The cornerstone of J.'s enjoyable study is the notion that the historian Tacitus in the Histories must be considered fundamentally as an ‘epic successor’ of Virgil. This author-to-author succession, transcending generic differences between historiography and epic, is itself further mediated at times through Virgil's own epic successor, Lucan. For J., the manner in which that literary relationship between Tacitus and Virgil unfolds can at times involve aemulatio and one-upmanship, as in Tacitus' reworking of Virgil's plurima mortis imago (Aen. 2.369) by omni imagine mortium (Hist. 3.28), which J. analyses programmatically at the opening of his study (also on p. 135); but the literary relationship can also involve the trope of suggestive repetition, where history seems to go round in circles and the chronological distance between mythical and historical events collapses and implodes in arresting ways. In this context, J. deploys David Quint's notion that repetition can either be progressive (so that the past is repeated and mastered) or regressive (so that the past is repeated, but gets stuck). It is no surprise that regressive repetition in Tacitus attracts J.'s attention far more often (see especially pp. 7, 57, 84 n. 12, 133, 144, 172) than its progressive counterpart.
In methodological terms, J.'s study of the repetitiveness of civil war is driven by very traditional literary techniques of close reading: so, his modus operandi is to identify and engage with meaningful clusters of verbal echoes in the Latin, which Tacitus uses to prompt comparisons of his carefully crafted historical scenes with those created by his epic predecessors. It might have been useful here to engage with J. Wills, Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion (1996), particularly relevant, for example, to J.'s discussion of polyptoton on pp. 117–18. J.'s critical engagement with the interface between epic and historiography reflects a wider scholarly interest in this whole sphere, as demonstrated by the collections of essays edited by D.S. Levene and D.P. Nelis, Clio and the Poets: Augustan Poetry and the Traditions of Ancient Historiography (2002) and by J.F. Miller and A.J. Woodman, Latin Historiography and Poetry in the Early Empire: Generic Interactions (2010). Indeed, generic hybridity continues to be a hot topic amongst Latin scholars, as in the recent conference proceedings edited by T.D. Papanghelis, S.J. Harrison and S. Frangoulidis, Generic Interfaces in Latin Literature: Encounters, Interactions, and Transformations (2013). J., however, is less interested in generic boundaries than in the ideological significance of Tacitus situating his own civil war narrative within the earlier epic frameworks of Virgil and Lucan.
Within the Histories, J. is understandably most concerned with Tacitus' first three books (those dominated by civil war), concentrating on pivotal sections of narrative which are particularly enriched by the device of creative repetition, specifically the death of Galba (Hist. 1; chapter 2), the two battles near Cremona (Hist. 2 and 3; chapter 3) and Otho's suicide (Hist. 2; chapter 4). Yet J. adds a substantial epilogue which considers how Tacitus extends his theme of repetitive civil war into the beginnings of the new Flavian dynasty (with further speculation about how this theme might have played out in the German legions' declaration of Antonius Saturninus as emperor at the start of a.d. 89). Indeed, J. sees Virgil as fundamentally important in giving ‘roots’ to Tacitus' ‘intratextual repetitive program’ (p. 6), even if there are certainly times when Lucan offers an even more expressive literary model: so on p. 72, J. considers Lucan's exclamation at 4.807–9 prompted by the death of Curio as a verbal and conceptual model for Tacitus' bleak summary nec enim umquam atrocioribus populi Romani cladibus magisue iustis indiciis adprobatum est curae deis securitatem nostrum, esse ultionem (Hist. 1.3.2). In this connection, it is worth adding that L. Fratantuono (in Madness Triumphant: a Reading of Lucan's Pharsalia [2013], published after J.'s study) compares Lucan's description of Curio's corpse at 4.809–10 to Virgil's snapshot of Priam's body (which J. sees as a crucial model for Tacitus on Galba's corpse: he has a keen interest in intertextuality involving Priam ~ Pompey ~ Galba).
In this study, J. offers numerous deft observations which neatly encapsulate the elegance and wit of Tacitus' Latin. Space precludes picking out many examples, but on points of detail, J. certainly has a good eye. For example, J. considers Tacitus' pointed delay between Galba's killing (Hist. 1.41) and burial (Hist. 1.49), whereby the emperor's remains are left ‘separated, unburied, and abused for some eight chapters’ (p. 86), and sees as a miniaturised reflection of this the syntactical separation between Galba's caput and corpus at Hist. 1.49.1, where 22 Latin words keep the head and the body apart until they are finally reunited. Likewise, J. draws attention on pp. 136–7 to the signposting of Tacitus' repetitive embrace of Virgil through the significant words ac rursus at Hist. 3.30. On pp. 173–4, J. picks out carefully how the language of armed military conflict pointedly spills over into Tacitus' account of the dispute between Helvidius Priscus and Eprius Marcellus at Hist. 4.7–8 to create a verbal continuation of ‘civil war’ in the senate.
There are arguably times when J. misses a trick. For instance, on p. 17 he looks at Tacitus' account of Lucan's death in ‘slow motion’ at Ann. 15.70, noting the importance of uox as the penultimate word of Tacitus' version, leaving the impression that this was ‘the last thing to go’. If we leave aside the potential to consider Lucan's death as a repetition (with uariatio) of Seneca's death at Annals 15.67, there is certainly scope here to align this point with Virgil's memorable picture of Orpheus' ghostly uox ipsa (G. 4.525), particularly since J. is concerned with Tacitus' engagement with Lucan both as a poet and as self-constructed poetic subject-matter. Similarly on p. 25, J. analyses Tacitus' provocative summary that much of what he has related might seem parua fortisan et leuia memoratu and that his own labor is in arto et inglorius (Ann. 4.32.2). He rightly compares this with Virgil's introduction to his miniaturised ‘epic’ about bees, particularly in tenui labor; at tenuis non gloria (G. 4.6). J. argues that in adapting Virgil's line at Ann. 4.32, Tacitus ‘asserts his own worthiness as a successor to the poet’ (even if Tacitus has surely demonstrated this worthiness eloquently in the first three books of the Annals) and that he highlights a stylistic allegiance to his epic predecessor. Yet, so often, engaging with allusions is rather like herding cats. Just when they are all lined up, another feline arrives to disrupt the pattern. In this instance, Tacitus also seems to be wittily inverting and parodying standard prefatory topoi about the greatness of the subject matter and the superiority of the current writer's account in comparison with other historians. Sallust's snapshot of his subject matter at BJ 5.1 comes to mind (bellum scripturus sum quod populus Romanus cum Iugurtha rege Numidarum gessit, primum quia magnum et atrox uariaque uictoria fuit). The Virgilian intertext is certainly present and J. analyses it well, but Tacitean wit is often sharpened by deftly drawing in multiple texts (as J. well demonstrates, for example, in his stimulating discussion on p. 93 of another complicated intertextual nexus involving Tacitus working in tandem with Virgil and Livy).
The strength of this monograph lies in its close readings. However, what also emerges progressively is that J. integrates readings of Virgil rather more fully than readings of Lucan. This is an impression supported by the very useful ‘index of passages discussed’ (pp. 209–15). Quite how one handles such multiple layers of allusion methodologically is certainly a challenge. Resisting a ‘one size fits all’ approach is clearly crucial, but by the end of the monograph, J. seems to hold Lucan at arm's length (relatively speaking) compared with his ‘embrace’ (one of his favourite metaphors) of Virgil. To borrow Aper's image (Dial. 20.5), J. visits the sacrarium of Virgil more frequently than that of Lucan. Given that when J. does engage with Lucan, the results are often compelling (e.g. p. 47), the imbalance leaves this reader at least wanting more on Tacitus as epic successor of Lucan.
