The Annals

443 Pages·2004·2.07 MB·English

by  Tacitus

tacitus
the
a nnals
translated, with
introduction
and notes, by
a. j. woodman
TACITUS
THE
ANNALS

TACITUS
THE
ANNALS
Translated,with Introduction and Notes,by
A.J.WOODMAN
Hackett Publishing Company,Inc.
Indianapolis/Cambridge
Copyright © 2004 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
All rights reserved
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Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
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Cover design by Abigail Coyle
Text design by Meera Dash
Maps by Bill Nelson
Composition by Agnew's, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tacitus, Cornelius.
[Annales. English]
The annals / Tacitus ; translated, with introduction and notes, by A.J.
Woodman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87220-559-2 (cloth) — ISBN 0-87220-558-4 (paper)
1. Rome—History—The five Julii, 30 B.C–68 A.D. I. Woodman, A.J.
(Anthony John), 1945– II. Title.
DG207.T3W66 2004
937'.07—dc22
2004047334
ISBN-13:978-0-87220-559-8 (cloth)
ISBN-13:978-0-87220-558-1 (paper)
eISBN: 978-1-60384-015-6 (ebook)
C
ONTENTS
PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION ix
Tacitus and the Annals x
The Translation xxii
Afterlife xxvi
FURTHERREADING xxix
ABBREVIATIONSANDREFERENCES xxx
CORNELIUSTACITUS:FROMTHEPASSINGOFDIVINEAUGUSTUS 1
Books 1–6:Tiberius 1
Books 11–12:Claudius 195
Books 13–16:Nero 245
APPENDICES
A Political and Military Terms 356
B The First-century A.D.Roman Army and the Annals 362
C The City of Rome 365
D Peoples and Places (Excluding Rome) 368
E Textual Variants 384
F Roman Emperors from Augustus to Hadrian 390
G The Imperial Family 391
Stemma (a):Augustus and Tiberius 392
Stemma (b):Gaius,Claudius,and Nero 393
MAPS
The Roman Provinces under the Julio-Claudian Emperors 394
Italy,the Environs of Rome,and the Bay of Naples 396
The City of Rome and the Roman Forum 398
INDEX 399
v
To David and John
P
REFACE
“These days,”wrote T.P.Wiseman recently,“we should be reading Tacitus with
a livelier and more sensitive interest than ever.”I hope that this new translation
of the Annals will respond to and,if possible,promote just such an interest.From
the start my principal aim,though subsequently and successively modified,was
to produce as exact a rendering of Tacitus’Latin as lay within my power;at the
same time I sought to incorporate some of the latest developments in Tacitean
scholarship and even to introduce some innovations of my own.I would like to
think that the resulting version will be equally appropriate for casual readers who
want to make the acquaintance of a classic text and for those who,whether at
school,college,or university,are studying the literature,history,or civilization of
ancient Rome through the medium of English.The footnotes with which the
translation is equipped are designed to meet the needs of both categories of
reader.If readers discover mistakes or misunderstandings in either translation or
notes,I hope most sincerely that they will bring them to my attention.
I had the singularly good fortune to begin my translation at the same time as
I was reading the Annals with graduate students at Princeton University in the
autumn of 1989,and to conduct the final revisions at the same time as I was again
reading the Annalswith graduate students at the University of Virginia in the au-
tumn of 2003:I could not have wished for more enquiring or enthusiastic read-
ers of Tacitus,and to all of them I would like to record my gratitude.In the in-
tervening years,and particularly more recently,I have received various sorts of
help from numerous scholars and friends,among them J.N.Adams,K.M.Cole-
man,E.Courtney,the late J.Ginsburg,M.T.Griffin,M.Helzle,J.Keegan,C.S.
Kraus,D.S.Levene,E.A.Meyer,J.Nelis-Clément,M.Peachin,J.G.F.Powell,D.
Sheldon,the late W.S.Watt,and T.P.Wiseman.David Braund,Ted Lendon,and
John Rich provided invaluable comment on some of the appendices,and I am
especially indebted to Juliette Moore for all the labor and expertise which she
devoted to the geographical appendix.
Deborah Wilkes expended a great deal of time and trouble on a frustrating and
difficult text.With good-humored tolerance Clemence Schultze allowed me on
countless occasions to pester her with questions of English usage:her unfailing
willingness to respond and in general to enter into the spirit of my enterprise was
a constant source of encouragement:ueteris stat gratia facti.Without the award of a
Sir James Knott Foundation Research Fellowship from the University of Durham
in 1998–9 I would never have been able to bring my work to its conclusion.
Over the past fifteen years Ronald Martin has commented in detail on two
drafts of my translation and has engaged in a substantial correspondence on the
innumerable problems,great and small,which have arisen.My greatest debt of
gratitude is owed to him.
A.J.Woodman
Charlottesville,March 2004
vii

I
NTRODUCTION
Tacitus is acknowledged to be the greatest historian of ancient Rome,the An-
nalshis greatest work.Even though we do not possess in its entirety his account
of the years between August A.D.14,when the emperor Tiberius came to power,
and June A.D. 68,when Nero committed suicide,1 the surviving narrative has
defined for generations of readers their picture of the early Roman empire—the
empire whose literary,political,and monumental legacy has had so profound and
persistent an influence on the shaping of the Western world.2
Some of Tacitus’episodes linger long in the mind:the discovery of the remains
of legions massacred in the German forests (Book 1),the noble speech on free-
dom of expression put into the mouth of the historian Cremutius Cordus be-
fore he commits suicide (Book 4),Nero’s attempt to murder his mother by means
of a collapsible boat in the sea near Naples (Book 14),the dignity of the philoso-
pher Thrasea Paetus as he faces the prospect of inevitable death (Book 16).Tac-
itus’sustained delineation of the emperor Tiberius in the first six books of the
Annalsis widely regarded as the most memorable and penetrating portrait of an
individual in the whole of antiquity—a “miracle of art,”in the words of Lord
Macaulay.Since the Renaissance,when the early printings of the Annals first
made his finest work available to a wider readership,Tacitus has attracted the at-
tention of some of the most prominent names in literature and affairs.In the sev-
enteenth century John Milton described him as “the greatest possible enemy to
tyrants,”Edward Gibbon in the eighteenth took him as his model in Decline and
Fall,and Thomas Jefferson in the nineteenth considered him “the first writer in
the world without a single exception,”while at almost exactly the same time
Napoleon was denouncing him for his “obscurity”and for having “slandered the
emperors.”3
1. Most of Book 5,some of Book 6,all of Books 7–10,and some of Book 11 are lost,
while Book 16 breaks off midway through;whether Book 16 was the final book,or
whether (as seems more likely) the work contained eighteen books in all,is disputed.See
further below,n.6.
2. See,e.g.,M.Reinhold,Classica Americana:The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United
States(Detroit 1984);R.Jenkyns (ed.),The Legacy of Rome:A New Appraisal(Oxford 1992);
C.J.Richard,The Founders and the Classics:Greece,Rome,and the American Enlightenment
(Cambridge,MA 1994);C.Edwards (ed.),Roman Presences:Receptions of Rome in European
Culture,1789–1945(Cambridge 1999),each with further bibliography.
3. See P.Gay,Style in History(London 1974) 21–34 (Gibbon);R.Mellor,Tacitus(New
York 1993) 159 (Jefferson) and Tacitus:The Classical Heritage(New York 1995) 126 (Mil-
ton),195 (Napoleon),209 (Macaulay).
ix