[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
This is an introductory guide to all the works of the Roman historian Tacitus—the Agricola, Germania, Dialogus de Oratoribus, Histories and Annals. Its primary intended readership seems to be ‘undergraduate and graduate student readers approaching Tacitus for the first time in the context of a course where only one book or minor work has been assigned’ (p. 11). This readership dictates the structure of the book. After the introduction, the main body of the text contains eighteen chapters, one for each of Tacitus’ three minor works, five for the Histories, and ten for the Annals. In other words, each book of the Histories or of the Annals that survives in full receives a chapter dedicated to it, with fragmentary books being discussed alongside the next full book. The author of each chapter guides the reader through the relevant minor work, or book of the larger work, by summarizing its content, almost chapter by chapter in many cases, while also drawing attention to the more significant literary qualities or historical issues as they arise. Each chapter concludes with a short section of suggested further reading, while the volume concludes with a lengthy bibliography, a short index of people, places, and topics, and notes on the contributors.
This is the second volume in this series, where the first was J. L. Ready, The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer’s Iliad (2024). It is noteworthy that the first volume was devoted to the Iliad alone rather than to the whole of the Homeric corpus, so the advocate for Tacitus may feel that he has not received the same respect as Homer has. Otherwise, much has remained the same, to the point that a previous reviewer’s comments on the strengths and weakness of The Critical Guide to Homer’s Iliad remain equally valid for the most part in the case of the present volume.[1]
The introduction to the volume is relatively short. It begins with a brief description of what is known about the life and career of Tacitus, followed by brief descriptions of the contents and purpose of each of his five works. It concludes with two brief bibliographies, the first a list of the main standard commentaries in English on Tacitus’ various works, the second a list of the translations into English of the same works. A footnote concedes that some commentaries on Tacitus’ work have been composed in German as well, but there are no concessions otherwise to other modern languages. This risks a misleading impression, because the consolidated bibliography at the end of the volume does contain a fair sprinkling of items in Italian and French, even if English-language items do dominate. Finally, one notes that chapter 18 dealing with the final surviving book of the Annals has a lengthy postscript discussing the controversy over the number of books in the Annals that might have been more usefully and visibly included within the introduction instead.
This volume will certainly serve its primary intended readership well. The main potential weakness is that bibliographical items in the individual chapters are always referenced by author’s surname and year of publication, so that one must refer to the consolidated bibliography for the whole volume to check full publication details. It would increase the chance that students might notice key items of interest if full bibliographical details were contained in a bibliography at the end of each chapter. Furthermore, the fact that there is a copyright notice at the end of each chapter suggests an expectation that chapters will circulate independently, as would be consistent with the aiming of the work at students studying only one book or minor work. The fact that individual chapters do not contain their own bibliography frustrates that expectation. As things stand, the section for suggested further reading is often minimal, a brief list of half a dozen items, usually commentaries or other wide-ranging works. A list of more specialized items dealing with relatively minor points of interest that were not mentioned in the footnotes to the chapter, even though directly relevant to it, would have more fruitfully highlighted other potential points of interest or areas of discussion.
While the authors have made determined efforts to make their contributions as accessible as possible to students who do not have Latin, so that, for example, all quotations from Tacitus’ text are translated into English, those with some basic knowledge of Latin will benefit most from this work. For example, the Latin-less student will probably find the chapter on Annals 4 rather frustrating as the author decides to focus on Tacitus’ intertextual engagement within his own corpus, where the extent and significance of this engagement become less clear if one possesses little or no Latin. Overall, more attention is paid to the literary qualities of Tacitus’ work than to purely historical matters.
Since this work was composed in the expectation that many readers would probably only read one chapter, that dealing with the book or minor work they are studying in their course, it does not matter much that authors are not entirely consistent in how they structure their chapters or what they choose to emphasize within each chapter. This is true even in the case of chapters dealing with different books within the same work. For example, the author of chapter 12 (Bram ten Berge) on Annals 4 divides his discussion according to the different calendar years contained within this book, from AD 23 to AD 28 (inclusive), while the author of chapter 13 (Kelly Shannon-Henderson) on Annals 5 and 6 divides her discussion according to calendar years also, but does not allot separate sections to the years AD 34-36 (inclusive), whose contents receive the most fleeting of descriptions at the end of the section describing the events of AD 33. Other authors prefer to divide their chapters according to major themes rather than calendar years. Similarly, some chapters, such as those on Annals 4 and Annals 5 and 6, do not contain any block quotations from Tacitus, while others, such as that on Annals 13, contain numerous block quotations. Neither approach is wrong: it is simply interesting to note that the authors can take very different pedagogical approaches.
The authors remain cognizant throughout that this is an introductory guide, so that footnotes remain relatively short and simple. They tend to direct the reader towards the most recent, relevant publication without necessarily describing the nature or extent of any controversy. Experts may disagree on certain points of interpretation offered in the text, as I do with regards to the significance of the description of the wilting and revival of the Ruminalis fig-tree at Rome in Annals 13.58 (p. 198), but that is to be expected, and students who pursue the reading in the footnotes will normally discover points of dispute.[2] However, one might argue that brevity has gone too far when the author of chapter 17 (Rhiannon Ash) on Annals 15, the book containing the most famous and controversial passage in any of Tacitus’ works, that describing the emperor Nero’s alleged persecution of Christians following the great fire at Rome in AD 64, fails to acknowledge (p. 225) that some reputable academics argue that this passage is really a Late Antique interpolation into Tacitus’ text.[3]
In conclusion, this is a practical introductory guide to the works of Tacitus. On the one hand, the fact that it treats individual books from Tacitus’ major works means that language students, who tend to read a single book within a course, will find it useful. On the other hand, the fact that it treats all of the books within a major work, means that it will also serve the needs of students of ancient history or civilization who need a guide to the work as a whole as they study the period for which that work is the main source. As a result, it deserves a place in the library of every institution where Roman history, or the Latin language, is taught.
Authors and titles
Introduction (Salvador Bartera and Kelly E. Shannon-Henderson)
- Agricola (Sergio Audano)
- Germania (Katherine Clarke)
- Dialogus de Oratoribus (Christopher S. van den Borg)
- Histories 1 (Cynthia Damon)
- Histories 2 (Lydia Spielberg)
- Histories 3 (S.P. Oakley)
- Histories 4 (Timothy A. Joseph)
- Histories 5 (René Bloch)
- Annals 1 (Victoria E. Pagán)
- Annals 2 (Aske Damtoft Poulsen)
- Annals 3 (Olivier Devillers)
- Annals 4 (Bram ten Berge)
- Annals 5 and 6 (Kelly E. Shannon-Henderson)
- Annals 11 and 12 (Caitlin Gillespie)
- Annals 13 (Alain M. Gowing)
- Annals 14 (Christopher Whitton)
- Annals 15 (Rhiannon Ash)
- Annals 16 (Salvador Bartera)
Notes
[2] See now D. Woods, ‘Tacitus, the Ficus Ruminalis, and the Intertwined Fates of Agrippina and Vespasian (Ann. 13.57–58)’, Museum Helveticum 80 (2023), 83-90, too late for this volume.
[3] In support of the argument that Ann. 15.44 has suffered substantial interpolation, see A.A. Barrett, Rome is Burning: Nero and the Fire that Ended a Dynasty (Princeton, 2020), 143-74; R. Carrier, ‘The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus, Annals 15.44′, Vigiliae Christianae 68 (2014), 264-83. While Ash cites Barrett, she fails to clarify that his main thesis contradicts what she has just said about Tacitus’ presentation of material relating to the persecution of the Christians.