Tacitus Wonders: Empire and Paradox in Ancient Rome

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This volume approaches the broad topic of wonder in the works of Tacitus, encompassing paradox, the marvellous and the admirable. Recent scholarship on these themes in Roman literature has tended to focus on poetic genres, with comparatively little attention paid to historiography: Tacitus, whose own judgments on what is worthy of note have often differed in interesting ways from the preoccupations of his readers, is a fascinating focal point for this complementary perspective. Scholarship on Tacitus has to date remained largely marked by a divide between the search for veracity as validated by modern historiographical standards and literary approaches, and as a result wonders have either been ignored as unfit for an account of history or have been deprived of their force by being interpreted as valid only within the text. While the modern ideal of historiographical objectivity tends to result in striving for consistent heuristic and methodological frameworks, works as varied as Tacitus Histories, Annals and opera minora can hardly be prefaced with a statement of methodology broad enough to escape misrepresenting their diversity. In our age of specialization a streamlined methodological framework is a virtue, but it should not be assumed that Tacitus had similar priorities, and indeed the Histories and Annals deserve to be approached with openness towards the variety of perspectives that a tradition as rich as Latin historiographical prose can include within its scope. This collection proposes ways to reconcile the divide between history and historiography by exploring contestable moments in the text that challenge readers to judge and interpret for themselves, with individual chapters drawing on a range of interpretive approaches that mirror the wealth of authorial and reader-specific responses in play.

Reviews

This book goes beyond the apparent artistic/anecdotal function of wonders in innovative ways and sheds light on how knowledge of the world is constructed in Tacitus works through miracula. * The Classical Review *
A fascinating exploration of the discourse of wonder, which addresses significant issues about ancient historiography and ancient concepts of knowledge. By challenging views of Tacitus which co-opt him to a modern standard of historiography, this book uncovers the diverse perspectives from which the world is understood in the Tacitean texts. -- Ellen O'Gorman, Senior Lecturer in Classics and Director of the Institute for Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition, University of Bristol, UK
The volume is certainly successful in achieving its aims and making us appreciate Tacitus marvels not as an aberration or embarrassment in an otherwise rational discourse, but as an integral part of his didactic and historical intentions There are many cross-references between the individual contributions, so that the collection, with a very carefully placed first and last chapter, reads like a wonderfully coherent exploration of a fascinating topic. * Greece and Rome *

Author Bio

James McNamara is a DAAD-Prime Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Potsdam, Germany. Victoria Emma Pagn is Professor of Classics at the University of Florida, USA.