Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) Tacitus, Epic Successor of Valerius?
1. Tacitus, Epic Successor of Valerius?
Recently, Timothy A. Joseph made the case for Tacitus as ‘epic successor’ (Tacitus
the Epic Successor: Virgil, Lucan and the narrative of Civil War in the Histories, Brill
(2012)). Joseph limits his focus to Virgil and Lucan, but offers some slight encouragement
that the project may extend to the Flavians in an early footnote: ‘while Virgil and Lucan
dominate, my line of inquiry could perhaps profitably be extended to Tacitus’ relationship
with the Flavian poets’, and goes on helpfully to direct the reader to preliminary work by
Erich Burck on imperial epic and Tacitus, and more recently - and responding to Burck, the
chapter of Eleni Manolaraki and Antony Augoustakis comparing Silius Italicus’ tragic hero
Hannibal with Tacitus’ Germanicus.1 Joseph makes no mention of Valerius Flaccus, and
since this is the Flavian epicist I know best, I thought I would start with Valerius in
investigating any potential influence of Flavian epic on Tacitus.
I was also lured into the exploration by the quite frequent though nebulous
characterisation in scholarship of Valerius as a ‘Tacitean’ author, or at least as one whose
Argonautica evokes a ‘Tacitean’ pessimism. Erich Burck suggested that the way Valerius
presents the fear and envy of Pelias for Jason comes close to the way Tacitus writes the
relationships of Tiberius and Germanicus or Nero and Britannicus, and assert a similar
Leidenspathos in the worldviews of Valerius and Tacitus. And this is taken up more recently
by Debra Hershkowitz, whose discussion of dissimulation and tyranny in the poem works
with reference to Tacitus’ depiction of Domitian in the Histories and Tiberius in the Annals,
and by Donald McGuire, who has read the suicide of Jason’s father Aeson as a heroic Stoic
1
Burck (1971); Burck (1981); Manolaraki & Augoustakis (2010)
1 Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) suicide of the kind Tacitus writes for Thrasea Paetus in Annals 16 (16.33.5).2 Just to give you
a flavour of the kind of thing I’m talking about, these are the lines instigating the voyage of
Argo in Valerius’ epic. Pelias - fraudulently - tells Jason that their kinsman Phrixus has been
murdered by the Colchian king Aeetes, and asks Jason to take responsibility for regaining the
Fleece and avenging their kinsman. Jason recognises this is a subterfuge:
Mox taciti patuere doli nec vellera curae
esse viro, sed sese odiis immania cogi
in freta. ...
heu quid agat? populumne levem veteri tyranno
infensum atque olim miserantes Aesona patres
advocet an socia Iunone et Pallade fretus
armisona sperat magis et freta iussa capessat...
Arg.1.64-6, 71-6
Soon Jason grasped the guile of words unsaid:
The man cared naught for the Fleece, but out of hate
Compelled him to embark the boundless seas.
...
What could he do? Convene the fickle crowd,
Long hostile to the tyrant’s rule and elders
Who had long since to Aeson shown compassion?
Or trust in Juno as ally, and Pallas,
Whose armor loudly rings, and raise his hopes,
Embarking on the seas as he was bidden?
As Andrew Zissos points out, Jason’s response, when he realises what Pelias is up to, is to
think about rebellion in terms which look both Roman and rather Tacitean - we have the
fickle mob, or populus, we have a tyrant, and we have elders - or perhaps more specifically a
senatorial class, patres, whose pity for the rightful ruler Aeson does not extend to any action
on his behalf. The combination of tyrant-in-charge, ‘atrophied senatorial class’ and mutable
mob is a socio-cultural constellation that obviously anticipates Tacitus too.3 Although
Valerius is ostensibly writing a new optimistic epic for the Flavian age, in other words, his
2
Burck (1971) 29 (on VF. 3.15ff. and Hist III, 22ff, esp. 23.3); 48 on Pelias/Tiberius. Hershkowitz (1998) 246,
evoking Hist.4.86.2, Anns.3.71.4-6; McGuire (1997) 24-8; Preiswerk (1934) 439-40. See however Borszak
(1991) 2588 for caution against the idea that Valerius and Tacitus present identical world-views.
3
Zissos (2006)
2 Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) world-view offers a preoccupation with the politically charged themes of suicide and tyranny,
and a pervading atmosphere of dissimulation that feeds into or makes the Argonautica just as
much like Tacitus as Virgil.4
So that’s why I thought Valerius might be a good place to start even though there
seems to be little specific scholarship on the influence of the Argonautica on Tacitus.
Basically, apart from these kinds of comments that suggest a complementary sensibility, there
hasn’t been any work so far as I know suggesting a direct allusive relationship between
Valerius and Tacitus or Trajanic literature in general. Andrew Zissos’ reception study of
Valerius points to the role of Argonautica on Juvenal’s first satire, then fast-forwards to late
antiquity - and older work on Nachahmer such as Manitius doesn’t mention Tacitus either. A
much more detailed philological analysis needs to be done to secure any hope of an ‘allusive’
relationship: which I have not yet done. But what I want to do today, at the outset of this
project, is suggest a more active reader-response approach to the possible role of Valerius in
ways which complements Timothy Joseph’s study, and suggest a way in which reading
Tacitus AS an epic successor of Valerius might be useful for understanding both authors. So
first I’ll briefly offer an example or two of Joseph’s take on epic and Tacitus’ Histories, and
then I’ll talk about how Valerius might fit into (and potentially nuance) that story.
2. Tacitus, Epic Successor
Joseph builds on a long-standing suspicion in scholarship on Tacitus that the epicists
Virgil and Lucan have left some kind of allusive mark. And adapting the work of eminent
Virgilian scholars, above all Philip Hardie and David Quint, Joseph reads Tacitus as i)
positioning himself as an epic successor of Virgil just like a Lucan, Statius or Valerius
4
This speaks to larger issues of interpretation for the poem - the most recent ‘optimistic’ interpreter is Stover
(2012); contra, see e.g. Zissos (2009)
3 Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) Flaccus (cf. Hardie (1993), and ii) incorporating into his own historiography the same kinds
of patterns of repetition that fundamentally structure the Aeneid and Lucan’s Civil War. In
Virgil the Trojan War gets played out again and again, progressively: the Trojans finally
taking the ‘winners’ place; in Lucan, the Bellum Civile writes the introduction of the
principate as a regressive repetition of imperialist power-grabs that start with Romulus and
Remus (cf. Quint (1993). Joseph maps this onto Tacitus’ Histories, arguing that while the
historian writes in a spirit emulative of Virgil, his approach to conflict is Lucanian: the
Histories work as a series of destabilising and cumulatively reinforcing civil war conflicts, as
the chaos of 68-9 returns again and again, in the revolt of Julius Civilis in 69/70, or of
Saturninus in 89.
By pin-pointing the epic heritage of, for example, the imagery of disaster (clades) and
divine wrath (deum ira), I think Joseph does a good job of re-contextualising and enriching
the epic milieu of the Histories. To take just one example, here is a little chunk from
Histories 1.50, in which the vulgus reflect on what’s happening in 68:
nec iam recentia saevae pacis exempla sed repetita bellorum civilium memoria captam
totiens suis exercitibus urbem, vastitatem Italiae, direptiones provinciarum, Pharsaliam
Philippos et Perusiam ac Mutinam, nota publicarum cladium nomina, loquebantur.
Their talk was no longer of the recent horrors of a bloody peace, but they recalled memories
of the civil wars and spoke of the many times the city had been captured by Roman armies, of
the devastation of Italy, of the plundering of the provinces, of Pharsalia, Philippi, Perusia, and
Mutina, names notorious for public disaster.
Joseph points out that Histories 1.50 - centring on the civil conflict between Otho and
Vitellius - does not simply borrow Lucan’s common conflation of Pharsalus and Philippi in
the Bellum Civile and recycle the achronogical juxtaposition of Perugia and Mutina something Lucan did at BC.1.41 (Perusina fames Mutinaeque labores) - it also repeats the
narratological framing of that epic. In other words, when Tacitus’ mob recall previous civil
4 Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) wars in 69 that look back to 49 BC, they are doing the same thing as Lucan’s old man in 49,
recollecting and reflecting on civil disturbances under Sulla. So I think that’s a really
successful example of Joseph’s idea that Tacitus is situating himself as in some sense a
continuator of the epic of civil war.5
But famously for Tacitus’ Histories, it is not simply a question of civil war vs external
war for this period in history. At the outset of the Histories, in a way Joseph sees as
aggressively emulative of Virgil, Tacitus promises to embark upon or even attack a rich
period of history:
Opus adgredior opimum casibus, atrox proeliis, discors seditionibus, ipsa etiam pace saevum.
quattuor principes ferro interempti: trina bella civilia, plura externa ac plerumque
permixta: prosperae in Oriente, adversae in Occidente res: turbatum Illyricum, Galliae
nutantes, perdomita Britannia et statim omissa: coortae in nos Sarmatarum ac Sueborum
gentes, nobilitatus cladibus mutuis Dacus, mota prope etiam Parthorum arma falsi Neronis
ludibrio. iam vero Italia novis cladibus vel post longam saeculorum seriem repetitis adflicta.
haustae aut obrutae urbes, fecundissima Campaniae ora; et urbs incendiis vastata, consumptis,
antiquissimis delubris, ipso Capitolio civium manibus incenso. ...
Histories 1.2
The history on which I am entering is that of a period rich in disasters, terrible with battles,
torn by civil struggles, horrible even in peace. Four emperors fell by the sword; there were
three civil wars, more foreign wars, and often both at the same time. There was success in the
East, misfortune in the West. Illyricum was disturbed, the Gallic provinces wavering, Britain
subdued and immediately let go. The Sarmatae and Suebi rose against us; the Dacians won
fame by defeats inflicted and suffered; even the Parthians were almost roused to arms through
the trickery of a pretended Nero. Moreover, Italy was distressed by disasters unknown before
or returning after the lapse of ages. Cities on the rich fertile shores of Campania were
swallowed up or overwhelmed; Rome was devastated by conflagrations, in which her most
ancient shrines were consumed and the very Capitol fired by citizens' hands.
The 3 civil wars are Otho vs Vitellius, Vitellius vs Vespasian and in 89 Saturninus vs
Domitian. The Loeb translation I’ve given suggests that plerumque permixta is easy to
construe, taking permixta to mean ‘happening at the same time’. But more recent translators
of this phrase suggest a different interpretation: that there is a third kind of war - foreign,
civil, and ‘mixed’: and that the events Tacitus goes on to relate - the Ilyrian uprising for
5
Pharsalia as Philippi in Lucan: 1.680, 6.582, 7.872, 9.271; on Perugia/Mutina, cf. Perusina fames Mutinaeque
labores, BC.1.41; the old man reflects, BC.2.67ff.
5 Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) Vespasian, the Batavian revolt supported by some of the Gallic provinces - fit the bill as
‘mixed’ conflict. As Timothy Joseph points out, here Tacitus stresses this new class of war,
calling it a war simultaneously civil and foreign (interno simul externoque bello, 2.69.1), and
as having the mixed look of civil and external war (mixta belli civilis externique facie,
4.22.2).6 He concludes that ‘The tag permixta ... looks ahead to the slipperiness and
limitlessness of Tacitean civil war, and braces us for the many shapes that it will assume in
his text.’ (36)
Here, I would prefer to emphasis Tacitus’ differences from Lucan, his attempt to
separate out into categories the kinds of distinctions between foreign and civil war the Bellum
Civile conspicuously tries to elide. Though Lucan’s epic begins with a striking lament that
Romans turned on themselves when so many foreign foes were left to fight, as the narrative
develops, the typical strategy of the Neronian text is to confuse the boundaries of identity and
ethnicity in the creation of a bellum ciuile on the world-scale.7 Even when the Romans end up
in the classic locus for the ‘Other’, Egypt, the picture of orientalizing luxury Tacitus paints is
not so much non-Roman as problematically proto-(imperial) Roman, a picture of the
principate to come. Lucan’s Bellum Civile, then, revels in the presentation of civil war as
world war, the elision of orbis and Urbs.8 Tacitus’ categorisation of 3 types of conflict, on the
other hand, doesn’t to me seem interested in collapsing distinctions between centre and
periphery entirely. Its concepualization of the mixture of external and internal lies instead in a
6
Joseph (2012) 34-35: cf. Hist.2.69.2, ‘Then, to keep the Batavian cohorts from undertaking some bold deed of
vengeance, he sent them back to Germany, for the Fates were already preparing the sources from which both
civil and foreign war was to spring.(principium interno simul externoque bello parantibus fatis). In taking this
tack, Tacitus is conspicuously not doing Josephus does - which is to present the Batavian revolt as a clear-cut
instance of ‘foreign’ war, a German attack on Rome (BJ.7.75-88).
7
This ambivalence is developed by post-Lucanian writers: cf. O’Gorman (1993) on Tacitus’ Germania.
8
See e.g. Masters (1992); on Egypt, Reed (2010); Murgatroyd, T. W. H. (2007) Geopolitics in Lucan's Bellum
Civile'. PhD Cambridge.
6 Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) different kind of flashpoint for Roman identity: the categorisation of the rebellious legions,
whose revolts against authority are both ‘civil’ and ‘foreign’ war.9
3. Enter Valerius, proto-Tacitean historiographer?
It has been suggested that Valerius’ choice of a mythological theme for epic allowed
him to avoid the broader historical perspective - as Gregory Hutchinson remarks, ‘Valerius
Flaccus’ epic on the Argonauts, though Rome has in it some small presence, to my mind
essentially immerses itself in a mythological world’10 - but, as I hope my first passage on the
hand-out shows, the world of Valerius’ Argonauts is at the same time ‘Roman’ from the getgo. And at Colchis, Valerius innovatively creates a conflict that is both clearly ‘mythological’
- written very closely to norms of Iliadic warfare, and featuring the fathers of many of the
combatants in the Homeric epic - but also obviously up-to-date from a geopolitical
perspective, with a range of reference extending far beyond Scythia, to Egypt, Persia, India
and Germany, and incorporating many places still outside Roman control.11 Thomas Baier
(2001: 61) terms Valerius’ evocation of war in Colchis ‘a tableau of the non-Roman world‘,
and given this associative frame, we might be encouraged to see Jason’s Argonauts sailing
into what might be a Rome-vs-barbarians foreign conflict. Indeed, Valerius even offers some
fresh juicy ethnographical detail about these new eastern foes that anticipates the later
historiographers of the Flavian period: Valerius, for example, gives the first accurate
description of arms and tactics of the Sarmatians: their distinctive weapon, the heavy lance
(contus), their aversion to the bow, their distinctive yell - fremitus, not ululatus.12
Yet at the same time as Valerius offers a new and startling picture of the hitherto
unknown ‘barbarian’ east, the Argonautica presents the war in Colchis as a bellum internum,
9
Cf. Myles Lavan forthcoming.
Cf. Barnes (1981); Spaltenstein (1991) 96-7; Hutchinson (1993) 69’
11
Cf. Shreeves (1978)182; Buckley (2010)
12
Syme (1929): on further detail about e.g. the Alans etc see *** [check Liberman on VF and Josephus]
10
7 Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) for this too is a war between two brother (Perses and Aeetes). Though some modern critics do
their best to suggest that the Argonauts themselves are not involved as civil war combatants,
Jason himself stresses his familial ties to the Colchians - an action that at the least implicates
them in this bellum ciuile,13 and - like Tacitus later - explicit allusion to Lucan’s Bellum
Ciuile becomes emblematic of Valerian war: the Colchian impulse for death at Arg.6.242,
for example (concurrunt ultroque ruunt in funera Colchi), recalls closely Lucan’s line that
civil war is the slaughter of the world (in funere mundi / mortibus innumeris, BC.7.617-8).14
Valerius’ war in Colchis, then, is presented as both bellum internum and bellum
externum, fusing expansionist narrative of exploration, the kind of ‘clean’ war stressed in the
self-legitimising presentations of the Flavian regime at its outset, with a much murkier kind
of war - the kind of war, in fact, that really put the dynasty in place.15 But what really seems
conceptually to make Valerius’ epic-mythological war ‘proto-Tacitean’ is the further
complication Valerius makes in this geographically foreign, allusively civil, mythologically
pre-Iliadic war: his anachronistic and jarring practice of comparing these exotic easterners to
Roman soldiers. Take, for example, the figure of Colaxes, a Scythian destined to die as part
of Jason’s Iliadic-style aristeia:
proxima Bisaltae legio ductorque Colaxes,
sanguis et ipse deum, Scythicis quem Iuppiter oris
progenuit viridem Myracen Tibisenaque iuxta
ostia, semifero--dignum si credere--captus
corpore, nec nymphae geminos exhorruit angues.
cuncta phalanx insigne Iovis caelataque gestat
tegmina dispersos trifidis ardoribus ignes;
13
Cf. esp. Jason’s claim that both he and Aeetes are ultimately descended from the same family (Arg.5.441ff.).
On this tradition see Langen (1894) ad Arg.1.41 and Dräger (2003) 334-5.
14
Schenk (1999) 272: ‘Die Skythenschlacht hat damit die vergilische Komponente des Bürgerkriegs verloren
und soll gemäß den Vorgaben des Weltplans als auswärtiger Krieg um die Vorherrschaft begriffen werden. Ein
solcher Krieg ist aus römischer Sicht keineswegs mit einem Makel behaftet, so daß die Kämpfe der Argonauten
in ihrer grundsätzlichen Funktion keiner Kritik unterzogen werden.’ See too Jal (1963) 21-7; Mantovani (1990)
123-5, 130f.; Stover (2012)
15
Boyle and Dominik (2003); Kramer and Reitz (2010).
8 Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) nec primus radios, miles Romane, corusci
fulminis et rutilas scutis diffuderis alas.
Arg.6.48-56
Bisalta’s legion is next, led by Colaxes,
The gods’ own blood, whom Jupiter begot
In Scythian lands beside verdant Myrace
And Tibisis’ river mouth. Charmed by her form,
(Half-bestial, if this deserves belief)
He felt no horror at the nymph’s twin snakes,
The whole formation bear Jupiter’s mark,
Shields engraved with spreading three-branched fires.
(Soldier of Rome, you’re not the first whose shield
Spews arcs and gleaming wings of lightning flash.)
Colaxes is a son of Jupiter doomed to play the Sarpedon role:16 but his troops prefigure the
Roman soldiers of the Twelfth Legion,17 who will bear the same emblem on their shields.
This ‘barbarian’ Colaxes is nothing less than a proto-Roman soldier: his latter-day
contemporaries fought with Titus at the Fall of Jerusalem.
This mixture of internal and external war comes up again in a slightly different format
with the figure of the Scythian Ariasmenus, a warrior who has been achieving great
destruction on the battlefield with his scythed-chariots. Pallas appears on the battlefield, as
she had done in the Iliad before, and Ariasmenus’ horses, terrified by her aegis, bring
destruction on their driver and his own forces:18
quam soli vidistis, equi. pavor occupat ingens
excussis in terga viris diramque retorquent
in socios non sponte luem. tunc ensibus uncis
implicat et trepidos lacerat discordia currus.
Romanas veluti saevissima cum legiones
16
Cf. Arg.6.621ff. with Schubert (1984) 226, 245f.; Fucecchi (1997) 201f.; Schenk (1999) 307.
On the Twelfth, known as the Fulminata, who fought with Titus at the Fall of Jerusalem (cf. Tac.Hist.5.1;
Jos.bellum.5.41-2, 468), cf. Parker (1971) 132-55; Otte (1992) 126; Liberman (1997-2002) 202; Schenk (1999)
184 n.226. NB Jon Coulston pointed out in discussion that ALL soldiers wear the lightning flash - explore
further.
18
Specifically, this scene draws on Il.18.202ff, where Achilles, adorned with the aegis of Pallas, has such a
terrifying effect on the Trojans that twelve of them are killed by their own chariots. On Valerius’ Ariasmenus,
see Wright (1998) 155f.; Schenk (1999) 307f.; Baier (2001) 77.
17
9 Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) Tisiphone regesque movet, quorum agmina pilis,
quorum aquilis utrimque micant eademque parentes
rura colunt, idem lectos ex omnibus agris
miserat infelix non haec ad proelia Thybris:
ic modo concordes externaque fata petentes
Palladii rapuere metus, sic in sua versi
funera concurrunt dominis revocantibus axes.
Arg. 6.396-406
Only you, his horses, saw them.
Great terror grips them and they toss their men back;
Unwittingly they turn the deadly scourge
On their own men. Confusion then ensnared
The panicked chariots and mangled them
On sickle blades. Like this Tisiphone
In all her savagery stirs Roman legions
And would-be kings; both sides have Roman spears
In squadrons, both have eagles gleam in sun;
Their fathers till the same land, and the same stream Tiber
Had sent these chosen men from every district,
Unhappy river, but not to a war like this.
So now, united in pursuit of death
Abroad, these men were seized by fear of Pallas.
Wheels collided, turned to masters’ ruin
As the men tried to hold them back.
The critics attempt to relate this scene of clashing legions to a particular conflict:
Preiswerk and Burck arguing for the conflict of 69, Syme for the rebellion of Antonius
Saturninus; Wijsman for the Caesar-Pompey conflict. It is clear, at any rate, that the aesthetic
of the simile is infused with Lucan’s programme for civil war.19 And in its mixture of Roman
and non-Roman, its-hard-to-define evocation of both civil and foreign war, it seems to me
that Valerius might be a useful missing link between the exploration of Roman identity and
civil war to be found in Lucan and in Tacitus’ Histories. Indeed, read through Tacitus, it
19
Scholars are divided on which particular civil discord is being hinted at: Preiswerk (1934), Ussani (1955) and
Burck (1981) argue for 69 AD; Syme (1929) for the rebellion of Antonius Saturninus (termed a civil war by
Suetonius; cf. Domitian 6.2, Bellum ciuile motum a L. Antonio...); Wijsman (2000) for the Caesar-Pompey
conflict. Baier (2001) 196 takes the most sensible line: ‘Am warhscheinlichsten ist jedoch, daß kein bestimmtes
historisches Ereignis, sondern die Erfahrung der Bürgerkriege im allgemeinen beschworen wird.’ On the
Flavian gens as starting a new civil war in the East, see Suet. Vespasian 7.1: Suscepto igitur ciuili bello...Cf.
also Keitel (1984) on Tacitus. Toohey (1993) argues for the ‘Romanisation’ of the Argonauts at Arg.3.365;
6.402ff., 420; 7.573.
10 Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) becomes less necessary to find a specific time-frame for legionary rebellion, for the Histories
(or at least Timothy Joseph’s interpretation of those Histories) are attempting to portray the
idea that every civil Roman conflict is the same rebellion.20 Whether Tacitus is consciously
engaging with Valerius’ or not, both authors seem at least interested in interrogating the new
ways Romans were finding to fight civil war, and the changing nature of Roman identity
itself. This thought-piece suggested that the Argonautica might have something to offer to
Nervan-Trajanic exploration of such ideas.
Select Bibliography
Baier, Thomas. 2001. Valerius Flaccus Argonautica buch VI : Einleitung und kommentar.
München: C.H. Beck.
Barich, Michael. 2009. Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica. . Gambier, OH: X0X0X Press.
Borszak, S. 1991. Tacitus – ein manierist ? Aufstieg Und Niedergang Der Römischen Welt
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Burck, Erich. 1971. Vom römischen manierismus : Von der dichtung der frühen römischen
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Hershkowitz, Debra. 1998. Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica : Abbreviated voyages in silver
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20
Cf. Getty (1936) 59-61 and Strand (1972) 23-8, who see this simile as uncomfortably threatening Valerius’
generally positive line on war in the Argonautica; cf. also Burck (1971); Cambier (1969) 196-213; McDonald
(1970) 47-50; Shreeves (1971) 118-34; Otte (1992) 132f. McGuire (1997) 58-9 reads this most strongly: ‘for
Valerius, Roman civil war explicitly becomes the standard against which other strife can be measured. [...] In
historical terms, then, the simile not only reflects the degree to which the post-Neronian wars confronted Roman
citizens once again with the realities of civil war, but it also reflects Valerius’ assessment of what type of power
the princeps wields – regal power.’
11 Emma Buckley: ‘Tacitus: Epic Successor of Valerius?’ Working Papers on Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.5 (6/2/13) Hutchinson, G. O. 1993. Latin literature from Seneca to Juvenal : A critical study. Oxford;
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