Tacitus and the Massacre at Tarracina (Hist., 3.76-77)
p. 285-291
Texte intégral
1Tacitus is one of our earliest successors of Flavian historiography, not only as a traditional compiler of contemporary historians1, but also as a vociferous critic at the end of Hist., 2.101.1:
Scriptores temporum, qui potiente rerum Flauia domo monimenta belli huiusce composuerunt, curam pacis et amorem rei publicae, corruptas in adulationem causas, tradidere: nobis [...] uidentur.
“The historians of the period, who during the ascendancy of the Flavian family composed the chronicles of this war, have asserted a regard for peace and a love of country, causes falsified by flattery. For my part, they seem…”.
2This suggests that the Flavian historians were unaware of their shortcomings and their propensities toward flattery. However, Pliny the Younger preserves a snippet of a conversation between Verginius Rufus (whose funeral oration Tacitus delivered in 97) and the Flavian historian Cluvius Rufus that indicates more self-awareness about their propensities toward flattery than we may infer from Tacitus (Plin., Ep., 9.19.5):
ita secum aliquando Cluuium locutum: “Scis, Vergini, quae historiae fides debeatur; proinde si quid in historiis meis legis aliter ac uelis rogo ignoscas”. Ad hoc ille: “Tune ignoras, Cluui, ideo me fecisse quod feci, ut esset liberum uobis scribere quae libuisset?”.
“Cluvius Rufus begins, ‘You know, Verginius, that history must be faithful to fact; so if you read anything in my histories which is other than you wish, I beg you pardon it’. To which Verginius replies, ‘Do you fail to recognize, Cluvius, that I did what I did so that you could be free to write what you please?’”2.
3Despite the acclamation of his soldiers, Verginius remained loyal to Nero, but once Nero was dead he switched allegiance to Galba. Verginius’ momentary loyalty to the morally bankrupt Nero was supposed to safeguard history against corruption. Yet apparently this agile navigation of treacherous political waters still did not protect the writing of history, although too many facts remain unknown about Cluvius’ work to draw any firm conclusions3. Flavian historians had difficulties, which Tacitus inherited when he took up the task of writing about the civil wars of the year 69.
4According to G. B. Townend, Tacitus had less material at his disposal for the extant Histories than he had for the Annals or for the Histories after Book 5. Lacking full and varied literary sources, Tacitus must have followed the method by which likely underpinned the Agricola: interviews with eye-witnesses4. Yet upon closer investigation, we find he engages with the Flavian literary imagination, and he supplements with exempla from the late Republic. These techniques are evident in Histories 3 but still do not explain the source for the startling narrative of the massacre at Tarracina (Hist., 3.76-77), an event preserved only by Tacitus, who alone provides such vivid detail.
5The episode is problematic not only because it is not attested elsewhere but also because it seems out of place in the narrative sequence of Histories 3. M. G. Morgan’s rehabilitation of the episode accounts for the “few loose ends in this narrative” to show that “even if the account is not perfect, Tacitus knows what he is doing here”5. After defending Tacitus’ somewhat awkward diction and his choices of details to include and exclude, Morgan argues that the episode contributes to the larger design of Histories 3, in which this minor Vitellian victory contrasts with Sabinus’ major Flavian disaster – which in turn is contrasted with Antonius Primus’ ultimate Flavian victory. Furthermore, falling between the destruction of the Capitol and the capture of Rome, the massacre at Tarracina brings into high relief two of the most devastating events of the civil wars. And finally, the episode contributes to Tacitus’ characterization of Antonius Primus as an “archetypal desperado”6. Morgan’s analysis makes an important contribution to our understanding of the narrative structures of Book 3. Tacitus’ artistry is inextricably linked to his purpose.
6This present volume on the sources and models of ancient history provides a moment to contemplate the extent to which the episode is dependent on Tacitus’ predecessors, used either as sources or as literary models, or both at the same time. On the one hand, the distinctiveness of the episode of the massacre at Tarracina sheds light both upon content, the civil wars, and context, the moment in which the Histories were written. On the other hand, massacres of this sort must have been quite common during the civil wars. If so, then Tacitus’ treatment of Tarracina in Histories 3 may be emblematic of his attitude toward his predecessors as expressed at the end of Histories 2.
7In Book 3, Tacitus refers to unnamed Flavian sources (more likely witnesses than texts) in general terms six times7. Tacitus also corrects an explanation transmitted by unnamed sources (3.65.1: erant qui) and offers instead a better interpretation (3.65.2: melior interpretatio). Vipstanus Messalla (lead character in the Dialogus) is named once as a direct source (3.25: rem nominaque auctore Vipstano Messalla tradam) and once as a source compared to Pliny the Elder (3.28: ut Messalla tradit, an potior auctor sit C. Plinius). Eyewitnesses too are named. Cluvius Rufus and the Campanian poet Silius Italicus witnessed the agreement between Flavius Sabinus (elder brother of Vespasian) and Vitellius in the Temple of Apollo, when Vitellius agreed to cease hostilities on certain conditions (3.65.2: uerba uocesque duos testes habebant, Cluuium Rufum et Silium Italicum)8.
8In addition to these overt acknowledgements of Flavian historiography, the theme of rivalry familiar from epic poetry underpins the petty jealousies between Vitellian generals Caecina and Valens (2.30.3: hinc aemulatio ducibus), and the Flavian generals C. Licinius Mucianus and Antonius Primus (3.53.3: inde graves simultates)9. Moreover, the theme of sibling rivalry surfaces full force just before the mention of Silius Italicus cited above. Leading men of the city urged Flavius Sabinus to make sure he got his share of glory for victory (3.64.1) and not let Antonius and Varus take all the credit. When Sabinus shrugged off the advice, some accused him with dark suspicions of delaying the ascent of his brother out of envy and rivalry (3.65.1: inuidia et aemulatione). Still, not at the hands of his brother was Sabinus executed, mutilated, decapitated, and thrown from the Gemonian steps (3.74), although his obituary does record the general agreement among historians that he was the more preeminent of the brothers, until, of course, Vespasian became emperor (3.75.1).
9Fratricide is inherent in civil war, and Tacitus records on superlative authority (3.51.1: celeberrimos auctores) a story of a knight who confessed to killing his brother in battle and then demanded a reward for it, a situation that generated a paradox familiar from the Thebaid. As human law did not permit Antigone to bury Polynices, and divine law did not permit her punishment for the deed, so in Tacitus, “human rights did not permit them to honor this murder, and the rules of engagement did not permit them to punish it” (3.51.1: nec illis aut honorare eam caedem ius hominum aut ulcisci ratio belli permittebat). The matter was dropped unresolved10.
10Tacitus compares this atrocity to an episode found in Cornelius Sisenna’s Histories. In the year 87 BCE, during the battle of the Janiculum against Cinna, a Pompeian soldier killed his own brother, and when he realized his crime, he killed himself11. The story is also preserved in Valerius Maximus, though of a Sertorian not Pompeian soldier12. Tacitus explains why he has included what must have been a well-known story (3.51.2):
sed haec aliaque ex uetere memoria petita, quotiens res locusque exempla recti aut solacia mali poscet, haud absurde memorabimus.
“But these and other instances sought from bygone memory I will recall not inappropriately to the extent that the subject matter and occasion demand an example of righteousness or a solace for evil”.
11Traditional tales embedded in the Roman cultural memory are the substance of moral exemplarity, a phenomenon shared among Roman writers. Tacitus’ statement thus aligns with Livy’s method of providing examples of good things to imitate and bad things to avoid (Praef., 10), a sentiment which resurfaces at Ann., 3.65.1, where Tacitus speaks of the function of annalistic history (munus annalium)13.
12Twice more in Histories 3 Tacitus invokes the past explicitly. After the Capitol was burnt to the ground, he digresses on its origins, development, and fate over time (3.72). When the Flavian armies broke through the Colline Gate and battle raged within the Campus Martius, Tacitus reminds us that armed troops had fought within the city before, twice when Sulla and once when Cinna triumphed (3.83). Thus, the final conflicts of the year 69 are compared to the civil war of 87-86 BCE – a worrisome analogy by which to characterize the beginnings of the Flavian dynasty, as R. Ash has noted14.
13Vitellius too had a brother. Lucius waged a fair share of the war, while Vitellius hid out in the Servilian gardens in Rome, neglecting his duties and fretting over the defection of the fleet at Ravenna (3.36). Vespasian’s brother Flavius Sabinus, in the company of Cluvius Rufus and Silius Italicus, offered Vitellius escape to a resort in Campania in return for his arms and his children; tempted, Vitellius went so far as to haggle for more slaves and beachfront property (3.63.2). Members of his court, however, reminded Vitellius of the more sobering reality, that Vespasian could not possibly keep such promises. If Caesar could not spare Pompey, nor Augustus Antony, then Vespasian would surely not allow Vitellius to live out his days on the Bay of Naples. Into this indirect discourse of the courtiers, Tacitus has once again inserted exempla from the past, this time within the context of the moralizing discourse of villas and otium, the sort treated in full-scale literary descriptions by Statius, Pliny, and Martial15.
14Thus, there are vestiges of the Flavian literary imagination in Histories 3: rivalries, fratricides, opulent villas, and cameo appearances by a contemporary historian and an epic poet. In the words of R. Ash, “Real life and poetic fiction […] seem to interact”, as Tacitus is found engaging actively with the Thebaid and indeed the broader Flavian literary tradition16. Yet the manifest engagement that Ash documents is part of a larger complex of strategies for narrating a phase of the civil wars for which sources were scarce. Exempla from the Republican past and the wars of Cinna and Sulla supplement the narrative. This is the context in which Tacitus embeds the narrative of the massacre at Tarracina.
15By December, things were looking desperate for Vitellius; of the whole world he held only the patch between the mountain passes at Narnia and Tarracina on the sea (3.60.2), which was occupied by rebels who had been incited by Claudius Faventius. He produced letters, forged as if from Vespasian (3.57.1: fictis Vespasiani epistulis) promising a reward for defection to his side17. Claudius Apollinaris captain of the fleet at Misenum and Apinius Tiro acting chief of Minturnae joined the cause. Puteoli too turned for Vespasian, while Capua remained faithful to Vitellius – although the civil war was just a pretext for asserting local rivalries (3.57.1: municipalem aemulationem bellis ciuilibus miscebant). In short, Campania was a tinderbox. So Vitellius sent his brother Lucius to secure the region; he camped at Feronia, about three miles from Tarracina. Discipline among the rebel forces under Iulianus, Apollinaris, and Tiro was lax, to say the least. They did not post watches or fortify weak spots in the walls; instead they sent their soldiers on errands for party supplies and spoke of war only over dinner (3.76.2). They were ripe for the picking.
16That’s when a slave of Vergilius Capito deserted to Lucius Vitellius and promised that if given a force he would hold part of the unoccupied citadel18. Late at night some light-armed cohorts were placed on the hilltop from which they descended to what was more a massacre than a battle (77.1: ad caedem magis quam ad pugnam). They slew men unarmed or in the act of arming themselves (77.1: inermos aut arma capientes) and some just awaking from sleep amid the confusion of darkness and panic, the braying of trumpets, and the shouts of the enemy. A few of the gladiators resisted and fell though not without some retaliation. The rest descended to the ships, everything in general panic; the troops and townsfolk alike were slaughtered indiscriminately. Six Liburnian ships with Apollinaris escaped early. The rest were either seized on the beach or foundered under the excessive weight of those who rushed on board (3.77.2). Such detail conjures images of the desperate attempts to escape the eruption of Vesuvius, and here we may detect a foreshadowing of how Tacitus may have used Pliny’s letters 6.16 and 6.20, written to provide Tacitus with material for his Histories. Iulianus was brought before Lucius and after a disgraceful whipping he was strangled before the general’s eyes. Some – and once again in fuere qui we see Tacitus using contemporary sources – accused Triaria, Lucius’ wife, of arming herself and behaving with arrogance and cruelty amid the horrors and massacres (3.77.3).
17Tarracina is not mentioned by name in Suetonius. Although the place is named by Dio, the episode is epitomized19. Tarracina was located near the Pomptine Marsh, a marvel (miraculum) which Mucianus reported to be the site of twenty-four cities, according to Pliny the Elder20. Would Mucianus have also mentioned the massacre that took place in the neighborhood? Supplementing whatever Flavian sources were at Tacitus’ disposal for this particular event are representations of Tarracina in Strabo, Horace, and Livy, since epic poetry yields negligible results21. Anxur, the ancient Volscian name for the metrically intractable Tarracina, is mentioned only in passing: in the catalogues in Aeneid 7 and Punica 8, and at the beginning of Pharsalia 3 in Caesar’s hostile march against Rome22. Whereas in Lucan’s poem Tarracina is the point of origin for Caesar’s attack on Rome, in Tacitus’ Annals it is terminus of the funeral procession of Germanicus, whose ashes were carried along the Via Appia by his brother Drusus as far as Tarracina23.
18Strabo provides the fullest geographical description of Tarracina, modern Terracina, which lies about sixty-five miles south on the Via Appia, half way between Rome and Naples (5.3.6): “In front of Tarracina lies a great marsh […] It is here that the Appian Way first touches the sea. […] Near Tarracina as you go toward Rome, there is a canal which runs alongside the Appian Way and is fed at numerous places by waters from the marshes and the rivers. People navigate the canal, preferably by night […] the boat is towed by a mule”24. Horace brings this canal and its mule to life in Satire, 1.5. On his journey to Brundisium he and his friends set out on the Appian Way as far as Forum Appi, where the Pomptine Marshes begin. There they must travel via pontoon along the canal infested with mosquitos and frogs. They arrive in the morning at the temple of Feronia, where they stop to wash before the final approach to Anxur25. There they were scheduled to meet trusted ambassadors Maecenas and Cocceius (coincidentally, the great-great-uncle of the emperor Nerva)26.
19In Livy, Tarracina belongs to a more distant past. In preparation for the war with the Veii in 406 BCE, the Romans sent Fabius to secure Anxur. Livy states the purpose explicitly: to lay siege without pillaging (Liv. 4.59.3: ad Anxur oppugnandum sine ulla populatione). Fabius threatened assault on one side, while Servilius Ahala assailed the walls from the high ground on the other side (as did the slave of Vergilius Capito). With none to oppose, they were free to bring scaling ladders and easily captured the town: the enemy for a long time gave no quarter slaughtering without distinction those who fled and those who resisted, the armed and the unarmed27. Then the command was given that those who were unarmed should be spared; survivors laid down their weapons and 2500 were taken alive. Furthermore, Fabius forbade his soldiers from plundering the town, insisting that they wait for the other units that by diverting the Volsci from defense of the place had contributed to their success (Liv. 4.59.7). Surely this is one of those examples of righteousness drawn from the past and demanded by the subject matter at hand, which Tacitus mentioned at Hist., 3.51.228. In the massacre at Tarracina, Tacitus layers multiple strategies for reassembling the past29.
20Vitellius was killed two days after the massacre. His brother Lucius Vitellius surrendered and was executed. Lucilius Bassus (a Vitellian gone Flavian) was sent to mop up operations in Campania. Most places needed no convincing, but Capua was punished for its allegiance to Vitellius and Tarracina received no relief. The turncoat slave was hanged (Hist., 4.2.3). The significance of Tarracina to Tacitus is proven by his pronouncement of a characteristically inscrutable sententia on the fate of the place: “So much more inclined are we to repay injury than forgive kindness, because gratitude is considered a burden, while revenge can be turned into gain” (4.3.2: tanto procliuius est iniuriae quam beneficio uicem exoluere, quia gratia oneri, ultio in quaestu habetur).
21No priority can or should be assigned to the source of Tacitus’ inspiration for his account of the massacre at Tarracina, whether he found it in a book or heard it from an elder, whether he had Horace or Livy in mind. Behind the episode lies unmistakably Tacitus’ condemnation of the stupidity of the Flavian rebels and the savagery of the Vitellian troops. To compose Histories 3, Tacitus engages in a process of imaginative elaboration that forecloses denial or disbelief and restores to the imagination the events that occurred. Tacitus condemns the pervasive violence of civil war in such a way as to remember for the Flavian writers what they themselves may have preferred to forget.
Notes de bas de page
1 Vipstanus Messalla (an interlocutor in the Dialogus) is mentioned by name at Hist., 3.9, 3.11, 3.18, and as a source at 3.25 and 3.28 with Pliny the Elder. Messalla is thought to be a “principal and preferred source” for the Flavian-Vitellian war according to Syme 1958, 177; see also FRH, I, 567 (Levick). Tacitus also relied on the commentaries of Vespasian and perhaps the work of Mucianus, on which see Ash 2007. See Wellesley 1972, 6-10.
2 On the historical events to which the remark eludes see Shotter 1967.
3 Wardle 1992, 477; FRH, I, 554-555 (Levick).
4 On Tacitus’ sources for the Agricola and the reliance on oral testimony see Woodman & Kraus 2014, 25-26.
5 Morgan 1992b, 124.
6 Morgan 1992b, 130.
7 3.22.2: alii tradiderint; 3.29.2: inter omnes auctores constat; 3.51.1: celeberrimos auctores habeo; 3.54.3: de fide constantiaque eadem tradidere; 3.59.3: multi tradidere; 3.75.1: inter omnis constiterit.
8 The same story is told at Suet., Vit., 15.2: urgenti deinde terra marique hosti hinc fratrem cum classe ac tironibus et gladiatorum manu opposuit, hinc Bedriacenses copias et duces; atque ubique aut superatus aut proditus salutem sibi et milies sestertium a Flavio Sabino Vespasiani fratre pepigit. According to Wellesley 1972, 162, Cluvius and Silius were dead when Tacitus wrote this.
9 On the importance of the rivalry between Mucianus and Primus see Ash 1999, 162.
10 Woodman 1983. See also Hardie 1993.
11 FRH, II, 665.
12 Val. Max. 5.5.4: is namque in castris Cn. Pompeii stipendia peragens, cum Sertorianum militem acrius sibi in acie instantem comminus interemisset iacentemque spoliaret, ut fratrem germanum esse cognouit, multum ac diu conuicio deos ob donum impiae uictoriae insecutus, prope castra transtulit et pretiosa ueste opertum rogo imposuit. ac deinde subiecta face protinus eodem gladio quo illum interemerat pectus suum transuerberauit, seque super corpus fratris prostratum communibus flammis cremandum tradidit. Licebat ignorantiae beneficio innocenti uiuere, sed ut sua potius pietate quam aliena uenia uteretur, comes fraternae neci non defuit.
13 For Livy see Chaplin 2000.
14 Ash 1999, 140: “This link between Sulla and Domitian artfully suggests the direction in which the Flavian dynasty could so easily have gone”.
15 Stat., Silu., 1.3; 1.5; 2.2; 2.3; Plin., Ep., 2.17, 5.6; Mart. 4.64, inter alia. See Newlands 2002; Myers 2005; more recently Dewar 2014.
16 Ash 2015, 219-220: “Indeed, it is entirely possible that Tacitus […] was actively engaging with the Thebaid […] the boundary between historiography and epic was notoriously permeable”.
17 For similar deception via letters cf. Ann., 1.36-37.
18 Feronia was associated with the manumission of slaves; Gowers 2012, 192.
19 Suet., Vit., 15.2: urgenti deinde terra marique hosti hinc fratrem cum classe ac tironibus et gladiatorum manu opposuit, hinc Bedriacenses copias et duces; atque ubique aut superatus aut proditus salutem sibi et milies sestertium a Flauio Sabino Vespasiani fratre pepigit; C.D. 64.16.2: καὶ τὸν µὲν ἀδελφὸν διὰ ταχέων ἐς Ταρρακῖναν ἔµπεµψε, καὶ διὰ αὐτοῦ τὴν πόλιν κατέσχεν ὀχυρὰν οὖσαν.
20 Plin., Nat., 3.59: aliud miraculum a Cerceis palus Pomptina est, quem locum xxiv urbium fuisse Mucianus ter consul prodidit.
21 Baxter 1971, 65 dismisses Aeneid, 9.455 and 2.55 as possible Vergilian reminiscences in Hist., 3.77.
22 Verg., Aen., 7.797-800: qui saltus, Tiberine, tuos sacrumque Numici/ litus arant Rutulosque exercent uomere collis/ Circaeumque iugum, quis Iuppiter Anxurus aruis/ praesidet et uiridi gaudens Feronia luco; Sil. 8.390-391: Quis Circaea iuga et scopulosi uerticis Anxur/ Hernicaque impresso raduntur uomere saxa; Luc. 3.84-90: iamque et praecipitis superauerat Anxuris arces,/ et qua Pomptinas uia diuidit uda paludes,/ qua sublime nemus, Scythicae qua regna Dianae,/ quaque iter est Latiis ad summam fascibus Albam;/ excelsa de rupe procul iam conspicit urbem/ Arctoi toto non uisam tempore belli / miratusque suae sic fatur moenia Romae.
23 Ann., 3.2.2: Drusus Tarracinam progressus est cum Claudio fratre liberisque Germanici, qui in urbe fuerant.
24 Str. 5.3.6: πρόκειται δὲ αὐτῆς µέγα ἕλος ἐνταῦθα δὲ συνάπτειτῇ θαλάττῃ πρῶτον ἡ Ἀππία ὁδός πλησίον δὲ τῆς Ταρρακίνης βαδίζοντι ἐπὶ τῆς Ῥώµης παραβέβληται τῇ ὁδῷ τῇ Ἀππίᾳ διῶρυξ ἐπὶ πολλοὺς τόπους πληρουµένη τοῖς ἑλείοις τε καὶ τοῖς ποταµίοις ὕδασι: πλεῖται δὲ µάλιστα µὲν νύκτωρ, ῥυµουλκεῖ δ᾽ ἡµιόνιον.
25 Sat., 1.5.26-27: milia tum pransi tria repimus atque subimus/ inpositum saxis late candentibus Anxur; for Fraenkel 1957, 110, this is “Perhaps the first time in the history of European poetry that so faithful and so suggestive a picture of a definite piece of landscape was given in a few words”.
26 Nerva was born at Narnia. Perhaps it was Tacitus’ audience would have been aware of the connection.
27 Liv. 4.59.6: armatorum atque inermium; cf. Tac., Hist., 3.77.1: inermos aut arma capientes, although shared subject matter and an affinity for adnominatio (etymologizing word play) may account for the verbal similarity.
28 Anxur is also mentioned at Liv. 27.38.4: with the approach of Hannibal, the Romans are in need of troops and so Anxur was pressed into military service.
29 The narrative of Tarracina is interrupted by the burning of the Capitol and the death of Vitellius and extends into Book 4; it thus seems to permeate the imagination.
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