Latin 520 (Tiberius): Assignment for Week 8 (Feb. 18-25)

 

NB: We will meet only on Tuesday of this week...

 

I sense that there are still things to be said about Phaedrus, so we shall take, say, 30-45 minutes for a Phaedrus wrapup.

 

But IÕd like to at least ensure some exposure to the epigraphic record for the reign of Tiberius.  This is a little complicated, but here goes:

 

This week IÕm assigning readings in three different texts:

  1. G. Rowe, Princes and Political Cultures.  The New Tiberian Senatorial Decrees (Michigan 2002), pp. 1-66.   This is available (or the part we want) electronically here:

 

http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailLookInside.do?id=17222

 

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU CANNOT ACCESS THIS!

 

This book is a study of several of the most important inscriptions from the period, most notably the Tabula Hebana and Tabula Siarensis as well as the (fairly) newly discovered SC de Pisone.  Rowe provides the Latin texts of the inscriptions (pp. 22-40); they are translated, for the most part (but with surrounding commentary), in the Introduction (pp. 1-22).  IÕd like you to read the Introduction (pp. 1-22); the three inscriptions mentioned in the previous sentence (pp. 22-38); and his chapter on the Senate (pp. 41-66).  Since we will have limited time to discuss the reading for this week, IÕd like you concentrate for Tuesday on the Senatus Consultum (SC) de Pisone.  This is the text we will look at together; if time allows, weÕll also discuss the Tabula Siarensis and Tabula Hebana. 

 

You may find a full translation (with facing Latin text) of the SC de Pisone in a special edition of the American Journal of Philology 120.1 (1999) 14-41.  Alas, these are missing from the seminar room AJP run, but it is available through the library via JSTOR (hopefully, you know what that is):

 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/i270333

 

Note that you must be logged in to the UW system to access this.

 

  1. The most significant epigraphic evidence for the Tiberian period is collected in English translation in R. Sherk, ed. and trans., The Roman Empire: Augustus to Hadrian (Translated Documents of Greece and Rome), Cambridge 1988, pp. 53-77.  I am sending you a pdf of this.  Please read (neither long nor hard).

 

  1. The Latin texts for what you find in Sherk are all (or almost all) contained in V. Ehrenberg and A.H.M. Jones, edd., Documents illustrating the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, 2nd ed. (Oxford).  These are not arranged in chronological order, as in Sherk, but rather grouped by subject.  However: when you read Sherk, you will see that for almost every text he refers you to the Latin text in Ehrenberg and Jones – this is how you can track down the relevant Tiberian texts in Latin in EJ.  For the most part, these inscriptions are relatively shortÉyou should be able to work through most if not all of them in Latin.  I have placed a couple of copies of Ehrenberg and Jones on our reserve shelf.

 

 

Inscriptions provide ŌhardcoreÕ historical evidence; much of what we have, apart from funeral inscriptions, are official documents or decrees, and thus represent one party line or another.

 

The overarching question here, especially as regards the Tabulae, is how these texts underscore or qualify our impression of the period from the literary record (and I include historians in that).  It may be useful to think of it this way: if you only had the epigraphic record, what would be your impressions of the Tiberian period?  Of particular interest (to me, anyway) are the impressions you form of the senate from reading these texts.  What connections do you see between what you read in the epigraphic record and what youÕve read thus far (VellPat, Tacitus, ValMax, Phaedrus, et al.)?