Mutiny and Madness: Tacitus Annals 1.16-49

Abstract

This paper considers the programmatic narratives of the mutinies in Germany and Pannonia with which Tacitus opens Annals 1. First, the correspondences between the two mutinies are established in detail, since scholars have tended to presuppose that parallels exist, rather than offer substantiation. Then the reasons for this insistent parallelism are explored. Tacitus, at the opening of the Annals, constructs Drusus and Germanicus as a pair, thus recalling the relationship between their respective fathers, Tiberius and Drusus, which would have been covered by Livy at the end of his narrative. Double identity of person and place creates an expectation that history will begin to repeat itself. Next the paper considers the recurrent imagery of the mutinies. Where Goodyear detected fire as the dominant image, closer analysis shows that medicine and madness predominate, probably because the principal intertext for Tacitus's narrative is Livy's account of the mutiny which Scipio Africanus confronted in Spain in 206 B.C. Thus Tacitus's account of Tiberius's accession is marked by two mutinies which are described in sustained metaphorical terms of (mental) illness. It is as if Tacitus has combined Thucydidean accounts of plague and stasis into a single narrative.

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