Departmental Papers (Classical Studies)
Document Type
Book Chapter
Date of this Version
2010
Publication Source
Citizens of Discord: Rome and Its Civil Wars
Start Page
261
Last Page
272
DOI
10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195389579.003.0017
Abstract
This chapter examines Tacitus' representation of the legacy of civil war in his history of the Julio‐Claudian period, the Annals, arguing that civil war persists during the pax Augusta as a kind of banalization of state violence against citizens, a political system that consumes its own. It studies Tacitus' multi‐episode account of Nero's paranoid, possibly cynical, and ultimately self‐defeating appropriation of civil war exempla to motivate the suppression of potential dissent.
Copyright/Permission Statement
This material was originally published in Citizens of Discord: Rome and Its Civil Wars edited by Brian Breed, Cynthia Damon, and Andreola Rossi, and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195389579.001.0001/acprof-9780195389579-chapter-17. For permission to reuse this material, please visit http://global.oup.com/academic/rights.
Keywords
Tacitus, Annals, Nero, civil war
Recommended Citation
Damon, C. (2010). Intestinum Scelus: Preemptive execution in Tacitus' Annals. In B. Breed, C. Damon, & A. Rossi (Eds.), Citizens of Discord: Rome and Its Civil Wars (pp. 261-272). Oxford Scholarship Online. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195389579.001.0001
Date Posted: 03 March 2016
This document has been peer reviewed.