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Detailed Assignment for Week 10 (4-8 Mar.)

NB: Your final translation assignment is due Thursday, March 14 by 11 PM.  Click HERE for said assignment (not available until 4:30 PM on Wednesday, March 6). 

Read

☞Book 16.1-3 (Latin); 4-9 (Woodman); 10-11 (Latin); 12-15 (Woodman); 16-19 (Latin); 20-33 (Woodman); 34-35 (Latin)

Ponderanda

This week entails an all-too-hurried march through the last surviving book of Tacitus' Neronian narrative, Book 16, the last part of which is also lost (it breaks off at Chap. 35).   There is, one has to admit, a good deal of death meted out in this book.  Ponder the following:

  • Although no death, specifically, is involved in this, why do you think T. includes at the beginning of the book the story of the 'mad Carthaginian' and Dido's treasure?
  • Of the various descriptions of people dying in this Book, which do you find the most poignant (and/or memorable) and why?  Why do you think Tacitus seems so concerned not just simply to mention deaths but actually, in many instances, to describe them?
  • The Book concludes -- or rather breaks off -- with the suicide of Thrasea Paetus.  This is in some respects the culmination of the whole Thrasea story, which we have followed since the beginning of the quarter.  As previously mentioned, TP is the Neronian Stoic par excellence.  Do you think Tacitus is in sympathy with Stoics generally and with TP is particular?  What about this final episode makes you think so (or not)?

Legenda ad libitum

  • I have saved until last one of the best articles on the Neronian books as a whole (on the assumption that this article will have more meaning once you've read all of Tacitus' Neronian books).  With Woodman, Elizabeth Keitel is one of the most interesting Tacitean scholars of the past 40 years or so.  I esp. like her "'Is dying so very terrible?'" The Neronian Annals", in The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus, A.J. Woodman, ed., pp. 127-43 (Cambridge 2009).  Highly recommended...and a good way to wrap things up.  Ebook available from UW Libraries.
  • With the loss of the final two books of the Annals, we of course do not have Tacitus' version of Nero's death.  However, we do have Suetonius' version, and it is entertaining to ponder on the basis of that what Tacitus might have done with it.  You might therefore find it interesting to read Suetonius' Nero 43-57 (roughly), the crucial part being 48-49. Eversions in English abound (you could do worse than the Loeb...and as I trust you all know, the complete LCL is available through the UW Libraries).  Unfortunately, the library does not have an e-version of Hurley's 2011 translation of Suetonius Caesars, which is currently my favorite.  If there is enough time on Wednesday, I shall conclude the quarter with a dramatic reading of the relevant chapters.  
  • Oh, and one last thing: If perchance you decide to continue your Tacitean musings beyond this class, I encourage you to be on the lookout for the Oxford Critical Guide to Tacitus, S. Bartera and K. Shannon-Henderson, edd., forthcoming from Oxford later this year.  You'll be cutting edge!