Assignment for Wednesday, February 25:

Read: Tacitus, Annals, Book 14.13-15.32 (Penguin, pp. 320-59)

Presentation: Jeff (“The Summi Viri are Dead!? Exemplary Evidence in Annals XV”)

Things to think about:

• Boudicca is one of the most celebrated characters in Roman (and thus in Tacitus’) history. Why does T. bother with her? In what ways is his account sympathetic….or not?
• Read carefully the speech of Cassius on pp. 333ff. Why would T. bother to quote this comparatively long speech? relevance to rest of narrative?
• Who are the ‘good’ characters in today’s reading…and what makes them ’good’?
• Think comparatively about Octavia and Livy’s Lucretia. What do they have in common? Is there any sense in which it seems obvious that T. is evoking the memory of the latter in his narrative of the former?

Optional entertainment: You might find Denis Feeney’s lecture this Friday “Transitions into history: founding, and refounding, the city of Rome” (3:30 PM, 216 Denny Hall) of some relevance to things we’ve been thinking about lately. (Great scholar, current Sather Lecturer at Berkeley)