Lucretius

OK then I'll have a look at doing a stylistic analysis then
I was just concerned of it becoming too technical for those not familar with the Latin language.
Given the time of year (In other words I plan to get drunk or have a hangover most of the next week ),it will probably be next week before I can do some serious work on it and then as I will only be doing it as a part time sort of thing it may take me a few days

Bede

Let me kick things off while Lucretius is sleeping off the Christmas festivities.

The sentence in question:

A couple of obvious points to note. First it is a parenthetical statement that sheds light on a new term Tacitus has just introduced. Second, as is usual in Latin, it is linked to the previous sentence, in this case by the pronoun, eius.

Any reading of Tacitus reveals that this sort of parenthesis in his narrative is standard fayre. They run from a couple of words to a couple of paragraphs depending on how important the figure or group he has introduced. Clearly, as we might expect, Christians are not very important so don't get much in the way of extra editorial.

A quick search of the Annals shows that T has no problem with eius as his linking word. Here are a couple (Using Perseus, I got up to 30 of the 1000+ instance of the word is,ea,id and found two instances of the gen sing masc used as a link. So its pretty common).

The second one is exactly the same grammatical structure as the sentence under review: 'the voice of this man was heard' compared to 'the originator of this name was executed'.

Another feature of our sentence is the use of a nominative noun standing as a relative clause. The first four words literally say "The originator of this name, Christ,..." which can be expanded to "The originator of this name who was called Christ". Tacitus loves to keep his language very tight. We see him doing the same thing quite often like here:

Note how again the relative clause is cut back to a masculine noun, not even a participle. Again, the translator can't help adding a 'who was' to the English to add a little padding to Tacitus's sparse prose.

So, our sentence looks very Tacitean to me. I'd be interested to hear what elements of it Lucretius is uncomfortable with, and also to hear if any other scholars have echoed his concerns.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Bede

Spin, in his only vaguely valid point, brings up the point that Tacitus used ingens multitudo or huge crowd to describe Nero's victims. He claims that as there was not a huge crowd of Christians in Rome in those days the passage must be false.

This is wrong for an infinta multitudo of reasons.

First, Tacitus is forever using hyperbole. At Annals 3:25 he describes Rome as having an infinite crowd of laws. As this is impossible, I assume Spin thinks this is an interpolation too.

Second, ingens multitudo in the nominative is a common Tacitean phrase typical of the author. See Annals 2:40, 2:21, 4:49, 14:8 etc.

Third, the passage under review makes clear that a 'vast multitude' were convicted, not that they were Christians. Clearly, this was a witchhunt where many innocents were rounded up and convicted on the basis of evidence under torture.

Thanks again to Perseus Project for helping with this. Any chance of Lucretius giving us his ideas now?

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Lucretius

I should have my arguments about that one particular sentence ready in a day or two
I must stress that the majority of the passage is not a problem for me, merely the sentence :-

I have been able to do some work on this and all that remains is for me is to double check what I have written and ensure it is comprehensible.
I have come up with one more slight problem ,I think I can see in the rest of the passage and I will address that too(it is possibly a relatively minor point but worth addressing I believe) .
Thanks for your patience in this at any other time of the year I may have been able to submit something sooner ,but I would sooner take a little longer to get my arguments right than rush a half baked response.

freigeister

Some quotations from Tacitus:

Those who have ears, let them hear.

andrewcriddle

On the question of how significant it is that Tacitus calls Pilate a procurator rather than a prefect it may be worth noting that Hirschfeld in 'Die kaiserlichen Verwaltungsbeanten bis auf Diokletian' 1905 when discussing the official position of Pilate apparently claimed that Tacitus's reference to Pilate as procurator doesn't settle the matter given Tacitus's carelessnes in such things.

(I'm basing this on a Christian encyclopedia article not having read Hirschfeld myself but the article was published long before the inscription proving Pilate was a prefect was discovered)

Andrew Criddle

Lucretius

First of all apologies in not posting this as soon as I said I would I have had some serious computer problems and only after a great deal of work have I been able to get back online.
Anyway here's my argument about the possible interpolation on this passage of Tacitus.

First of all I am going to split this sentence into it's two component parts.
"Auctor Nominis Eius Christus" and "Tibero imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio Adfectus Erat"

What can be said about the first part - very little really it is in perfectly grammatical Latin, all the right words agree with each other and that is our problem.

This is schoolboy Latin. It is worthy only of someone who knows the basics of Latin but is completely unaware of any true Latin style.

Don't forget, Tacitus was and still is renowned not just as a historian but equally as a stylist.

As Professor Michael Grant states "the outstanding quality of Tacitus is his brilliance as a literary artist".

Where is that style here?

Tacitus is known for his concise style but conciseness does not just consist of basic words only as in this example.
The phrase is just unbearably DULL.
Where is anything descriptive about Christus?
Tacitus is quite happy to describe that Chrestianos , as followers of a vile superstition, yet other than the wrong use of the name Christus, he doesn't say a word,not even what the supposed crime was .

There is a discrepancy obviously between Chrestianos and Christus. While this is possibly an error in transcription , some commentators have said that using Christus, Tactitus is showing off his knowledge in comparison to the common people. (vulgus)

In fact by stating that Christus is a name he is showing his ignorance. This in spite of the fact that as he had served in Asia and was in contact with Pliny , who served in Syria , he should have been aware that Christus is not a name ,but is used to describe the "Messiah".

The second part by contrast, also exhibits non-Tacitean style, but for a completely different reason.
"Tibero imPeritante Per Procuratorem Pontium Pilatum suPPlicio Adfectus Erat"

The extensive use of alliteration of the letter P makes for, in my oPinion Pathetically Pedestrian, Poor and Puerile Prose.

Sorry but I just couldn't resist but I do hope you get my Point. This is bad English usage and it is equally bad Latin usage. Now don't forget that Tacitus is praised as a stylist. However, this second part is not only reminiscent of the tongue-twister " Peter Piper, Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers", just try yourself saying it out loud as Tacitus' works would have been , but also gives the impression to me at least of being something from the comedies of Plautus or even perhaps from Petronius' satirical work "Cena Trimalchionis", where the authors are making fun of the literary pretensions of the middle classes or "upwardly mobile" freedmen.

If there is one thing the work of Tacitus isn't ,it is pretentious, it may be difficult ,it may be confusing at times ,but pretentious it never is ,

In addition, in Latin literature, and in particular in well written Latin literature the use of things such as alliteration are always used for a specific purpose. It is actually impossible to see what the purpose and intent of this alliteration would be here, what does this alliteration add to the phrase ?

Now, there are several other problematical aspects to this second part, as has already been stated procurator is both the wrong title and anachronistic, Christians using this sentence as "proof" as Jesus historical existence seem to want it both ways, they want to be able to claim that Tacitus as a respected historian must be right when he mentions "Christus" as existing but when faced with the inconvenient fact that Tacitus gets something wrong they seem to want to say "Well you can't expect him to get everything right" ,a case perhaps of "Divine Inspiration" in this ?
"Imperitante Tibero " the missing I from Tiberius' name is a minor point and some modern texts have in fact reinstated it. This probably comes about from a simple scribes error. However, the expression as a whole is unusual, in fact this is only the second time that it is used at all in the Annals, when referring to Tiberius .

The more correct and indeed common form would be "Principe Tiberio" Roman Emperors at the time were still holding onto the myth that they were just Principes , First Citizens or at least first among equals in the Senate not Emperors as such .
Pontium Pilatum raises another problem, again as Professor Michael Grant states in his introduction to Tacitus "UNLIKE Tacitus I have sought to avoid confusion by giving names in FULL" (my CAPS).

Tacitus, in the Annals rarely uses names in this fashion, The exceptions being when stating the names of the Consuls of the year. Following Tacitus' general rule of conciseness "Per Pilatum" would be much more Tacitean in tone.

Pontius Pilate also seems to show a medieval idea of a persons name - forename plus surname rather than the full proper Roman usage of three names or an initial and two names .

Yet another problem is that it is not stated where Pilate was actually Prefect. Admittedly, it does state "Per Iudaeam" later on but the connection is not overly obvious. Michael Grant yet again felt that he had to include Judea in his translation but then he like us already knew from Biblical sources that that was the place in question.

Now a true test of whether an interpolation of marginalia exists is to remove those words and the passage still makes sense and in this instance it certainly does. In fact in my opinion, it reads far better with the words "Chrestianos" followed more closely by "Repressaque". So if we put the two parts of this particular sentence back together again we see that no only that they are non Tacitean but they even clash with each other in terms of style if you can say it has a style.

After several re-readings of this passage I am almost tempted to say that what we have here are actually two interpolations and not just the one as I had originally thought.
The other point I noticed in my several re-readings was the phrase

This has commonly been translated as "their hatred of mankind" but the problem is that again as Micheal Grant states as a footnote in his translation it can in fact also be translated as
"But this phrase (odio humani generis) may instead mean "because the human race detested them" "(Penguin Classics translation footnote 2 page 365)
Now this as well as the expression "multitudo ingens" actually starts to make sense if these "Chrestianos" are in fact Jewish settlers in Rome ,of whom there was a large number , at the time and who had suffered prejudice already in Tiberius reign , as well as later on in Claudius reign,so a continued prejudice in Nero's reign seems likely .
Their being popularly called "Chestianos" is well documented, as after all weren't they still waiting for a Christ to appear?

andrewcriddle

IIUC imperitante here is a chronological reference to the reign of Tiberius not a reference to his title as ruler. There would seem to be two parallels earlier in the annals

Book 3 24 and Book 4 62Tacitus seems to use two names quite frequently (much more frequently than the full set of three names)

In Book 15 of the Annals we have in section 3 Verulanus Severus and Vettius Bolanus in section 7 we have Funisulanus Vettonianus and Calavius Sabinus in section 11 we have Tarquitius Crescens etc.

I agree the alliteration is odd but am not sure why an imitater of Tacitus would use it here either.

Andrew Criddle

Lucretius

I missed the usage of Imperitante in Book 4 I must admit but even so it is still comparatively rare.
As far as the use of the 2 names goes you make a fair point I mainly based my comment on another commentator on Tacitus (Lazy of me I know ) and should have checked it myself ,but with the length of the whole of the remaining books of Annals I just took the lazy option.
I would have liked to have read AJ Woodmans latest book on Tacitus Annals but at £90 for the book it isn't exactly high on my list of books to buy
As he is only producing volumes with commentary for each book in turn and has only reached Book 4 (or maybe 5 ) it will be sometime before and affordable commentary will be available
I am trying to get some details from an old friend of mine of a conference that was held at York University where Woodman gave a talk on the Annals,but don't know if this passage or sentence were even mentioned .

Lucretius

Something I meant to say yesterday is that this sentence or even part of the sentence, if in fact it is an interpolation, need not necessarily be by an "imitator" of Tacitus.
There are very few of these interpolations that can be said to be deliberate insertions of text,the vast majority are Marginalia i.e notes that someone at a later date has written in the margins of the work in a similar way we might use a footnote to explain something further.
This can often be absorbed into the main part of the work mainly by scribes, who could not distinguish between the margin notes and the proper text.
In this case due to the extreme difference in style to Tacitus normal usage I would suggest that the possible "author" of the interpolation was merely writing in what he thought was good Latin,rather than trying to copy Tacitus' style, if it is an attempt at imitation in my opinion it fails spectacularly.