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This chapter gives a close reading of a famous speech in Tacitus, where the emperor Tiberius rejects a request to allow a temple to be built to him in Spain. The reasons he gives seem exemplary, in particular the priority he gives to genuine respect in the eyes of posterity rather than empty divine honours; and yet, Tacitus goes on to say, he was viciously criticized by contemporary observers. This episode is suggestively juxtaposed with others, with subtle verbal echoing. Just before, the accusation of Cremutius Cordus has highlighted the importance of memory, and the role of the historian in ensuring the permanence of one's fame, whether good or bad. Just after, an exchange between Tiberius and Sejanus emphasizes the difficulty of reading Tiberius's words and intentions. Taken together, the sequence helps the reader both to see the unfairness of the criticisms of Tiberius, and to understand the atmosphere of unease and mistrust in which they were not unnatural. It is too simple to ask whether Tacitus is for or against Tiberius in this passage, but such good-and-bad judgements nevertheless play a part in the reconstruction of contemporary responses, and therefore contribute substantially to the work's historical interpretation.

This chapter examines depictions of dangerous doctors and medicines in plays by Jonson and Webster. It argues that Jonson draws on popular fears of drugs and poisons when he identifies cosmetics and medicines with dangerous forms of political and theatrical manipulation in Sejanus, and that Webster uses a similar strategy in The White Devil to link the seductive powers of Vittoria and Brachiano with various chemicals and poisons. While these two plays offer a sinister image of theatrical deception, however, Volpone uses a similar vocabulary to construct a more complex and variable model of theater’s physiological effects. Ultimately, Jonson suggests that the power of the theater can be harnessed to improve or cure spectators as well as to harm them.

This introductory chapter begins by looking at Roman historical writing before Tacitus. It then provides a background of the life and works of Tacitus. It is not known how many books the Annals comprised, when complete — or indeed whether Tacitus lived to complete the work which, as extant, breaks off in the middle of Book 16 in A.D. 66, two years before Nero's suicide. Though much of the material used by Tacitus for his portrait of Tiberius is found also in Suetonius' biography of the emperor, the structure that Tacitus gives to his narrative is his own. The six books of the reign are divided into two triads, a division that is clearly marked at the beginning of Book 4, where Tacitus states that at this point (A.D. 23) there was a significant change for the worse in Tiberius' reign, a change he ascribes to the malign influence that Aelius Sejanus, Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, now began to exert upon the Princeps. The missing portion of Book 5 will have seen Sejanus' power and authority grow still further, reaching its zenith when he became consul, with Tiberius himself as colleague. The chapter then details the structure, sources, language and style, and text and translation of Annals 5 and 6.

This chapter details the Latin text and English translation of Books V and VI of Tacitus' Annals. The fragment of Annals V recounts the death of Julia Augusta (Livia) and Tiberius' reaction. It also features a letter of Tiberius to senate accusing Agrippina and Nero Caesar. The senate defers action and is rebuked by Tiberius, who reserves a decision on Agrippina and Nero to himself. Meanwhile, Annals VI begins with the deaths in the aftermath of Aelius Sejanus's downfall. After visiting the mainland and approaching Rome, Tiberius returns to Capri to indulge in sexual excesses. Annals VI also describes senatorial business (mostly prosecutions), with written interventions by Tiberius from Capri. These include decrees against Livi(ll)a's statues and memory; Sejanus' confiscated property transferred to fiscus; and Tiberius sarcastically rejects a sycophantic proposal by a minor senator.

This chapter provides commentary on Books V and VI of Tacitus' Annals. The annalistic framework of the Annals is emphasised by the fact that, with the exception of AD 20, each year begins with the names of the two consuls who entered office on January 1. In the Annals, Tacitus most commonly gives their names in the ablative absolute construction, syntactically the loosest way of expressing the relationship with the statement made by the main clause. According to Tacitus, the death of Livia marks an important turning point in Tiberius' reign. Tiberius' narrative resumes late in AD 31, after the death of Aelius Sejanus. From among the many who were in one way or another implicated in Sejanus' downfall, Tacitus was able to select and arrange examples to suit his purpose. He employs one of his favoured constructional devices, the comparison and contrast of a pair of notable individuals.

This chapter provides the Latin text and a literal English translation of the section on prayers for power in Juvenal’s tenth satire and a detailed critical appreciation of those lines (56-113), paying particular attention to poetic aspects such s sound, style, rhythm, diction, imagery, vividness and narrative technique, and also assessing humour, wit, irony and the force and validity of the satirical thrusts. Questions of text are considered as well, where they are of substantial importance. This chapter shows how this section highlights the destructiveness of prayers for power and presents a long, densely packed and wide-ranging attack on power from its highest to its lowest form, with a particularly pointed and vivid depiction of the downfall of Sejanus.

In contrast to the previous chapter, Chapter 4 examines Lucan’s use chiefly in English political drama, ranging from The Misfortunes of Arthur (1588), an entertainment devised by lawyers for Elizabeth I, to The Tragedy of Nero (1624). It begins with a discussion of Ben Jonson’s complex use and appraisal of Lucan in his Roman tragedies and ends with the way he draws on Lucan The Masque of Queens (1609); Philip Massinger and John Fletcher’s The False One (ca. 1620) also receives extended discussion. The chapter argues that Lucan’s often stark moral and political oppositions were appropriated by dramatists concerned with governance, and especially with the pernicious effects of royal favouritism, court corruption, and the doctrines of legal absolutism and reason of state.

Sejanus presents itself as a piece of authoritative Tacitean historiography, and its maxims are part of the play’s effort to align itself with the ‘politic’ histories of Tacitus, Commines, and Guicciardini, valued for the aphoristic materials that could be extracted from their texts. Jonson’s tragedy puts such materials of political analysis into public, commercial circulation, but suggests that the unmasking of power through such analysis is inconsequential except as a marker of social distinction. In Sejanus, the fearless analysis of the political world is the ineffectual activity of powerless outsiders, a source of intellectual and aesthetic pleasure, not of political change. Jonson’s tragedy found its ideal reader in Sir William Drake, who read and re-read Sejanus alongside other politic authors without any thought of putting the copious political notes he took from his readings to use in political action.

This chapter focuses on Annals 3, in which Tacitus recounts several episodes that show the pervasiveness of Tiberian Rome’s failure to maintain traditional religious practices. Tiberius prevents changes from being made to the important ritual taboos regulating the conduct of the flamen Dialis, and the Senate discusses placing limitations on the granting of asylum by sanctuaries in the Greek world, but these discussions are conducted in a way that suggests that the principle of religious memory is falling into disuse. At the same time, the use of divine honors to memorialize the deceased Germanicus, and the attempt of the fetialies to become involved in rituals for the health of Livia although that does not fall within the traditional remit of their priesthood, show society’s increasing inability to practice appropriate commemoration.

Book 4 is examined at a turning point in the discussion of religious material in the Annals. At the start of the book, the rise of Sejanus is attributed to the savageness of fortuna and the wrath of the gods; Tacitus for the first time explicitly introduces the possibility of divine punishment for the decline in cultic memory shown in previous books. Episodes such as godlike honors for the deceased Drusus, the form of marriage ritual appropriate for the flamen Dialis, and the revisiting of temple asylum rights show that the problem of cultic amnesia persists. It is interwoven with notices about the proposal of temples in Asia (4.15.2–3) and Spain (4.37–8) to be dedicated to the worship of Tiberius himself. Tiberius’ rejection of the Spanish temple, which rests on his alleged wish to keep such honors the province of the deified Augustus alone, shows his fundamental misunderstanding of the principle of cultic memory and earns him the ire of his critics as showing an insufficient concern with his own posthumous commemoration, of which emperor cult is now presumed to be the best form. Tiberius comes into conflict with Agrippina the Elder over the proper way to commemorate divus Augustus, and Tiberius’ withdrawal from Rome allows for new abuses of ritual to be performed in his absence.

This chapter examines Annals 5–6, in which Tiberius’ life draws to a close and the issues of fate and divine punishment are linked to the decline in religious memory that has characterized his principate. Commemorations of Sejanus, Livia, and Agrippina the Younger show the Senate’s tendency to use cult practice for the flattery of the Imperial house. Episodes such as the appearance of a phoenix in Egypt and Tiberius’ own predictions of the future, made with the help of astrology, give Tacitus’ reader the impression that Rome will be punished for its actions.