Klassische Philologie
Refine
Has Fulltext
- no (22)
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (11)
- Review (6)
- Monograph/Edited Volume (3)
- Part of a Book (1)
- Contribution to a Periodical (1)
Language
- English (22) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (22)
Keywords
- Tacitus (5)
- Germania (3)
- Historiography (3)
- Caesar (2)
- Classical reception (2)
- Geschichtsschreibung (2)
- Lateinische Literatur (2)
- Latin literature (2)
- Textbooks (2)
- Absence (1)
Institute
Against the pain
(2023)
Introduction
(2023)
Lost in Germania
(2021)
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 is a discussion of Plin. Ep. 7.29 and Ep. 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 at 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 Ann. 12.52–3 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 let- ters 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, consider- ing 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 Tac. Ann. 12.52–3 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.
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.