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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Tacitus gives lavish treatment to the mutiny of the German legions in the aftermath of Augustus' death in a.d. 14 and provides an excellent centrepiece in a speech (given in oratio recta) by Germanicus to the troops of the Lower German army at Ara Ubiorum (Cologne). After the harsh treatment of a delegation from Rome, Germanicus responded to requests that he send Agrippina and Caligula to safety. As the family was leaving the camp the troops surrounded Germanicus, who moved them to repentance by his speech. Previous writers have already discussed particular debts to Livy and to Virgil, but none has, I think, pointed to the most likely source for Germanicus' opening remarks: ‘Non mihi uxor aut filius patre et re publica cariores sunt…’. Goodyear dismisses the sentiment as a variety of the ‘commonplace’. that the state was more important than the individual and refers the reader to Béranger. However, none of these passages is as close or as pointed as the examples I consider below.
1 Ann. 1.31-52, with the speech comprising chapters 42 and 43.
2 E.g. H. Furneaux, The Annals of Tacitus2(Oxford, 1896), p. 235; F. R. D. Goodyear, The Annals of Tacitus Volume I (Annals 1.1-54)(Cambridge, 1972), pp. 288-96; most recently C. B. R. Pelling ‘Tacitus and Germanicus’, inTacitus and the Tacitean Tradition[edd. T. J. Luce and A. J. Woodman] (Princeton, 1993), p. 74. While we can agree that Tacitus intends to present Germanicus aspius,any pointed parallel between Germanicus and Aeneas is far from secure; the appearance of such generic termsas filiusandconiunxcan only with difficulty bring to the reader's mind a literary parallel rather than theKaisereid paceR. T. S. Baxter, ‘Virgil's Influence on Tacitus’, CP 67 [1972], 249⁁50. Nothing in the Virgil passages quoted by Baxter suggests any allusion by the poet to theKaisereidformula
3 Op. cit., p. 288; J. Beranger, Recherches sur I aspect ideologique du principat (Basle, 1953), pp. 169f. Cf. E. Koestermann, Cornelius Tacitus: Annalen Band /(Heidelberg, 1963).
4 CIL 2.172. Text as in P. Herrmann, Der romische Kaisereid: Untersuchungen zu seiner Herkunft und Entwicklung (Gottingen, 1968), p. 122.
5 See J. Gonzalez, ‘The first oath pro salute Augusti found in Baetica’, ZPE 72 (1988), 113-27. His text
6 OGIS 532; text Herrmann [n. 4], pp. 123-4. The sanctio attached to the oath also develops a version of the carior idea:
plausibly stresses that the origins of the Kaisereid are to be seen in the western tradition, whereas the cities of the East, with their tradition of Herrschereide, adapted the western formulae.
7 See references collected at D. Wardle, Suetonius' Life of Caligula: a Commentary (Brussels, 1994), p. 164 on Cat. 15.3. Add Seneca Cons. Pol. 7.4.
8 Dio 64.14.1 of Otho's troops after his suicide
9 This argument was suggested by the anonymous reader, who also asks whether salus at 1.40.1 reflected language found in oaths. Suetonius (D.J. 69-70), Appian (B.C. 2.93) and Dio (42.53.3) connect Caesar's words with the revolt of the tenth legion at Rome in 47 B.C., Lucan (5.237f.) with that of the ninth legion at Placentia in 49 B.C. Both contexts predate the formulation of special oaths of loyalty to Caesar, if ever they were sworn (Appian B.C. 2.518, 601;) cf. Weinstock [n. 7]
10 Ann. 1.7.5, 31.1, 34.1 and 37.3. Even if Germanicus had not personally administered the oath to the rebellious legions at Cologne before he gave his speech, and Tacitus' account includes no such activity, the question of the oath was central. If indeed the swearing of the Kaisereid was an annual affair by A.D. 14 (as it certainly was later), its terms and formulae would have been the more familiar to the troops.
11 It may be worth considering whether Tacitus' use of the plural 'liberos' at 1.42.1, where only Caligula is immediately relevant, should be explained by the wording of the oath 'liberos meos' (e.g. CIL 2.172) rather than as a ‘generalising plural’ (Goodyear [n. 2], p. 289) or as including Agrippina's as yet unborn child (N. P. Miller, Tacitus: Annals Book /[London, 1959], p. 163).
12 On the composition of the speech see G. Landgraf, BBG 59 (1923), 27; R. Ullmann, La technique des discours dans Salluste, Tite-Live et Tacite (Oslo, 1927), pp. 218-9. Cf. D. C. A. Shotter, ‘Tacitus, Tiberius and Germanicus’, Historia 17 (1968), 198: ‘through the long speech Tacitus again characterises Germanicus’ histrionic manner of behaviour - through the fulsome style of the prose...'; D. O. Ross, 'The Tacitean Germanicus', YCS 23 (1973), 216: 'Remorse allows Germanicus a long and emotional speech, one which promises nothing and settles nothing, but merely attends on the fact of the soldiers' contrition'.
13 If the speech is purely Tacitean it shows in another area how he could echo imperial formulae. Haverfield argued convincingly (JRS 2 [1912], 197-9) that Tacitus subtly and maliciously alludes to the opening section of Augustus' Res Gestae in Ann. 1.10 (cf. Goodyear [n. 2]), pp. 159-60. Other instances have been noted, e.g. Ann. 3.55.5 (see A. J. Woodman and R. H. Martin, The Annals of Tacitus Book 3 [Cambridge, 1996], pp. 409-10) and Ann. 4.6.4 (A. J. Woodman and R. H. Martin, The Annals of Tacitus Book 4 [Cambridge, 1990], p. 110). While Tacitus could echo key imperial texts, usually to parody or controvert their official meaning, in general he avoids terms associated with imperial propaganda (see R. Syme, Tacitus [Oxford, 1958], pp. 272,413, App. 66; cf. Goodyear [n. 2], p. 156).
14 Mrs M. T. Griffin has suggested that a problem for seeing in the proem any reference to the Kaisereid is the presence of res publica, as the oath was sworn to the emperor and imperial house, not to the state. However, in Tacitus' presentation Germanicus was in effect carrying out the advice of others: ‘illos saltern avo et rei publicae redderet’ (Ann. 1.40.2). Germanicus' speech, then, picks up this earlier passage.
page 613 note 1 J. Ward-Perkins and A. Claridge, Pompeii AD 79 (Bristol, 1976), no. 248. They give Vitruvius 10.3.4 as a reference
page 613 note 2 Based on Daremberg and Saglio s.v. Libra.
