37.4 per licita atque inlicita: Neronian vice covers the entire spectrum of possibilities, but Tacitus uses an oxymoron to articulate the comprehensive nature of his debauchery. In principle, it is difficult to defile oneself per licita, but Nero somehow manages the impossible. Conversely, Tacitus intimates that in Nero’s perverse indulgence in public disgrace, even otherwise sanctioned forms of erotic activity become filthy and hideous.

foedatus: A very strong and ugly verb, suggesting how utterly Nero disgraced himself and sullied any sense of public morals.

nihil flagitii reliquerat: flagitii is a partitive genitive dependent on nihil. The pronounced hyperbole again makes clear Nero’s degeneracy, suggesting that Nero saw this party as an opportunity to debase himself and made sure he left nothing out.

quo corruptior ageret: The antecedent of quo is nihil; quo is an ablative of means or instrument; corruptior is an adjective used instead of an adverb: ‘through which he could have acted with greater depravity.’

paucos post dies: We move on from the party to its aftermath. As in 37.2 Tacitus uses anastrophe, with the preposition post-poned. The link involves the personnel – Pythagoras was among the perverted crowd that participated in the banquet of Tigellinus (uni ex illo contaminatorum grege). It is important to note, however, that the marriage was not part of the banquet. Put differently, Tacitus has his cake and eats it too: at the beginning of the chapter, he announced that he would pick out a particular egregious instance of Nero’s debauchery exempli gratia – so as not to be compelled to cover the same stuff over and again (the implication being, of course, that Nero was a serial offender). At the same time, he indulges in the creative license to link up temporally distinct (but thematically related) episodes – in defiance of the annalistic principle. This condensation of material ensures that within this paragraph Tacitus reaches unprecedented heights on the imperial scandalometer.

uni ... in modum sollemnium coniugiorum denupsisset: Tacitus keeps his narrative dynamic and enthralling as we move from a general description, to a view of Nero specifically in that general setting, and now finally to a specific event. From a Roman point of view, Nero’s same-sex marriage forms a shocking climax to the depravities committed during Tigellinus’ banquet. Delivering on the heralded ‘licit-and-illicit’ headline, the emperor of Rome participates in a mockery of the sacred rite of marriage, and the perversion of this ancient ceremony is emphasised by the technical term for ‘real’ marriage, coniugiorum, and the adjective sollemnium. But the real shocker comes at the end: the verb denubo is specifically used of a woman marrying a man – so Nero is the bride here. It is therefore a savage comment on Nero’s inversion of everything natural and normal (with acid overtones of his being the passive sexual partner). (In the cultural imaginary of ancient Rome, the distinction between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ was of far greater importance than the distinction between homosexual and heterosexual.)

ex illo contaminatorum grege: This refers to the perverts, who like the rowers and whores, fill the party. The illo adds a note of scorn and also presents them as infamous in Nero’s reign. The word grex usually denotes animals, and thus dehumanises the men and emphasises their degeneracy. Finally, the powerfully pejorative adjective contaminatorum stresses the moral pollution of these men. The memorable and scything phrase sums up the company Nero kept: it is a paraded on-the-nail quotation from Horace’s famous ‘Cleopatra Ode’ (Ode 1.37.6–10):¹⁰

... dum Capitolio

regina dementis ruinas

funus et imperio parabat

contaminato cum grege turpium,

morbo virorum.

[... while the queen | was plotting mindless ruin for the | Capitoline and an end to Empire, | among her pervert company of disease- | polluted ‘males.’]

As Tony Woodman explains, this allusion to Horace clinches Tacitus’ subliminal transformation of Rome into Alexandria: ‘Horace was referring to the eunuchs who were conventionally associated with Egypt in the ancient world; and in his ode their leader, being a woman (regina), is an appropriate analogue to Nero, who in his wedding to Pythagoras adopts the female role. Yet Cleopatra was not only a woman but queen of, precisely, Alexandria.’¹¹ The allusion, then, achieves an identification of malicious ingenuity: Nero is Cleopatra, the king of Rome has turned into the queen of Egypt.¹² There is a further, sinister dimension to the Horatian intertext. His poem is, after all, a victory ode that celebrates a Roman triumph over an alien queen who tried to reduce Rome to ruins. Yet especially with the account of the fire coming up, Tacitus strongly implies that Nero succeeded where Cleopatra failed – Rome, in Horace’s words, has become ‘polluted’, an empire has indeed come to ‘an end.’ We are, in other words, faced with another inversion, this time at the literary level: whereas Horace, writing under Augustus, composed a victory ode of joy, relief, and celebration that, in exorcising a threat from the East, looks forward to a bright future, Tacitus’ narrative, which here chronicles the crimes of the last scion of the dynasty, who undoes or even reverses Augustus’ victory of West over East, offers an obituary on Julio-Claudian Rome, which collapses in onto itself: in a monstrous spectacle of imperial history returning to its beginnings, Nero is Augustus, Antony, and Cleopatra all in one.

nomen Pythagorae fuit: The name is Greek, conjuring ideas of effeminacy, homosexuality and loose morality. He is almost certainly also a eunuch – and a dreadful bringdown of a parodic return to life for the metempsychosis (and triangle and vegetarianism) guru.

flammeum ... auspices ... dos ... genialis torus ... faces nuptiales: All the ritual elements of genuine marriage are there in this disgraceful sham of a wedding, and Tacitus, by using the technical language of weddings, wants us to dwell on how totally Nero perverted the sacred ceremony:¹³

• The flammeum was the orange veil worn by the bride at her wedding (again, note that Nero assumes the female role).
• An auspex was a priest who foretold the future by observing the flight of birds. Auspices were sent to take their reading as part of the Roman wedding ceremony to gage the future prospects of the couple.
• The bride’s dowry (dos) was officially transferred as part of the service.
• The bride and groom’s marriage bed (torus genialis), on which the marriage would be consummated and which was a symbol of their union, was on prominent display during the ceremony.
• The wedding procession was accompanied by torch-bearers carrying the wedding torches (faces nuptiales), further symbols of wedlock.

inditum imperatori flammeum: Tacitus deliberately refers to Nero not by his name but by his most military title, imperator (‘emperor’, ‘commander’). The appalling incongruity of this title inserted strategically in-between inditum ... flammeum (the word-order enacts the covering of the emperor in the bridal veil), brings dramatically and graphically to life Nero’s distortion of both his office and the ceremony of wedlock. And his passive role in this play for today. Nero allegedly takes on a much more active role in the following chapter, which contains Tacitus’ account of the fire of Rome – and Tacitus makes the connection via a verbal link: ‘Nero’s flammeum provides both a verbal and visual harbinger for the flammae that will sweep through the city of Rome in the next chapter (15.38.2).’¹⁴

dos et genialis torus et faces nuptiales: The asyndeton of the previous two phrases, both containing verbs, turns into polysyndeton here, combined with the absence of any verb at all: this speeds up the list of sacred objects of marriage, which now pile up as Tacitus fires out the items Nero profaned. The perfect symmetry of the chiasmus (a) genialis (b) torus (b) faces (a) nuptiales, which features two adjectives meaning ‘of marriage’ in prominent position, brings details of the ceremonial part of the wedding to a mocking end – before Tacitus proceeds to recount its consummation.

cuncta denique spectata quae etiam in femina nox operit: Tacitus refers to the act of consummation. The culmination of a genuine wedding service came at night, when the bride was undressed by fellow women who had only ever had one man (univirae), before the groom was brought in and the marriage consummated in private, while friends and family sang wedding hymns outside. But Nero ‘consummates’ his ‘marriage’ by having intercourse with his ‘groom’ Pythagoras in full view of everyone. The cuncta (everything) suggests pretty graphically that there was no modesty here.

etiam in femina nox operit: In other words even (etiam) in heterosexual weddings decency requires the cover of night for the act of consummation. In contrast, Nero turns his wedding night experience into a public spectacle. And into the bargain, the way Tacitus makes it sound, right before their very eyes s/he pulled off a wizard feat of anatomical impossibility!

37.4 per licita atque inlicita: Neronian vice covers the entire spectrum of possibilities, but Tacitus uses an oxymoron to articulate the comprehensive nature of his debauchery. In principle, it is difficult to defile oneself per licita, but Nero somehow manages the impossible. Conversely, Tacitus intimates that in Nero’s perverse indulgence in public disgrace, even otherwise sanctioned forms of erotic activity become filthy and hideous.

foedatus: A very strong and ugly verb, suggesting how utterly Nero disgraced himself and sullied any sense of public morals.

nihil flagitii reliquerat: flagitii is a partitive genitive dependent on nihil. The pronounced hyperbole again makes clear Nero’s degeneracy, suggesting that Nero saw this party as an opportunity to debase himself and made sure he left nothing out.

quo corruptior ageret: The antecedent of quo is nihil; quo is an ablative of means or instrument; corruptior is an adjective used instead of an adverb: ‘through which he could have acted with greater depravity.’

paucos post dies: We move on from the party to its aftermath. As in 37.2 Tacitus uses anastrophe, with the preposition post-poned. The link involves the personnel – Pythagoras was among the perverted crowd that participated in the banquet of Tigellinus (uni ex illo contaminatorum grege). It is important to note, however, that the marriage was not part of the banquet. Put differently, Tacitus has his cake and eats it too: at the beginning of the chapter, he announced that he would pick out a particular egregious instance of Nero’s debauchery exempli gratia – so as not to be compelled to cover the same stuff over and again (the implication being, of course, that Nero was a serial offender). At the same time, he indulges in the creative license to link up temporally distinct (but thematically related) episodes – in defiance of the annalistic principle. This condensation of material ensures that within this paragraph Tacitus reaches unprecedented heights on the imperial scandalometer.

uni ... in modum sollemnium coniugiorum denupsisset: Tacitus keeps his narrative dynamic and enthralling as we move from a general description, to a view of Nero specifically in that general setting, and now finally to a specific event. From a Roman point of view, Nero’s same-sex marriage forms a shocking climax to the depravities committed during Tigellinus’ banquet. Delivering on the heralded ‘licit-and-illicit’ headline, the emperor of Rome participates in a mockery of the sacred rite of marriage, and the perversion of this ancient ceremony is emphasised by the technical term for ‘real’ marriage, coniugiorum, and the adjective sollemnium. But the real shocker comes at the end: the verb denubo is specifically used of a woman marrying a man – so Nero is the bride here. It is therefore a savage comment on Nero’s inversion of everything natural and normal (with acid overtones of his being the passive sexual partner). (In the cultural imaginary of ancient Rome, the distinction between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ was of far greater importance than the distinction between homosexual and heterosexual.)

ex illo contaminatorum grege: This refers to the perverts, who like the rowers and whores, fill the party. The illo adds a note of scorn and also presents them as infamous in Nero’s reign. The word grex usually denotes animals, and thus dehumanises the men and emphasises their degeneracy. Finally, the powerfully pejorative adjective contaminatorum stresses the moral pollution of these men. The memorable and scything phrase sums up the company Nero kept: it is a paraded on-the-nail quotation from Horace’s famous ‘Cleopatra Ode’ (Ode 1.37.6–10):¹⁰

... dum Capitolio

regina dementis ruinas

funus et imperio parabat

contaminato cum grege turpium,

morbo virorum.

[... while the queen | was plotting mindless ruin for the | Capitoline and an end to Empire, | among her pervert company of disease- | polluted ‘males.’]

As Tony Woodman explains, this allusion to Horace clinches Tacitus’ subliminal transformation of Rome into Alexandria: ‘Horace was referring to the eunuchs who were conventionally associated with Egypt in the ancient world; and in his ode their leader, being a woman (regina), is an appropriate analogue to Nero, who in his wedding to Pythagoras adopts the female role. Yet Cleopatra was not only a woman but queen of, precisely, Alexandria.’¹¹ The allusion, then, achieves an identification of malicious ingenuity: Nero is Cleopatra, the king of Rome has turned into the queen of Egypt.¹² There is a further, sinister dimension to the Horatian intertext. His poem is, after all, a victory ode that celebrates a Roman triumph over an alien queen who tried to reduce Rome to ruins. Yet especially with the account of the fire coming up, Tacitus strongly implies that Nero succeeded where Cleopatra failed – Rome, in Horace’s words, has become ‘polluted’, an empire has indeed come to ‘an end.’ We are, in other words, faced with another inversion, this time at the literary level: whereas Horace, writing under Augustus, composed a victory ode of joy, relief, and celebration that, in exorcising a threat from the East, looks forward to a bright future, Tacitus’ narrative, which here chronicles the crimes of the last scion of the dynasty, who undoes or even reverses Augustus’ victory of West over East, offers an obituary on Julio-Claudian Rome, which collapses in onto itself: in a monstrous spectacle of imperial history returning to its beginnings, Nero is Augustus, Antony, and Cleopatra all in one.

nomen Pythagorae fuit: The name is Greek, conjuring ideas of effeminacy, homosexuality and loose morality. He is almost certainly also a eunuch – and a dreadful bringdown of a parodic return to life for the metempsychosis (and triangle and vegetarianism) guru.

flammeum ... auspices ... dos ... genialis torus ... faces nuptiales: All the ritual elements of genuine marriage are there in this disgraceful sham of a wedding, and Tacitus, by using the technical language of weddings, wants us to dwell on how totally Nero perverted the sacred ceremony:¹³

• The flammeum was the orange veil worn by the bride at her wedding (again, note that Nero assumes the female role).
• An auspex was a priest who foretold the future by observing the flight of birds. Auspices were sent to take their reading as part of the Roman wedding ceremony to gage the future prospects of the couple.
• The bride’s dowry (dos) was officially transferred as part of the service.
• The bride and groom’s marriage bed (torus genialis), on which the marriage would be consummated and which was a symbol of their union, was on prominent display during the ceremony.
• The wedding procession was accompanied by torch-bearers carrying the wedding torches (faces nuptiales), further symbols of wedlock.

inditum imperatori flammeum: Tacitus deliberately refers to Nero not by his name but by his most military title, imperator (‘emperor’, ‘commander’). The appalling incongruity of this title inserted strategically in-between inditum ... flammeum (the word-order enacts the covering of the emperor in the bridal veil), brings dramatically and graphically to life Nero’s distortion of both his office and the ceremony of wedlock. And his passive role in this play for today. Nero allegedly takes on a much more active role in the following chapter, which contains Tacitus’ account of the fire of Rome – and Tacitus makes the connection via a verbal link: ‘Nero’s flammeum provides both a verbal and visual harbinger for the flammae that will sweep through the city of Rome in the next chapter (15.38.2).’¹⁴

dos et genialis torus et faces nuptiales: The asyndeton of the previous two phrases, both containing verbs, turns into polysyndeton here, combined with the absence of any verb at all: this speeds up the list of sacred objects of marriage, which now pile up as Tacitus fires out the items Nero profaned. The perfect symmetry of the chiasmus (a) genialis (b) torus (b) faces (a) nuptiales, which features two adjectives meaning ‘of marriage’ in prominent position, brings details of the ceremonial part of the wedding to a mocking end – before Tacitus proceeds to recount its consummation.

cuncta denique spectata quae etiam in femina nox operit: Tacitus refers to the act of consummation. The culmination of a genuine wedding service came at night, when the bride was undressed by fellow women who had only ever had one man (univirae), before the groom was brought in and the marriage consummated in private, while friends and family sang wedding hymns outside. But Nero ‘consummates’ his ‘marriage’ by having intercourse with his ‘groom’ Pythagoras in full view of everyone. The cuncta (everything) suggests pretty graphically that there was no modesty here.

etiam in femina nox operit: In other words even (etiam) in heterosexual weddings decency requires the cover of night for the act of consummation. In contrast, Nero turns his wedding night experience into a public spectacle. And into the bargain, the way Tacitus makes it sound, right before their very eyes s/he pulled off a wizard feat of anatomical impossibility!

Footnotes