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WHEN GOOD MEN DO NOTHING: AN EMENDATION IN TACITUS, HISTORIAE 1.38.3
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 June 2018
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In January of the year a.d. 69, Marcus Salvius Otho, disappointed in his attempt to be named Galba's heir and successor, fomented revolt among the praetorian guard. Trading on the praetorians’ own discontent at not receiving the donative, he began to win over the soldiers’ favour. Tacitus relates that, when the attitude of the soldiers seemed ripe (haud dubiae iam in castris omnium mentes, Hist. 1.36.1), Otho himself came forth and began to implore them directly (nec deerat Otho protendens manus adorare uolgum, iacere oscula, et omnia seruiliter pro dominatione, Hist. 1.36.3); and after he accepted the oath of loyalty from the entire classicorum legio (Hist. 1.36.3), he felt ready to hold a speech encouraging the men to complete the deed by ousting Galba.
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References
2 All quotations from Tacitus’ Historiae are taken from the edition of Heubner, H., P. Cornelii Taciti libri qui supersunt. Tom. II, Fasc. 1. Historiarum libri (Stuttgart, 1978)Google Scholar. I have also consulted the following other editions: Spooner, W.A., The Histories of Tacitus (London and New York, 1891)Google Scholar; Moore, C.H., Tacitus. The Histories: Books I–III (Cambridge, MA, 1925)Google Scholar; Fisher, C.D., Cornelii Taciti Historiarum Libri (Oxford, 1911)Google Scholar; Koestermann, E., P. Cornelii Taciti libri qui supersunt. Tom. II, Fasc. 1. Historiarum libri (Leipzig, 1961)Google Scholar.
3 This is the text of all the editions I have been able to consult (see n. 2), with the one difference, irrelevant for our purposes, that Koestermann prints Muretus's aperiri instead of M's aperire.
4 For a brief but useful discussion of sententiae and epigrams, see Damon, C., Tacitus. Histories: Book I (Cambridge, 2003), 15–16Google Scholar. As Damon writes, there is often overlap between the two, but ‘[m]any epigrams … lack the elevating effect of voces universales’, which is characteristic of sententiae.
5 Tacitus’ interest in this aspect of crowd behaviour may be due not only to personal observation but also to the reminiscence of and reflection upon a literary antecedent. Keitel, E., ‘Sententia and structure in Tacitus Histories 1.12–49’, Arethusa 39 (2006), 219–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 223–4 has argued for connections between the first half of Tacitus, Histories Book 1 and key passages in Sallust (Cat. 10, Cat. 38) and Thucydides (3.82–3, the famous depiction of stasis at Corcyra). Keitel is concerned with the ‘breakdown of traditional values’ (ibid.) and focusses on the use of the words fides, amicitia and adulatio in Hist. 1.12–49. However, another aspect of the political turmoil in Corcyra was the way in which (Thuc. 3.82.4, Loeb trans.) ‘Reckless audacity came to be regarded as courageous loyalty to the party, prudent hesitation as specious cowardice’ (τόλμα μὲν γὰρ ἀλόγιστος ἀνδρεία φιλέταιρος ἐνομίσθη, μέλλησις δὲ προμηθὴς δειλία εὐπρεπής). This reflection may in part be behind Tacitus’ concern with resolve and hesitation throughout Hist. 1.38–41. In fact, the epigrammatic quality of Thuc. 3.82.4 is not unlike the epigram at Hist. 1.38.3 (in the emended form I am proposing), even if Thucydides is concerned with the way in which actions are represented in words, whereas Tacitus is concerned with the dynamics of crowd violence as such.
6 haereo: Agr. 36.3; Hist. 1.47.1, 3.26.1, 4.19.2, 4.23.2, 4.27.1; Ann. 1.65.4, 1.68.3, 2.14.2, 4.19.4, 6.21.2, 14.4.4, 14.30.1. haesito: Hist. 4.31.2. haesitatio: Hist. 1.39.2, 2.45.2; Ann. 1.80.3. adhaereo: Hist. 2.25.2; Ann. 2.23.4, 3.21.4, 13.35.3. adhaeresco: Ann. 3.33.4, 11.12.3. cohaereo: Germ. 16.1.
7 The manuscript M (Laurentianus 68.2) for Tacitus’ Historiae ‘ultimately derives from a manuscript in rustic capitals, but measurement of displaced passages suggests at least one ancestor in minuscule’ (Tarrant, R.J., ‘Tacitus’, in Reynolds, L.D. [ed.], Texts and Transmission [Oxford, 1983], 406–9Google Scholar, at 407).
8 All numbers are based on searches run with the PHI Latin database.
9 Heubner, H., P. Cornelius Tacitus. Die Historien. Band I: Erstes Buch (Heidelberg, 1963), 90Google Scholar.
10 Damon (n. 4), 181.
11 For a brief summary of these events with further references, see Nisbet, R.G.M., M. Tulli Ciceronis in L. Calpurnium Pisonem oratio (Oxford, 1961), xGoogle Scholar.