Tacitus’ Annales

1. Tacitus’ Annales The role of Women in Roman Historiography

2. The most prominent women in Tacitus • Livia • Poppaea • Messalina • Agrippina the elder • Agrippina the Younger

3. Livia • When Agrippa gave up the ghost, untimely fate, or the treachery of their stepmother Livia, cut off both Lucius and Caiusº Caesar, Lucius on his road to the Spanish armies, Caiusº — wounded and sick — on his return from Armenia. Drusus had long been dead, and of the stepsons Nero survived alone. On him all centred. Adopted as son, as colleague in the empire, as consort of the tribunician power, he was paraded through all the armies, not as before by the secret diplomacy of his mother, but openly at her injunction. For so firmly had she riveted her chains upon the aged Augustus that he banished to the isle of Planasia5 his one remaining grandson, Agrippa Postumus, who though guiltless of a virtue, and confident brute-like in his physical strength, had been convicted of no open scandal. Yet, curiously enough, he placed Drusus' son Germanicus at the head of eight legions on the Rhine, and ordered Tiberius to adopt him: it was one safeguard the more, even though Tiberius had already an adult son under his roof. (Tacitus, Annales 1.3)

4. Livia, the Death of Augustus • 5 While these topics and the like were under discussion, the malady of Augustus began to take a graver turn; and some suspected foul play on the part of his wife. For a rumour had gone the round that, a few months earlier, the emperor, confiding in a chosen few, and attended only by FabiusMaximus, had sailed for Planasia on a visit to Agrippa. "There tears and signs of affection on both sides had been plentiful enough to raise a hope that the youth might yet be restored to the house of his grandfather. Maximus had disclosed the incident to his wife Marcia; Marcia, to Livia. It had come to the Caesar's knowledge; and after the death of Maximus, which followed shortly, possibly by his own hand, Marcia had been heard at the funeral, sobbing and reproaching herself as the cause of her husband's destruction." Whatever the truth of the affair, Tiberius had hardly set foot in Illyricum, when he was recalled by an urgent letter from his mother; and it is not certainly known whether on reaching the town of Nola, he found Augustus still breathing or lifeless. For house and street were jealously guarded by Livia's ring of pickets, while sanguine notices were issued at intervals, until the measures dictated by the crisis had been taken: then one report announced simultaneously that Augustus had passed away and that Nero was master of the empire.7 (1.5-7

5. The case of Plancia:Livia’s influence, again • 15 Plancina, equally hated, had more than equal influence; so that it was considered doubtful how far the sovereign would be allowed to proceed against her. She herself, so long as hope remained for Piso, p545protested that she would share his fortune for good or ill, or, if the need arose, would meet destruction in his company. But once her pardon had been procured by the private intercessions of Livia, she began step by step to dissociate herself from her husband and to treat her own defence as a distinct issue. It was a fatal symptom, and the defendant knew it. He was doubtful whether to make another effort or not; but, as his sons pressed him, he hardened his heart and entered the senate once more. He faced the repetition of the charges, the hostile cries of the Fathers, the fierce opposition evident in every quarter; but nothing daunted him more than the sight of Tiberius, pitiless and angerless, barred and bolted against the ingress of any human emotion. After being carried home, he wrote a little, apparently notes for his defence the next day; sealed the paper, and handed it to a freedman. Then he gave the usual attention to his person; and finally, late at night, when his wife had left the bedroom, he ordered the door to be closed, and was found at daybreak with his throat cut and a sword lying on the floor. (3.15)

6. Plancia continued • 17 Tiberius followed by absolving the younger Piso from the charge of civil war, — for "the orders came from a father, and a son could not have disobeyed," — and at the same time expressed his sorrow for a noble house and the tragic fate of its representative, whatever his merits or demerits. In offering a shamefaced and ignominious apology for Plancina, he pleaded the entreaties of his mother; who in private was being more and more hotly criticized by every person of decency:— "So it was allowable in a grandmother to admit her husband's murderess to sight and speech, and to rescue her from the senate! The redress which the laws guaranteed to all citizens had been denied to Germanicus alone. The voice of Vitellius and Veranius had bewailed the Caesar: the emperor and Augusta had defended Plancina. It remained to turn those drugs and arts, now tested with such happy results, against Agrippina and her children, and so to satiate this admirable grandmother and uncle with the blood of the whole calamitous house!" Two days were expended on this phantom of a trial, with Tiberius pressing Piso's sons to defend their mother; and as the accusers and witnesses delivered their competing invectives, without a voice to answer, pity rather than anger began to deepen. The question was put in the first instance to Aurelius Cotta, the consul; for, if the reference came from the sovereign, even the magistrates went through the process of registering their opinion.37 Cotta proposed that the name of Piso should be erased from the records, one half of his property confiscated, and the other made over to his son Gnaeus, who should change his first name;38 that Marcus Piso should be stripped of his senatorial rank, and relegated39 for a period of ten years with a gratuity of five million sesterces: Plancina, in view of the empress's intercession, might be granted immunity. ( 3.17)

7. Livia, meddling once more • 22 About this time, the praetor Plautius Silvanus, for reasons not ascertained, flung his wife Apronia out of the window, and, when brought before the emperor by his father-in‑law, LuciusApronius, gave an incoherent reply to the effect that he had himself been fast asleep and was therefore ignorant of the facts; his wife, he thought, must have committed suicide. Without any hesitation, Tiberius went straight to the house and examined the bedroom, in which traces were visible of resistance offered and force employed. He referred the case to the senate, and a judicial committee had been formed, when Silvanus' grandmother Urgulania sent her descendant a dagger. In view of Augusta's friendship with Urgulania, the action was considered as equivalent to a hint from the emperor: the accused, after a fruitless attempt with the weapon, arranged for his arteries to be opened. Shortly afterwards, his first wife Numantina, charged with procuring the insanity of her husband by spells and philtres, was adjudged innocent. (4.22)

8. The importance of women in the Dynasty • 4 The day on which the remains were consigned to the mausoleum of Augustus9 was alternately a desolation of silence and a turmoil of laments. The city-streets were full, the Campus Martius alight with torches. There the soldier in harness,10 the magistrate lacking his insignia, the burgher in his tribe, iterated the cry that "the commonwealth had fallen and hope was dead" too freely and too openly for it to be credible that they remembered their governors. Nothing, however, sank deeper into Tiberius' breast than the kindling of men's enthusiasm for Agrippina — "the glory of her country, the last scion of Augustus, the peerless pattern of ancient virtue." So they styled her; and, turning to heaven and the gods, prayed for the continuance of her issue — "and might they survive their persecutors!" (3.4)

9. 52 But in Rome, the imperial house was already shaken; and now, to open the train of events leading to the destruction of Agrippina, her second cousin, Claudia Pulchra,5 was put on trial, with DomitiusAfer as accuser. Fresh from a praetorship, with but a modest standing in the world, and hurrying towards a reputation by way of any crime, he indicted her for unchastity, for adultery with Furnius, for practices by poison and spell against the life of the sovereign. Agrippina, fierce-tempered always and now inflamed by the danger of her kinswoman, flew to Tiberius, and, as chance would have it, found him sacrificing to his father.6 This gave the occasion p95for a reproachful outburst:— "It was not," she said, "for the same man to offer victims to the deified Augustus and to persecute his posterity. Not into speechless stone had that divine spirit been transfused: she, his authentic effigy, the issue of his celestial blood, was aware of her peril and assumed the garb of mourning. It was idle to make a pretext of Pulchra, the only cause of whose destruction was that in utter folly she had chosen Agrippina as the object of her affection, forgetful of Sosia,7 who was struck down for the same offence." Her words elicitedº one of the rare deliverances of that impenetrable breast. He seized her, and admonished her in a line of Greek8 that she was not necessarily "A woman injured, if she lacked a throne." Pulchra and Furnius were condemned. Afer took rank with the great advocates: his genius had found publicity, and there had followed a pronouncement from the Caesar, styling him "an orator by natural right." Later, whether as conductor of the prosecution or as mainstay of the defence, he enjoyed a fame which stood higher for eloquence than for virtue. Yet even of that eloquence age took heavy toll, sapping as it did his mental power and leaving his incapacity for silence.9 (4.52)

10. Agrippina the Younger • Pallas, in his eulogy of Agrippina, insisted on the point that she brought with her the grandson of Germanicus,3 who fully deserved an imperial position: let the sovereign unite to himself a famous stock, the posterity of the Julian and Claudian races,4 and ensure that a princess of tried fecundity, still in the vigour of youth, should not transfer the glory of the Caesars into another family! • 3 His arguments prevailed, with help from the allurements of Agrippina. In a succession of visits, cloaked under the near relationship, she so effectually captivated her uncle that she displaced her rivals and anticipated the position by exercising the powers of a wife. For, once certain of her marriage, she began to amplify her schemes, and to intrigue for a match between Domitius, her son by GnaeusAhenobarbus, and the emperor's daughter Octavia. That result was not to be achieved without a crime, as the Caesar had plighted Octavia to Lucius Silanus,5 and had introduced the youth (who had yet other titles to fame) to the favourable notice of the multitude by decorating him with the triumphal insignia and by a magnificent exhibition of gladiators. Still, there seemed to be no insuperable difficulty in the temper of a prince who manifested neither approval nor dislike except as they were imposed upon him by orders.

11. Why were Women so important in Tacitus’ account?

12. Why women were important in the Annales • 1. wealth of sources available to Tacitus • 2. The topic of the Annalesitself (i.e. the Imperial dynasty) made inclusion of women necessary; women played indispensible role in reproduction of the family, especially since Julio-Claudians unfortunate in their inability to produce male heirs • Augustus and Caligula had no biological sons • Women lived longer, had more knowledge acquired and influence. • Tacitus sees this as motivating factor in Claudius’ marriage to the younger Agrippina (12.2) • The elder Agrippina several times made to compete with Tiberius for influence simply because of her biological relationship with the founder of the dynasty (3.4 and 4.52)

13. The Sources • 53 Meanwhile Agrippina, obstinately nursing her anger, and attacked by physical illness, was visited by the emperor. For long her tears fell in silence; then she began with reproaches and entreaties:— "He must aid her loneliness and give her a husband; she had still the requisite youth,10 and the virtuous had no consolation but in marriage — the state had citizens who would stoop to receive the p97wife of Germanicus and his children." The Caesar, however, though he saw all that was implied in the request, was reluctant to betray either fear or resentment, and therefore, in spite of her insistence, left her without an answer. — This incident, not noticed by the professed historians, I found in the memoirs of her daughter Agrippina11 (mother of the emperor Nero), who recorded for the after-world her life and the vicissitudes of her house. (4.53)

14. Women in Roman historiography • While the domestic sphere of the women in Tacitus’ Annales appear shadowy, they are extremely powerful, manipulating from behind outside public life. • The powerful imperial women in Tacitus have clear historiographical connection to Sallust’ Sempronia, who forces her way to the public stage and tries to wrest power from men. • Also connected to Lucretia, or the raped Sabine women - who were all able to make a difference in history by not aping men around them but surpassing them. No attempting to beat men at their own game, these women were virtuous wives, mothers and daughters who showed themselves as powerful forces in political life. Their femininity proved to be an alternative source of power and influence not all under male control. • See in Roman historiography that despite the patriarchal ideology and social structure, Roman authors made room for women in the history of the Roman state and gave visibility to them.