Agrippina's (Un-)Augustan Anger

Tacitus, Annals 12.22.3 and Ovid, Tristia 2.127

Bibliographic Data

ID9666232
AuthorsTimothy A Joseph (0000-0002-5109-1198, College of the Holy Cross, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume73
Issue1
Pages320-327
Publication date2023-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Classical Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-8388 • E-ISSN: 1471-6844
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0009838823000228
OpenAlexW4385273161
LanguageEN
References cited17

Book 12 of Tacitus’ Annals spotlights the ascent of Agrippina, the new wife of Claudius and mother of Nero, to the heights of power in imperial Rome. This paper examines how Tacitus deepens and complicates that characterization through an allusion to Ovid's depiction of Augustus in Tristia Book 2. The allusion, coming in Ann . 12.22 as Agrippina is consolidating her power, serves to cast her as a figure of awesome anger and authority on a par with Augustus himself, but also as lacking the ability Augustus had to put limits on that anger. The allusion thus underscores the Annals ’ broader arc of the unruly collapse of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, while at the same time revealing the deftness of the historian of the Julio-Claudians at continuing and complicating the themes of the famed poet of Augustus

Allusion · Anger · Annals · Art · Depiction · Humanities · Literature · Power (physics · Theology · Wife · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Organic Chemistry Synthesis Methods · Philosophy · Psychology

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