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Tacitus, Annals 4.70: an unappreciated pun*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Chapter 68 begins the account of the last year covered by Tacitus in Annals 4: A.D. 28, when Junius Silanus and Silius Nerva were consules ordinarii. The new year, Tacitus informs us, was marked by a disgraceful event, the arrest (postponed since A.D. 24, cf. 19.1) of Titius Sabinus, loyal friend to Germanicus and his family. After the naming of the consuls at 68.1 and the brief preliminary account of Sabinus' arrest, 68.2–69.3 revert to the period before the beginning of a. d. 28 and describe Sabinus– entrapment by a group of ambitious praetors wishing to gratify Sejanus and so secure the consulship, an office ad quern non nisi per Seianum aditus, ‘to which the only access was through Sejanus’ (68.2).
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1998
References
1 Weinstock, S., Divus Julius (Oxford, 1971), p. 217.Google Scholar
2 Martin, R. H. and Woodman, A. J., Tacitus, Annals Book IV(Cambridge, 1989), ad locGoogle Scholar
3 Taylor, L. R. and Holland, L. A.,‘Janus and the Fasti’, CPh 47 (1952), 137–42, at 137.Google Scholar
4 Lucan, Cf. 5.5–6.‘lacking in Janus’Google Scholar
5 Scullard, H. H.,Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (London, 1981), p. 61.Google Scholar
6 Taylor and Holland(n. 3), 139–40.deity of entrancesGoogle Scholar
7 Martin and Woodman, (n. 2), ad loc; Ginsburg, J., Tradition and Theme in the Annals of Tacitus (Salem, 1981), p. 11Google Scholar
8 With the privative se ‘Sejanus’ is almost literally ‘lacking in Janus’.
9 For Sejanus' pseudo-divine statusMartin, cf. and Woodman (n. 2), at 4.2.3,74.2, and 74.4. Cf. 4.1.1,initium et causa penes Aelium Seianum, ‘the beginning and cause were Aelius Sejanus’ responsibility'Google Scholar
10 Ginsburg (n. 7), p. 100. In retrospect Tacitus' comment that there was no access to the consulate except through Sejanus, ad quern non nisi per Seianum aditus, may seem to gain special point. Janus was above all the deity of entrances.