of his own family) for whose murders he has been responsible
(Sen. Apocol. 11.5). Furthermore, he argues that admitting Claudius to the
pantheon will devalue what it is to be a god and will lower humans’ opinions
of the “regular” gods who chose to admit him to their number: “Who would
worship him as a god? Who would believe in him? While you make such men
into gods, no one will believe that you are gods” (Sen. Apocol. 11.4 hunc deum
quis colet? quis credet? dum tales deos facitis, nemo vos deos esse credet). This is
strikingly similar to the assertion of the Annals’ Augustan critics that Augus-
tus’ appropriation of the traditional apparatus of cult worship has had the
effect of cheapening the traditional means available to honor the “real” gods.
The notion, then, that some individuals could be thought unworthy of deifi-
cation, and that making them into gods would somehow devalue the cultural
vocabulary (priests, temples) with which the gods were usually honored, was,
if not necessarily a widely held opinion, at least a possible alternative to
enthusiastic acceptance of deification. Tacitus highlights the presence of this
viewpoint in early Tiberian Rome: those who disliked the fact that Augustus
was becoming a god, Tacitus implies, had good reasons for that opinion. It was
²⁵ Cf. Gradel 2002, 279.

²⁶ For the idea that Augustus deserved divinity because of his conduct in life, cf. Sen. Clem.
1.10.3.
²⁷ Wankenne 1977, 332 (“C’est d’un tel homme qu’on fait un dieu!”).
²⁸ Gradel 2002, 325.

perfectly possible to say that Augustus deserved worship for his good behavior;
Tacitus instead chooses to imply the opposite.
This is not to say that Tacitus necessarily thought that Augustus’ critics had
the right idea about his deification. Indeed, because this negative view of
deification comes from such biased interpreters within the text, the reader is
left uncertain whether to believe it.²⁹ Yet when Tacitus moves abruptly from
these anti-Augustan sentiments into a matter-of-fact report of the actual
deification given in his own authorial voice (Ann. 1.10.8), the criticisms of
Augustus’ detractors still ring in the reader’s ear, and the caelestes religiones
are viewed in the context of an attitude that sees deification only as something
that demeans the honors available to the “real” gods, and not as an appropriate
way to commemorate Augustus.
Notably, however, this criticism does not actually prevent Augustus from
being made a god. Tacitus reports no debate in the Senate about whether
Augustus should be deified; he states simply that the deification went ahead.
When it comes time to admit Augustus to the pantheon of official gods in the
Roman state cult, Tacitus silences the critical voices who had complained about
the worship of Augustus at Ann. 1.10.6. Furthermore, distinctions between
different groups of senators, some of whom must have agreed with the
deification of Augustus and some of whom Tacitus tells us did not, are erased.
Tacitus uses passive verbs to describe both Augustus’ critics (1.10.1 dicebatur)
and the Senate’s conferral of divine honors (1.10.8 decernuntur); since no
agent is specified in either case, the reader is left to speculate how much overlap
there was between the people who criticized the worship of Augustus and the
senators who voted for his deification.³⁰ Although talk against Augustus’
deification is clearly in the air after his death, it does not affect the Senate’s
ultimate decision, even if some of its members were participants in such
criticism (just as the criticisms of Claudius in the Apocolocyntosis did not
make Claudius any less a divus).³¹ Those critics, for whatever reason, do not
voice their opinions when the actual vote about deification is taken, and the
reader can only speculate about why those dissenting voices have fallen silent.
At least some people in Tacitus’ Senate, then, may be hiding their true
opinions about Augustus’ deification: “Hypocrisy is not a preserve of the
emperor alone; nor is inconsistency.”³² While we should not minimize the
number of senators (perhaps even the majority) who evidently found Augustus’
deification thoroughly unproblematic, the hypocrisy of the dissenters who
²⁹ Cf. Pelling 2010, 374.

³⁰ The doubtfulness is magnified by the shifting between senatorial procedure and popular
talk (probably outside the Senate, but not necessarily excluding senators as participants) that
Tacitus introduces into the sequence Ann. 1.8–10: 1.8.1–5 (in the Senate), 1.8.6 (apparently
outside the Senate), 1.9.1–10.7 quaesivisse (apparently outside the Senate), 1.10.7 etenim . . .
exprobraret (a digression describing a discussion which took place in the Senate during the
Augustan period), 1.10.8 (again in the Senate meeting of  15) (A. J. Woodman, per litteras).
³¹ Cf. Gradel 2002, 328–9. ³² Pelling 2010, 369.
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Attaridji, esto es, el cronista por excelencia. Del texto arábigo sólo
hay referencias en otros historiadores más modernos y la traducción
castellana del siglo xiv, fundada en otra portuguesa hecha por el
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Memorias de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1850) y Saavedra.
Nos ha llegado en códices muy estragados y pasando por dos
intérpretes, y parece algo interpolada; pero es la mejor fuente para
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Corral, del siglo xv. Una de las lagunas que tiene ha sido rellenada
por la narración que R. M. Pidal halló en una de las redacciones de
la Segunda Crónica general, esto es, la de 1344 (Catálogo de la
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descritas por R. Menéndez Pidal, Madrid, 1898. El texto de Rasis,
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Molina que mostró su gran prudencia y valor contra
las pretensiones de los infantes don Pedro, tío del
Rey; don Juan, tío de don Fernando, y don Juan
Manuel. Se encargó del gobierno á los catorce años,
juntando Cortes en Valladolid y, deshaciéndose de
los tutores, se hizo famoso por sus leyes y por las
guerras con los moros en Algeciras, El Salado y
Gibraltar, en cuyo sitio murió. Publicó el
Ordenamiento de Alcalá, á 28 de febrero de 1348
(era de 1386), y lo mandó usar y guardar su hijo don
Pedro. Puso en vigor las Siete Partidas. Atribúyesele
el Libro de la Montería. Fué, después de Alfonso X,
el legislador á quien más debe la jurisprudencia
española.
248. El Libro de la Montería publicólo Argote de Molina en 1582 y
reprodújolo J. Gutiérrez de la Vega, Bibliot. venatoria, Madrid, 1877,
t. I y II. Consúltese: B. Martín Mínguez, Alfonso XI y el Libro de la
Montería, en La Ilustración Española y Americana, 1906, t. LXXXI,
págs. 190-191. Consérvase el texto de las Cortes celebradas por
Alfonso XI en Burgos, 1315; en Valladolid, 1325; en Medina del
Campo, 1328; en Madrid, 1329; en Alcalá, 1348, con su famoso
Ordenamiento, y en León, 1349.
249. Á la primera mitad del siglo xiv pertenece el

Poema de Alfonso Onceno (1312-1350), traducción
probablemente del gallego, hecha por Rodrigo
Yáñez. El autor debió asistir á muchos de los hechos
que canta como soldado y juglar, no como poeta
erudito. Hay brío y calor, como en ningún otro poema
anterior, fuera del Cantar de mio Cid. Consta de
2.455 estrofas de á cuatro versos octosílabos,
consonantados el primero con el tercero y el
segundo con el cuarto, aunque le falta el principio y
el fin y tiene algunas otras lagunas. Es la última
muestra de la epopeya castellana del mester de
juglaria.
250. Descubrió el Poema de Alfonso XI en Granada, por los años de
1573, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, y publicó un extracto de él Argote
de Molina en la Nobleza de Andalucía (1588). Mendoza lo tuvo por
una de las antiguas gestas (en su carta de 1.º de diciembre de 1573
á Zurita) y de hecho es la última del mester de juglaria. Nicolás
Antonio creyó que su autor era Alfonso XI. El manuscrito, que fué de
Mendoza, pasó con su librería á la Biblioteca de El Escorial, donde
estuvo hasta 1864, en que Florencio Janer lo publicó, reduciendo á
la forma versificada el texto, que está como si fuera prosa. Hállase
plagado de faltas en la versificación, debidas acaso al que se
supone lo transcribió al castellano, como insinuó Julio Cornu, pues
leídos en gallego ó en portugués los versos cojos resultan enteros.
Parece, pues, que el Rodrigo ó Ruy Yáñez, que se nombra en la
copla 1841 ("Yo Rodrigo Yannes la note | en lenguage castellano")
fué un traductor desmañado, natural de Galicia, que castellanizó su
nombre de Rodrigo Eannes. Hay otros que suponen fué un
portugués el que se esforzó por escribir el Poema en castellano;
pero el sonar bien los versos en gallego hace más probable la
primera conjetura. Las alusiones á las profecías de Merlín (242-246,
1808...) la corroboran, pues éstas entraron en Galicia con los lays
bretones, y no menos lo de "la farpa de don Tristán" (409). El autor
de la Crónica de Alfonso XI parece tuvo presente el Poema.
251. Poema de Alfonso Onceno. Ed. F. Janer, Madrid, 1863; Bibl. de

Aut. Esp., t. LVII. Consúltense: señora C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos,
en Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, t. II, 2. Ableitung, páginas
204-205; señora C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Estudos sobre o
romanceiro peninsular: Romances velhos em Portugal, Madrid,
1909, pág. 330.
252. La Crónica rimada de las cosas de España

desde la muerte del rey don Pelayo hasta don
Fernando "el Magno", y más particularmente de las
aventuras del Cid, que otros intitulan Cantar de
Rodrigo ó también Las mocedades de Rodrigo, es
una composición de unos 1.225 versos, los más de
diez y seis sílabas, esto es, en romance, con huellas
de la cuaderna vía y algunos versos que no son más
que prosa cortada (ej. 235-248; 312-313). El autor
semierudito tomó del pueblo el metro del romance, el
asunto histórico y hasta la manera novelesca que
habían traído á Castilla las nuevas leyendas
caballerescas, venidas de Galicia y Francia. Es,
pues, un largo romance con inspiración popular,
hecho por persona algún tanto letrada.
253. La Crónica rimada se halla en un manuscrito del siglo xv. La
refundición de la Crónica general de 1344 contiene ya en prosa la
historia de las mocedades del Cid, tal como la ofrece la Crónica
rimada, de manera que parece hubo gestas, mejor diremos
romances, que las cantaban, de los cuales salió ó á los cuales alude
esta prosa de la Crónica de 1344 y la descuidada Crónica rimada. El
autor, que parece debía de ser palentino, tiene del juglar y del
erudito. La manera de tratar al Cid en una y otra Crónica muestra
que el espíritu caballeroso y aventurero corría ya por España y que
ya se debían de cantar romances de este nuevo género novelesco,
de los que tantos hay entre los romances viejos del siglo xv. El Cid,
mozo de doce años, se combate con el Conde Gómez de Gormaz
por haber maltratado éste á los pastores de su padre y robádole su
ganado. Mátale, y la más joven de las hijas del muerto, llamada
Ximena Gómez, demanda en matrimonio al matador, hecho
caballeresco hasta dejarlo de sobra. Cásase Rodrigo contra su
voluntad cediendo á los ruegos del rey don Fernando, á quien
insulta y jura no besarle la mano á él ni ver á Ximena hasta tanto
que no haya salido vencedor en cinco lides: otro rasgo caballeresco.
Vencedor en una, se aviene con el Rey; peregrina á Santiago y, al
volver, acoge á San Lázaro en figura de leproso, el cual se le
aparece en sueños; sóplale en las espaldas y prométele victoria
siempre que sienta estremecerse (calentura). En Palencia está aún
en pie la iglesia de San Lázaro, mandada labrar por el Cid, y junto á
ella hubo el primer hospital de leprosos de España, según allí se
dice. Emprende, pues, sus aventuras, vence al Conde de Saboya,
coge presa á su hija y aconseja al rey don Fernando que la tome
para sí; pártese para París, golpea las puertas, encuentra al Papa,
desafía al Rey de Francia y á los doce Pares; asiste á las vistas de
los Reyes de Castilla y de Francia, del Papa y del Emperador de
Alemania, portándose con altanera fanfarronería; la hija del Conde
de Saboya da á luz un hijo, cuyo padre es "el buen rey don
Fernando", y para celebrarlo, el Papa solicita treguas de un año,
apoyándole el Rey de Francia y el Emperador de Alemania,
padrinos del niño. El romántico Cid de la Crónica rimada bien se ve
cuánto dista del histórico Mio Cid: el soplo de la novela caballeresca
había soplado regañonamente de Galicia. Tal aparece después en
no pocos romances y en el teatro, en la Comedia de la muerte del
rey don Sancho y reto de Zamora por don Diego Ordóñez, de Juan
de la Cueva; en Las mocedades del Cid, de Guillén de Castro; en
Las Almenas de Toro, de Lope; en La jura en Santa Gadea, de
Hartzenbusch; en Le Cid, de Corneille; en La Légende des Siècles,
de Víctor Hugo; en los Poèmes tragiques, de Leconte de Lisle; en
los Trophées, de José María Heredia.
La Crónica Rimada se conserva en un códice de la Biblioteca

Nacional de París; fué impresa por Francisque-Michel, Viena, 1846;
por Ferdinand Wolf, Viena, 1847; por Durán, en el Romancero
general, vol. II, Madrid, 1851, Bibl. de Autor. Esp., t. XVI, Apénd. IV,
núm. 188.
254. El Cantar de Rodrigo. Ed. B. P. Bourland, en Revue Hispanique

(1911), t. XXIV, págs. 310-357; Crónica rimada de las cosas de
España desde la muerte del rey don Pelayo hasta don Fernando "el
Magno", y más particularmente de las aventuras del Cid, ed. Fr.
Michel, Anzeige-Blatt für Wissenschaft und Kunst, en Jahrbücher der
Literatur (Wien, diciembre 1846), t. CXVI; reimp., en Bibl. de Aut.
Esp., t. XVI, págs. 651-664; facsímile del manuscrito de la
Bibliothèque Nationale, ed. Archer M. Huntington, New York, 1904.
Consúltese: M. Menéndez y Pelayo, Tratado de los romances viejos,
Madrid, 1903, t. I, págs. 337-345.
255. Fernando Sánchez de Tovar ó de

Valladolid, predecesor de López de Ayala en la
Cancillería de Castilla en tiempo de Alfonso XI, y que
acaso alcanzó hasta Enrique II, escribió por orden
del mismo Alfonso XI la Chronica del rey D. Alonso
"el Sabio", Valladolid, 1604; la Chronica del rey D.
Sancho "el Bravo"; la Chronica del rey D. Fernando
el IV; la Chronica del rey D. Alfonso XI. Todas en la
Bibl. Escor. Creyéronse antes obra de Juan Núñez
de Villaizan.
Acaso en 1345, y por lo menos poco antes de 1350,

Fray Johan García de Castro Xerex (Castrojeriz),
de la orden de los frailes menores, confesor de la
reina de Castilla, trasladó del latín El Regimiento de
los príncipes, por orden de don Bernardo, obispo de
Osma (1331-1335), "por honra e enseñamiento del
muy noble infante don Pedro, fijo primero heredero
del muy alto e muy noble don Alfonso, rey de
Castilla, de Toledo, de León". Este Infante fué el que
reinó después, llamándose don Pedro el Cruel,
nacido en 1334 y que sucedió á su padre Alfonso XI
en 1350. La obra latina era De regimine principum,
hecha por Egidio Colonna, ó "Gil de Roma", de la
orden de San Agustín, que dice la versión, el cual
murió en Aviñón en 1316, después de ser Obispo de
Bourges y maestro del futuro Felipe IV el Hermoso,
de Francia, para quien escribió el libro. Nacido este
Rey en 1268 y habiendo sucedido á su padre en
1281, el libro se compuso antes de esta fecha. El
trasladador añadió muchas cosas de su cosecha.
Imprimióse la traslación en Sevilla, 1494. Consúltese
Revue Hispanique, t. XV, pág. 370.
En 1350 se tradujo la Crónica Troyana del Roman de

Troie, hecho por Benoît de Sainte-More hacia el
1160.
256. Resumamos la historia de las llamadas Crónicas troyanas y
cuanto al ciclo troyano atañe. En la segunda mitad del siglo iv, antes
de Teodosio (379), compuso Septimius una historia fabulosa de la
guerra de Troya, que pasa por traducción de un seudo cretense,
Dictys, el cual la escribió en fenicio y fué hallada en tiempos de
Nerón en su sepulcro, el cual mandó se vertiese al griego. Así se
dice en el prólogo de la redacción latina; pero ésta parece haberse
compuesto, sin ser traducción del tal Dictys. En la segunda mitad del
siglo v otra Historia de excidio Troiae se publicó, no menos fabulosa,
como traducción del seudo frigio Dares, que estaba en griego: el
traductor se firma Cornelio Nepote, y la dirige á Salustio; el autor se
presenta como testigo ocular. Todo ello es una superchería de aquel
tiempo de decadencia. Se han publicado entrambas fabulosas
historias juntas, generalmente, F. Meister, Lips., Bibl. Teubner, 1873.
En la Edad Media se tuvo por fabuloso á Homero y en cambio se
creyó á pies juntillas cuanto decían estas dos fabulosas historias:
"Todos aquellos que verdaderamente quisiéredes saber la estoria de
Troya, dice la traducción castellana del Roman de Troie, non leades
por un libro que Omero fiso... este libro fiso él después más de cient
annos que la villa fué destroyda; et por ende non pudo saber
verdaderamente la estoria en commo passara. Et fué después este
libro quemado en Atenas. Mas leet el de Dytis, aquel que
verdaderamente escrivió estoria de Troya en commo passaua por
ser natural de dentro de la cibdad, et estudo presente a todo el
destruymiento, et veya todas las batallas et los grandes fechos que
se fasian, et escrivía siempre de noche por su mano en qual guisa el
fecho pasaua". Dictys era de los griegos, Dares de los troyanos,
según se decía. Isidoro, Oríg., I, 41: "Historiam primus apud nos
Moyses... conscripsit; apud gentiles vero primus Dares Phrigius de
Graecis et Troianis historiam edidit, quam in foliis palmarum ab eo
conscriptam esse ferunt". Consúltense: H. Dunger, Die Sage vom
trojanischen Kriege in den Bearbeitungen des Mittelalters, Dresde,
1869; F. Meister, Ueber Dares von Phrygien, Breslau, 1841; G.
Körtin, Dicktys und Dares; ein Beiträge zur Gesch. d. Trojasage in
ihrem Uebergange aus d. antiken in die romantische Form, Halle,
1874. También hay una Historia Daretis Frigii de origine Francorum
(que pretenden venir de los troyanos), interpolada en tres
manuscritos de Fredegario y publicó G. Paris, Romania, 1874. La
Historia excidii Troiae es también acaso de origen franco. Un poeta
de Turena, Benoît de Sainte-More, compuso con estos materiales,
hacia 1160, el Roman de Troie, en más de 30.000 versos pareados
de nueve sílabas, y aduló la vanidad nacional con el supuesto
parentesco de francos y troyanos. Tradújose al alemán y
compendióse en prosa francesa; pero sobre todo corrió por Europa
en la traducción latina hecha por Guido delle Colonne, juez de
Mesina, con el título de Historia Troiana, comenzada en 1272 y
acabada en 1287, callando maliciosamente su verdadero original,
refiriéndose sólo á Dictys y Dares y dando al libro una pedantesca
apariencia histórica que contribuyó á su crédito entre los letrados
(M. Pelayo, Oríg. novel., t. I, pág. cxlv). Todas las variantes,
españolas é italianas, de la Crónica Troyana se fundan en la Historia
de Guido de Columna ó en el Poema de Benito de Sainte-More. A.
Mussafia las distinguió en Ueber die Spanischen versionen der
Historia Trojana, Viena, 1817. Ya dijimos del Poema de Alixandre, de
Berceo. La traducción castellana del Roman de Troie de 1350 dice:
"Este libro mandó facer el muy alto e muy noble e muy escelent rey
don Alfonso, fijo del muy noble rey don Fernando e de la reyna doña
Costanza. Ε fué acabado de escribir e de estoriar en el tiempo que
el muy noble rey don Pedro, su fijo, regnó, all cual mantenga Dios...
Fecho el libro postremero dia de diziembre. Era de mill et trecientos
et ochenta et ocho años. Nicolas Gonçales, escriban de los sus
libros, lo escribí por su mandado". Tradújose esta versión castellana
por Fernán Martis al gallego, "era de mill e quatroçentos et onze
años", esto es, año de 1373; de ella hay dos códices: el que fué de
Santillana y hoy para en la Bibl. Nacional, procedente de la de
Osuna, y el bilingüe, gallego y castellano, de la biblioteca de M.
Pelayo: de entrambos salió la edición de Andrés Martínez Salazar,
La Coruña, 1900, dos vols. Volvió á traducirse el Roman de Troie en
castellano por autor anónimo á fines del siglo xiv, con algunos
trozos versificados, cuyo códice, también de Osuna, para en la Bibl.
Nac. (véase Revue Hisp., 1899), aunque parece anterior á la de
1350 por ciertos arcaísmos del lenguaje. De la Crónica, de Guido de
Columna, procede la traducción catalana de Jaime Conesa (1367), y
la castellana de Pedro de Chinchilla (1443), cuyo códice está en la
bibl. de M. Pelayo. La Crónica Troyana, impresa en el siglo xvi á
nombre de Pedro Núñez Delgado, Medina, 1587, toma á Guido por
principal fuente y añade otras fábulas.
Crónica Troyana, códice gallego del siglo xiv, etc., ed. M. R.

Rodríguez, La Coruña, 1900, 2 vols. Consúltense: J. Cornu, Estoria
Troyãa acabada era de mill et quatroçentos et onze annos (1373),
en Miscellanea linguistica in onore di Graziadio Ascoli (Torino, 1901),
págs. 95-128; A. Mussafia, Ueber die spanischen Versionen der
Historia Trojana, en Sitzungsberichte d. k. k. Akademie (Wien,
1871), t. LXIX, págs. 39-62.
257. Don Gil Álvarez de Albornoz (1310-1367), nacido en

Cuenca, consejero de Alfonso XI, Arzobispo de Toledo, Cardenal
desde 1350, Legado y cabeza de las tropas de Inocencio VI, para
quien reconquistó muchas plazas de su patrimonio. Aniquiló en Italia
el poder de Visconti de Milán, como Legado de Inocencio VI por la
publicación de las Constitutiones Aegidianae del año 1362, impresas
en Venecia, 1568-1571. Fundó el Colegio Mayor de San Clemente
de los Españoles en Bolonia, que se inauguró en 1367. Hizo otras
varias Constitutiones, como las diocesanas y provinciales de Toledo
(1339), las contra Clericos concubinarios (1342); además el
Catecismo, en castellano: Interrogationes et Scrutinia de peccatis
publicis para los Visitadores de las Iglesias; en fin, las Constitutiones
de 1345: todo ello en la Biblioteca de El Escorial.
Fray Bernardo Oliver, valentino, agustino y obispo de Tortosa

hacia 1345, publicó Excitatorium mentis in Deum, traducido por
anónimo: Espertamiento ó levantamiento de la voluntad en Dios.
Tractatus contra Judaeos.
Fray Guillermo Anglés, valenciano y obispo de Valencia en 1345,

escribió Expositio de ordine Missae.
El maestro general Gaver, barcelonés, escribió hacia 1345 Epistola

Apologetica. De perfectione eiusdem Ordinis. De caelesti eiusdem
Ordinis revelatione ac fundatione.
Rodrigo de Mallorca escribió Eximiae Chiromantiae in

Universitate Oxoniensi circa medium saeculi xiv compilati, ó De
praedictionibus.
Fray Nicolás Rosell († 1362), dominico mallorquín y cardenal

desde 1356, escribió De quadruplici iurisdictione Romanae
Ecclesiae in regnum Siciliae. De unitate Ecclesiae et schismate
vitando. Historia ordinis Praedicatorum, que acabó en Roma el
1357. Otras obras en Nic. Antonio.
En 1356 Fray Nicolás Eymerich, dominico gerundense, fué

nombrado inquisidor de Aragón. Publicó Directorium Inquisitorum,
impreso en Roma, 1578. De potestate Pontificis contra haereticos.
De duobus Christi naturis et de tribus personis in Deo. De excellentia
Christi et B. Virginis. In Pauli ad Galatas et ad Hebraeos. Contra
adoratores et advocatores daemonum. Contra calumniantes
praeeminentiam Christi et Virginis. Super quatuor Evangelio.
Conciones. Contra astrologos imperitos atque contra nigromantes.
Á principios del reinado de don Pedro I y por su mandado se

compuso el Becerro ó Libro famoso de las Behetrias de Castilla, que
se custodia en la Real Chancillería de Valladolid, en el cual se
expresan la naturaleza y origen de la nobleza de España y se
describe en todo su esplendor el feudalismo español en el último
tercio de la Edad Media. Imprimióse en Santander, 1866, en cuyo
prólogo se atribuye á don Pedro I. Tenemos las Cortes celebradas
por don Pedro en Valladolid, 1351, con sus varios Ordenamientos;
las celebradas por Enrique II en Burgos, 1367; en Toro, 1369 y
1371; en Burgos, 1373, 1374, 1377; las celebradas por Juan I en
Burgos, 1379; en Soria, 1380; en Valladolid, 1385; en Segovia,
1386; en Briviesca, 1387; en Palencia, 1388; en Guadalajara, 1390;
las celebradas por Enrique III en Madrid, 1391 y 1393.
Hacia 1356 Guillermo Despaborde, jurisconsulto de Pedro IV de

Aragón, escribió De privilegio militari. De pace et tregua.
Alphabetum iuris patrii.
Don Fray Alonso de Vargas (1299-1365), agustino toledano,

arzobispo de Sevilla desde 1361, escribió Quaestiones de anima,
Venecia, 1565. In librum Magistri Sententiarum, ibid., 1490.
Fray Juan Ballester († 1374), carmelita mallorquín, general de la
Orden, escribió Super libros Sententiarum. Constitutiones sui
Ordinis. Sermones. De bello forti militantis Ecclesiae et Anti-christo.
Fray Francisco de Bacho († 1372), carmelita catalán, procurador

general de la Orden desde 1366, luego provincial, escribió
Repertorium Praedicatorum. Super libros Sententiarum. Sermones.
Fray Bernardo Oller, carmelita de Manresa, general y sucesor

de Ballester desde 1375, escribió De Ordinis sui origine. De
immaculata Virg. conceptione.
258. Los castigos y documentos, libro atribuido al rey

don Sancho IV, se publicaron malamente en la
Biblioteca de Rivadeneyra, 1857. Gran parte está
tomado de la traducción del De regimine principum,
de Egidio Colonna, hecha cincuenta años después
de morir Sancho IV, no sólo de lo que Colonna
escribió, sino de lo añadido por el traductor Johan
García. No es obra de dicho Rey y se hizo entre los
años 1350 y 1369, según Groussac, cuanto á la
redacción primitiva, contrahecha y aumentada
después, acaso en tiempos de Enrique III.
Castigos e Documentos. Bibl. de Aut. Esp., t. LI. Consúltense: P.
Grousac, en Revue Hispanique (1906), t. XV, págs. 212-339; R.
Foulché-Delbosc, en Revue Hispanique (1906), t. XV, págs. 340-
371.
259. El rabino Sem Tob ó Santob ó Santo, que

suena buen nombre, fué el primer judío que escribió
en castellano y el primero que introdujo en Castilla la
poesía gnómica ó sentenciosa, poniendo en 686
cuartetas de versos heptasílabos los Proverbios
Morales. Era ya canoso cuando dirigió su obra á don
Pedro (1350-1369), de quien algunos le creen
médico, sin algún fundamento. Tampoco se sabe si
nació en Carrión de los Condes, aunque allí
estuviese avecindado. El Teognis castellano supo
poner en verso bien rimado, con la gracia y nobleza
de este género de composición y con bien
apropiadas metáforas y cierto colorido oriental, la
doctrina sentenciosa, que en aquel siglo habían
tantos tratado en prosa, sacándola de la Escritura y
de los libros de origen arábigo, corrientes á la sazón.
Peca á veces de alguna oscuridad y sequedad,
debidas á su extremada concisión y á las alegorías ó
metáforas.
260. Sermón comunalmente rimado de glosas y moralmente sacado
de filosofía llamó el autor á su obra. Santillana dice de él que fué
"grand trovador", que escribió "muy buenas cosas" y "assaz
comendables" sentencias. Según el mismo Marqués, escribió Sem
Tob otras obras, que desconocemos. Falsamente se le atribuía la
Doctrina de la Discriçion, la Revelación de un ermitaño y la Danza
de la Muerte. Dos son los textos que tenemos del libro de Sem Tob,
tan diferentes, que parecen dos obras: el mejor y más completo es
el de la Biblioteca de El Escorial, en 686 estrofas, y es el que editó
Janer, poniendo al pie las variantes del otro manuscrito, 627
estrofas, que se guarda en la Biblioteca Nacional y que editó
Ticknor. Ambos fueron cotejados por José Coll y Vehí. Proverbios
morales, edic. Bibl. de Aut. Esp., t. LVII. Consúltese:
Untersuchungen über die Proverbios morales von Santob de
Carrión, mit besonderen Hinweis auf die Quellen und Parallelen von
doctor Leopold Stein, Berlín, 1900; Μ. Menéndez Pelayo, Antología
de poet. lír. cast., t. III, págs. cxxiv-cxxxvi.
261. Pedro de Verague escribió la Doctrina de la

Discriçion, que falsamente atribuyen algunos á Sem
Tob. Es un catecismo en 154 estrofas, de tercetos
octosílabos, con el último verso de cuatro sílabas. Es
de fines del siglo xiv y fué impreso en el siglo xvi
(Gallardo).
Foulché-Delbosc ha editado el ms. de El Escorial, IV, b. 21, fol. 88-
108, en Rev. Hisp., t. XIV (1906), págs. 565-597; Bibl. de Autor.
Esp., t. LVII.
262. Juan Fernández de Heredia, "ilustre vástago de una de las

más poderosas familias de Aragón", como escribe Am. de los Ríos
(V, 240), nació en 1310, entró en la Orden de San Juan en 1332 y
cincuenta y cinco años después fué nombrado Gran Maestro de la
Orden; asentó en Aviñón el 1382 y se rodeó de letrados hasta que
murió, el 1396, escribiendo durante aquel tiempo obras de historia.
Atribúyensele, aunque no todas sean enteramente suyas, sino que
las planearía y revisaría, las obras siguientes en castellano
aragonés: Versión de las Vidas de Plutarco, ídem de Crosius, ídem
de Marco Polo, ídem De Secreto Secretorum, de Aristóteles; Flor de
las Istorias de Orient, La Historia de Eutropio, La grant Cronica de
Espanya, La grant Coronica de los Conquiridores, de la que ha
publicado la Sociedad de Bibliófilos Madrileños las Gestas del rey
don Jayme de Aragon, Madrid, 1909. Véase Revue Hispan., 1907, t.
XVI, pág. 244; Morel-Fatio, Rom., XVIII, pág. 491.
Johan Fernández de Heredia, Libro de los fechos et conquistas, ed.

[con trad. francesa] A. Morel-Fatio, Genève, 1885 (Publications de la
Société de l'Orient Latin, IV); Gestas del rey don Jayme de Aragón,
ed. R. Foulché-Delbosc (Soc. de Biblióf. Madrileños, t. I).
Don Pedro Gómez de Albornoz, arzobispo de Sevilla hasta 1372,

escribió De la justicia de la vida espiritual (Bibl. Real).
263. El Canciller Pero López de Ayala (1332-

1407) nació en Vitoria, de padre alavés, Ferrán
Pérez de Ayala, y de madre montañesa, Elvira de
Ceballos. Entró de paje de don Pedro el Cruel en
1353, fuélo después del infante don Fernando de
Aragón, volviendo el año siguiente al servicio de don
Pedro, de quien fué partidario hasta 1366, en que
fué proclamado rey don Enrique en Calahorra, que,
huyendo don Pedro, se pasó con su padre al bando
del bastardo. En 1359 recorre como capitán de la
flota los mares de Valencia y Cataluña, alcanzando
el alguacilazgo mayor de Toledo en premio de su
extraordinario valor. Hecho prisionero en Nájera por
el Príncipe Negro (1367), se rescató, y tras el
fratricidio de don Pedro en Montiel (1369), fué
enriquecido y honrado por Enrique II y Juan I. En
Aljubarrota (1385) fué preso de los portugueses,
pasando quince meses en una jaula de hierro en el
castillo de Oviedes, donde trabajó en el Rimado de
Palacio y en el Libro de la caza, que compuso en
1386. Rescatado en 1387 volvió á España y formó
parte del Consejo de regencia en la minoría de
Enrique III (1390-1394) y fué nombrado Gran
Canciller de Castilla (1398). En 1402 vió nombrados
Merino mayor de Guipúzcoa á su hijo Fernando y
Alcalde mayor de Toledo al otro hijo, Pedro. Todavía
vivió nueve años dado á la política y á las letras,
residiendo, ya en la corte, ya en sus estados de
Álava y la Rioja, en los monasterios de que era
fundador ó patrono, sobre todo en el de San Juan de
Quijana y en el de San Miguel del Monte, cerca de
Miranda de Ebro. Murió casi de repente en Calahorra
en 1407, después de don Enrique III y cuando se
hallaba escribiendo su Crónica. Fué recio de
complexión y de musculoso cuerpo, de valor hasta la
temeridad, salvo que con reflexión, diestro en la
caballería y en las armas, amigo de la caza de
cetrería y montería, "muy dado á las mujeres, más
de lo que á tan sabio caballero como él convenía",
en frase de su sobrino Fernán Pérez de Guzmán.
264. Su padre fué rico hombre de Álava, de los que ayudaron á
Alfonso XI á apoderarse de su provincia natal. De la hermana del
Canciller descendía Fernando el Católico. En su Crónica confiesa su
desleal traición: "e de tal guisa iban los fechos, que todos los más
que dél se partían habían su acuerdo de non volver más á él".
Amontonó señoríos, alcaldías, tenencias, heredamientos y riquezas
sin cuento, siendo además árbitro de cuanto se hacía en Castilla.
Obtuvo al pasarse á don Enrique el cargo de alférez mayor de la
Orden de la Banda, cuyo pendón llevó en la batalla de Nájera; fué
de los más favorecidos en el reparto del botín de Montiel, adonde no
asistió; en 1369 logró la Puebla de Arciniega, la torre del valle de
Orozco, la posesión del valle de Llodio, que traía en litigio su padre;
en 1374, los cargos de alcalde mayor y merino de Vitoria y la
confirmación del mayorazgo fundado por su padre, que ya entonces
era fraile dominico; en fin, la alcaldía mayor de Toledo, en 1375.
Como consejero de Enrique II y Juan I mostró su habilidad en
misiones diplomáticas en las Cortes de Aragón y de Francia,
asistiendo á Carlos VI en la batalla de Rosebeck, por lo que le hizo
en 1382 su camarero y le dió una pensión anual de 1.000 francos de
oro. Treinta mil doblas de oro pagó por su rescate á los portugueses
su mujer doña Leonor de Guzmán, con ayuda de su pariente el
Maestre de Calatrava y de los Reyes de Francia y de Castilla. Ajustó
las paces entre don Juan I y la casa de Lancaster, representante de
los derechos de los descendientes de don Pedro y peroró en las
Cortes de Guadalajara de 1390 contra el proyecto de abdicación y
repartición del reino que tenía pensado don Juan I. En 1392 ajustó
las treguas con Portugal por don Enrique III, que estaba en su
minoridad, el cual después, en 1398, le nombró Canciller. Escribió
su vida Rafael Floranes y se publicó en los tomos XIX y XX de los
Documentos inéditos para la Historia de España.
265. El Rimado de Palacio fué compuesto por la

mayor parte en la jaula de hierro de Oviedes, como
el Libro de buen Amor y el Quijote se compusieron
en la cárcel. La desgracia abre los ojos para
reconocer las culpas propias y ajenas. Desde la
estrofa 903 hubo de escribirse más tarde, cuando ya
libre el Canciller pudo poner en su obra más
tranquilidad y serenidad, que cuando preso comenzó
con la propia confesión para que su crítica de los
vicios ajenos tuviese más fuerza, bien así como lo
hizo el de Hita. Al acabar su Sermón dice en la
estrofa 706 que se hallaba aquejado "de muchas
grandes penas e de mucho cuydado". Así el
Arcipreste pide á Dios: "Saca á mi coytado desta
mala presion". No puede negarse cierto parentesco
entre la obra del Canciller y la del Arcipreste: ambos
pretenden criticar los vicios de la sociedad, con la
diferencia de unos cuarenta años.
El Canciller leyó y remedó al Arcipreste en el intento

de la crítica social, en la enérgica franqueza y aun
extremada libertad de juicio, en el mudar de metro
sobre el fondo del tetrástrofo, dando lugar á las
combinaciones métricas de la tradición galaico-
portuguesa, en las canciones á la Virgen, en la
unidad personal que sirve de trama, en lo variado y
al parecer descosido de las partes: "Efemérides del
espíritu de su autor", llamó Gallardo al Rimado de
Palacio. Ya conocemos la obra del Arcipreste; la del
Canciller es un libro más del mester de clerezia, sin
pizca de la juglaria, que es el alma del Libro de buen
Amor. Obra didáctica como las acostumbradas hasta
entonces, "que le hizo caer en cierto prosaísmo ético
y pedagógico", como dijo M. Pelayo; nada de lo
lírico, de lo dramático y de lo épico, que lo es todo en
la obra del Arcipreste. El cual era grandísimo y
originalísimo poeta; el Canciller era un puro
versificador. El fino humorismo con que el de Hita
envuelve la retozona sátira, hasta el punto de haber
desconocido los críticos su verdadero intento, se
convierte en declarada causticidad en la grave sátira
de Ayala. Donde mejor le imita es en la pintura de la
simonía (c. 229). Tanto va del espíritu erudito del
Canciller al espíritu popular del Arcipreste, del beber
en los muertos libros al beber en la vena bullente de
la vida, del morar en palacios al corretear por ferias y
plazas, del tratar con disimulados cortesanos al
andar entre escolares, troteras, moriscas y serranas.
Con todo eso, ya que no como poesía, la obra del
Canciller sirve como claro documento de la
depravación de costumbres durante la malhadada
época del cisma de occidente. Con esta obra
desaparece el verso alejandrino de la literatura
castellana.
Pasaba de los setenta años cuando dió el último

toque al Rimado de Palacio; nada tiene de extraño
que después de los metros ligeros que en las
canciones religiosas empleó, á imitación del
Arcipreste, volviese á la cuaderna vía, parafraseando
al final de la obra el libro de los Morales de San
Gregorio.
266. Se ha creído que el Rimado de Palacio lo escribió durante su
cautiverio en Inglaterra, fundándose en un manuscrito indicado por
Gallardo. Pero, según esto, lo escribió el año 1367. Mas en la
estrofa 215 (ed. Janer) se alude al cisma en tiempo de Urbano VI,
de modo que estos versos no pudieron escribirse antes de 1378. En
la estrofa 811 se dice que el cisma había durado veinticinco años,
pasaje que no pudo escribirse antes de 1403. Lo que se dice en la
estrofa 853, "que me libre e me tire de entre estas paredes", no
pudo escribirse hasta después de 1372, en que el padre de López
de Ayala fundó el convento de San Juan de Quejana, á cuyas
monjas dominicas dirige estos versos desde el castillo de Oviedes.
Todas estas partes de la composición fueron escritas después de
1367, en que el autor cayó preso del Príncipe Negro. Ahora bien, no
se sabe que estuviese otra vez en Inglaterra. Su pariente Santillana
llama á esta obra Las maneras del Palacio; también se titula El libro
de Palacio; pero lo corriente es darle el rótulo que le dió Pérez de
Guzmán, Rimado de Palacio.
267. Así como el Arcipreste de Hita había nacido

poeta y se amañaba mal en la prosa, López de
Ayala, versificador moralista sin estro poético, era
por naturaleza un gran prosista. Durante su encierro
en Oviedes (junio de 1386) escribió el Libro de la
caza de las aves et de sus plumages et dolencias et
melecinamientos, dirigido á su pariente Gonzalo de
Mena, obispo de Burgos, tan aficionado como él á la
caza de altanería. Gran fautor de toda buena cultura,
tradujo, ya en los ocho últimos años de su vida, las
Décadas 1.ª, 2.ª y 4.ª de Tito Livio, de la versión
francesa del benedictino Pedro Berçuire († 1362), á
instancias de Enrique III. Por sí ó por sus secretarios
tradujo el libro De summo bono sive De sententiis,
de San Isidoro, los Morales ó Comentario de Job, de
San Gregorio el Magno, el De consolatione
philosophiae, de Boecio, el De casibus virorum et
feminarum illustrium, ó Caída de principes, de
Boccaccio, traducción hecha entre 1356 y 1364,
continuada por Alonso de Cartagena y Juan Alfonso

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Religion and memory in Tacitus' Annals

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OXFORD CLASSICAL MONOGRAPHS

Religion and Memory

Introduction: Religion, Memory, and Tacitus 1

¹ For examples in Roman literature, see Crawley 1971.

⁵ Rawson 1985, 300, and ch. 20 passim.

⁸ Halbwachs 1992, 93–9.

0.2 TACITUS, PRIEST AND HISTORIAN: TAKING

³⁹ Clark 2007, 255–6.

⁶⁹ For this translation of magisve iustis, see Damon 2003, 97.

0.3 TYPES OF MATERIAL

One of the difﬁculties in writing a study of religious material in the Annals is

⁸¹ On the passages, see §4.3 and §4.4.

0.4 THE STRUCTURE OF THIS STUD Y

⁹² Martin 2001, 149. ⁹³ See Woodman 2016, 181–3.

Tiberius the Autocrat

1.1 I NTRODUCTION: T I B ERI U S PERI N D E D I VI N A

It is typically advisable to begin at the beginning; but for Annals 1, we will

¹ On this question, see §0.2, and §6.5, p. 270.

26 Tiberius the Autocrat

Tiberius the Autocrat 27

28 Tiberius the Autocrat

Tiberius the Autocrat 29

¹⁴ See Edlund-Berry 2006.

30 Tiberius the Autocrat

1.2 F UNERAL, APOTHEOSIS, AND R E C U S A T I O

Tiberius the Autocrat 31

32 Tiberius the Autocrat

Tiberius the Autocrat 33

²⁵ Cf. Gradel 2002, 279.

34 Tiberius the Autocrat

²⁹ Cf. Pelling 2010, 374.

247. Año 1348. Don Alfonso XI, el Justiciero, ó

249. Á la primera mitad del siglo xiv pertenece el

251. Poema de Alfonso Onceno. Ed. F. Janer, Madrid, 1863; Bibl. de

252. La Crónica rimada de las cosas de España

La Crónica Rimada se conserva en un códice de la Biblioteca

254. El Cantar de Rodrigo. Ed. B. P. Bourland, en Revue Hispanique

255. Fernando Sánchez de Tovar ó de

Acaso en 1345, y por lo menos poco antes de 1350,

En 1350 se tradujo la Crónica Troyana del Roman de

Crónica Troyana, códice gallego del siglo xiv, etc., ed. M. R.

257. Don Gil Álvarez de Albornoz (1310-1367), nacido en

Fray Bernardo Oliver, valentino, agustino y obispo de Tortosa

Fray Guillermo Anglés, valenciano y obispo de Valencia en 1345,

El maestro general Gaver, barcelonés, escribió hacia 1345 Epistola

Rodrigo de Mallorca escribió Eximiae Chiromantiae in

Fray Nicolás Rosell († 1362), dominico mallorquín y cardenal

En 1356 Fray Nicolás Eymerich, dominico gerundense, fué

Á principios del reinado de don Pedro I y por su mandado se

Hacia 1356 Guillermo Despaborde, jurisconsulto de Pedro IV de

Don Fray Alonso de Vargas (1299-1365), agustino toledano,

Fray Francisco de Bacho († 1372), carmelita catalán, procurador

Fray Bernardo Oller, carmelita de Manresa, general y sucesor

258. Los castigos y documentos, libro atribuido al rey