James McNamara

Articles:
Calpurnius Piso
Curtius Montanus
Germani, Germania
Batavi
Bructeri
Cherusci
Marcomani
Nerthus Tribes
Suebi
Ubii


The most comprehensive reference work on Tacitus published in English The Tacitus Encyclopedia is the only complete reference of its kind in the field of Tacitean studies. Spanning two volumes, this unprecedented resource contains more than 1,000 entries covering every person and place named in all extant works of Roman historian and politician Tacitus (c. 56-120 CE). Written by an international collaboration of diverse contributors, the entries

Tacitus’ Germania is notable for its absences: lacking a preface and programmatic statements, and being the only ethnographic monograph to have survived from Greco-Roman antiquity, readers have often leapt to fill in its perceived blanks. This chapter aims at redressing the effects of overdetermined readings by interpreting the text’s absences as significant in their own right.

This article analyses a narrative pattern in Tacitus’ Agricola dealing with the crossing of natural boundaries. First it discusses imaginary geography and the connections between the bounds of nature and the psychology of Agricola and his soldiers. It then turns to a discussion of paradoxes inherent in how the bounds of nature are handled, and discusses several traditions on which Tacitus draws. In declamation the edges of the earth represent a mystery and a danger, while the philosophical topos of the flight of the mind, as exemplified by Lucretius’ praises of Epicurus, offers a positive scheme in which breaking the bounds of nature is a metaphor for major intellectual achievement. The implications of Agricola’s identity as a provincial Roman are discussed, along with the glimpses of an imaginary geography in which Rome is de-centred. Finally the article considers how Tacitus inverts a literary tradition of associating the periphery of the earth with death and the underworld.

[Open access] This article is a discussion of Pliny, Ep. 7.29 and 8.6, in which he presents his reaction to seeing the grave monument of Marcus Antonius Pallas, the freedman and minister of the emperor Claudius, beside the via Tiburtina. The monument records a senatorial vote of thanks to Pallas, and Pliny expresses intense indignation at the senate’s subservience and the power and influence wielded by a freedman. This article compares Pliny’s letters with Tacitus’ account of the senatorial vote of thanks to Pallas at Annals 12.52–53 and explores the differences between the ways in which the two authors encourage readers to relate to past events. It is noted that the Pallas letters are unusual amongst Pliny’s letters for their treatment of material unconnected with the life and career of Pliny and his friends, and argued that in Ep. 7.29 Pliny uses language and attitudes drawn from satire to evoke the past. Ep. 8.6 is read as an idiosyncratic piece of historical enquiry, considering Pliny’s use of citation and his anonymization of historical individuals. Both letters are considered in the context of the surrounding letters, and a hypothesis is offered regarding the identity of their addressee Montanus, considering evidence from Tacitus’ Histories and Annals. Discussion of Tacitus Annals 12.52–53 focusses on the use of irony. Pliny’s evocation of enargeia (vividness) is compared with that of Tacitus. The article concludes with comparison of the historical accounts offered by Pliny and Tacitus through reflection on Juvenal, Satire 1.

[Open access] This article is a contribution to the history of classical education, focused on the reception of Roman texts about Germania in German schools between 1945 and 1989. The period under discussion here represents a time during which there was an aversion to handling material tainted by its appropriation under Nazi ideology, and traces the development of new approaches to its treatment.

A survey of the portrayal of the Germani in Latin textbooks from 1989 to 2009, tracing the resurgence of interest in the Germani in the Federal Republic of Germany after German reunification and leading up to bimillennial commemoration of the battle in the Teutoburg Forest. The central sources are textbooks for the teaching of Latin, while context is provided by academic scholarship and representations of the Germani in other cultural contexts, including film and theatre, museums and tourist attractions. The study traces a process of demy- thologisation and the rise of a myth of mythlessness in the handling of ancient Germanic history. Germany’s role in the European Union is considered as a developing influence on the portrayal of ancient Germania, including the Roman provinces of Germania, and the lands outside the empire called Germania by the Romans.

Conscientia vestra hoc loco titubat et illud superbum promissum, numquam sapientem facti sui paenitere. Seneca, De beneficiis 4, 34, 3 Per il terzo ciclo dei Titubanti Testi si propone il tema "ignoto, segreto, senza nome", ma è nella natura di qualsiasi testo di non svelare interamente, di presentare per sottrazione, di non nominare del tutto il proprio il contenuto. Persino gli elenchi e i lunghi cataloghi poetici, benché sembrino volere tutto esibire, restano sempre lacunosi e ineffabili. L'assen-za, come è noto, ben più della presenza marca la scrittura. Il testo eccede sempre se stesso e produce un surplus che resta senza nome. Titubanti testi. Binomio di lettura è un evento on line della durata di 60 minuti in cui due relatori discutono lo stesso passo tratto da un'opera greca o latina. La lingua è l'italiano, del quale non si richiede una conoscenza perfet-ta bensì un livello tale da permettere la comunicazione con gli altri partecipanti. In Titubanti Testi si incontrano studiosi stranieri, italiani d'Italia e italiani che lavorano in altri paesi. Modalità Ogni relatore ha 20 min. a disposizione per presentare il testo. Seguono 20 min. di discussione aperta al pubblico. A parlare per primo/a sarà colui o colei che ha accettato una proposta altrui, cioè per ogni binomio il secondo nome sul programma. La piattaforma è Zoom, per ogni incontro verrà diramato un link. Gli incontri verranno registrati, resi successivamente disponibili su YouTube e sul sito www.titubantitesti.ugent.be Chiunque volesse partecipare da uditore/uditrice e/o da rela-tore/relatrice nei prossimi cicli è pregato/a di prendere con-tatto con Marco Formisano, marco.formisano@ugent.be.

Heinrich Schliemann-Institut für Altertumswissenschaften, Universität Rostock, 3. Dezember 2020

In diesem Vortrag wird der literarische Charakter der Hainbeschreibungen in der taciteischen Germania diskutiert. Bisher hat die moderne Ausdeutung dieser Textstellen Bezüge zu poetischen Traditionen außerhalb der Ethnographie relativ wenig beachtet. Der Vortrag bietet eine Interpretation der Germania in diesem aussagekräftigen Kontext und leistet dabei neue Perspektive auf die Rolle der Philosophie in der ethnographischen Schrift.

Paper delivered at Victoria University of Wellington in 2017.

Please find the subsequently published article (Classical Quarterly, open access), at the following link:

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838821000203

Juvenal famously stated that he would restrict his satire to those whose ashes lay by the Via Flaminia and the Via Latina. In two relatively overlooked letters, Pliny the Younger undertook an attack against Claudius' wealthy and powerful freedman and minister, Marcus Antonius Pallas, whose tomb he had observed beside the Via Tiburtina. In this paper I trace a web of connections between the two letters on Pallas and other letters on historical subjects, and compare Pliny's reaction to Pallas' monument with Tacitus' account of the senatorial honours paid to the freedman. The aim will be to gain an understanding of the rich mixture of satirical, comical, rhetorical and historical language in the Pallas letters: a delicate balance between humour and outrage has important consequences for what is possible, and appropriate, in reading and writing about the recent – and not-so-recent – past.

Presentation in the online conference series: L’eredità di Roma antica in età moderna, Università degli Studi di Firenze, 11 May 2022
Convenor: Prof. I.G. Mastrorosa, Dipartimento SAGAS, Firenze

William Camden’s Annales (first editions 1615 & 1625) have had an immeasurable influence on the historiography of Elizabethan Britain and Ireland, but they are most often studied through four variously problematic translations into English produced in the 17th century. This paper aims to show that Camden’s Latin text offers insights into the generally overlooked sophistication of his literary and historical technique, and suggests that the communis opinio – that Camden is a ‘plain’ writer, whose technique is more modern than humanistic, is in need of revision. The paper focuses on classical intertexts and allusions in Camden’s narrative of the Essex rebellion of 1601. A central strand will be supplied by my argument that Camden’s account of the Essex rebellion in 1601 alludes to the Catilinarian conspiracy, and the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero, in order to offer multiple viewpoints on the events. Camden’s use of a classical literary texture is no mere display of learning, but rather a dynamic way to debate political questions central to the events he describes. Camden’s Latinity, often submerged in reception of his Annals, deserves to be returned to the central place it would have had for Camden’s first readers across Europe.

***

William Camden fu uno degli studiosi inglesi più conosciuti del suo tempo, e partecipeva attivamente nella respublica litterarum europea. I suoi Annales  rappresentano una delle prime narrazioni del regno di Elizabeth I. Nonostante la loro enorme influenza sulla storiografia di questo periodo in Inghilterra, gli Annales sono stati unsati come fonte, pur rimanendo relativamente
sconosciuti come opus per se stesso. La maggior parte della ricezione degli Annales negli ultimi due secoli è dalla parte di storici inglesi, che non hanno trattato l’originale in lingua latina, utilizzando piuttosto alcune traduzioni inglesi seicentesche. Negli ultimi decenni studiosi come Patrick Collinson hanno scritto sui pregiudizi anglocentrici nella storiografia su Camden, e la tendenza di esaggerare la sua modernità.

Oggi vi presento alcune ricerche preliminarie verso una nuova lettura degli Annales in lingua latina, insieme ad un prospetto di uno studio più esteso del ruolo dell’antichità negli Annales, e soprattutto del tacitismo di Camden. Spero di far rivivere prospettive sull’opere di Camden che sicuramente erano presenti ai suoi lettori contemporanei, ma che sono state trascurate nella storiografia inglese che spesso celebra Camden quasi come uno storico moderno, sottovalutando le tradizioni umanistiche che animano la sua narrativa.

CENTRO E PERIFERIA NELLA LETTERATURA LATINA DI ROMA IMPERIALE

Convegno Internazionale: Udine 12-14 gennaio 2021

Contributo in italiano: I confini del mondo nell'Agricola di Tacito.
Un'analisi dello schema narrativo del superamento di confini naturali.

ASCS 2018, University of Queensland:

In more than one sense, Tacitus’ Germania, as an ethnographic monograph from antiquity, stands alone. Without the survival of other texts of the same kind, we are left to compare it with ethnographic passages in other texts, though these differ from it in having a narrative framework by which to contextualise the ethnography.

This paper offers a reading of the Germania as a portrait, albeit a portrait focused on mores rather than appearance. The framing of Germania as ecphrasis, rather than as an ethnographic excursus from an implied historical narrative, is essayed as an approach to interpreting this elusive work.

This volume unfolds Tacitus’ wonders, paradox, the marvellous and the admirable to scrutiny. Tacitus’ withering reference to those who marvel at matters worthy only of the daily gazette expresses a scepticism that can be regarded as typically Tacitean; nevertheless wonder has an important role to play in his writing, and his narratives are filled with wondrous phenomena. This collection asks whether new approaches to reading Tacitus can accept wonders as an integral part of the narrative, rather than aberrations.

While recent scholarship has advanced the study of wonders in ancient Greek and Roman literatures with special attention to paradoxographers and poets, this volume tackles the problem of how marvels, paradox and wonder challenge readerly credulity in historiography and the adjacent genres in which Tacitus worked. Individual chapters draw on a range of interpretive approaches that mirror the wealth of authorial and reader-specific responses in play. As a result, historical judgement and literary artistry come to be seen as working in concert. 

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/tacitus-wonders-9781350241725/